egpu for potato laptop

[Anjelo Flores]

Hi I'm anjelo from the Philippines I'm new here and I'm 17 years old and also a fan of linus techtips, watch u guys in my free time ok so I'm not entirely sure what topic I'm supposed to put this into but I'm in need of help trying to somewhat make my semi potato laptop playable with some demanding games, so I have a Lenovo ideapad flex 14 (2014-2015..not entirely sure what year I'm sorry) with a i5-4200u, 8gb DDR3 Ram, 500gb hdd, with a GeForce 820m 2gb. So I got this idea because I really wanna play apex legends but as you can see from the specs I can't really play even after lowering every graphics, and so I've bumped into so many of these egpu and then found the "PCIe PCI-E V8.4D EXP GDC External Laptop Video Card Dock / Laptop Docking Station (Mini PCI-E interface Version)" and i was curious to see if this would be my answer to my problem. so i plan to buy it and use a "Radeon RX470P4L 4GB 256bit GDDR5" with it, im also not sure if my cpu will bottleneck this but pls dont judge me i have no experience in this kind of things, and my final question would be what kind of power supply can i use to make all these functional, anyways fell free to change anything to this build as long as i can somewhat play apex and be in my budget.......thanks in advance! 

[Fasauceome]

4 minutes ago, Anjelo Flores said:

Radeon RX470P4L 4GB 256bit GDDR5" with it, im also not sure if my cpu will bottleneck this

When it comes to a low end system, bottlenecking is not nearly as important, but you can save money with a cheaper video card like an RX 460 or 560 and it would still be an upgrade.

 

The problem, though, is the external graphics card part. Those docks are not very consistent, so even laptops that have the mini PCIe interface do not all work correctly. It's a risk if you buy the dock.

[boggy77]

i would sell the current laptop and buy a more modern one. that cpu won't be able to run apex smoothly regardless of what gpu you throw in.

[Anjelo Flores]

9 minutes ago, Fasauceome said:

When it comes to a low end system, bottlenecking is not nearly as important, but you can save money with a cheaper video card like an RX 460 or 560 and it would still be an upgrade.

 

The problem, though, is the external graphics card part. Those docks are not very consistent, so even laptops that have the mini PCIe interface do not all work correctly. It's a risk if you buy the dock.

id take the risk tbh but uhm how to i power all these?

[Anjelo Flores]

8 minutes ago, boggy77 said:

i would sell the current laptop and buy a more modern one. that cpu won't be able to run apex smoothly regardless of what gpu you throw in.

i wish i could but i cant

[boggy77]

1 minute ago, Anjelo Flores said:

i wish i could but i cant

you can seel you current laptop for $200-$250. with another $200-$250 that you would spend on egpu system, you can get a second hand laptop with a i5 and a 860m/960m or something

[Fasauceome]

5 minutes ago, Anjelo Flores said:

id take the risk tbh but uhm how to i power all these?

You'd have to get a power supply for the graphics card. 

 

To be honest, I'd you're spending money on a power supply, a graphics card, and a dock, you might want to sell your current laptop and buy a cheap desktop PC. If you're only interested in gaming, there are some pretty good options on the low end in the Philippines.