A sleeves up approach to eGPU w/ case

[servivigiledeus]

Ok so I've got a decent laptop, a Lenovo Thinkpad T410 with and intel core i5 vpro running 4 threads at ~2.4ghz, 4g wam, and perhaps most importatly an expresscard slot capable of 5gbs raw transfer speed, enough of a pipeline to effectively run a good graphics card externally, and with this adapter; http://goo.gl/wYWJ5s , I can do just that. So the plan is to get a 980ti, or something leet like that, since i'm throwing the change around no issue, the main reason to do this is to get occulus ready to some degree, and mostly to hook up the tv in my room to a better graphics processor than intel hd which just barely makes css and minecraft playable, although they do play to intels credit.

once i have this fancy card and adapter combo i still need a power supply to run it.

Phase 2 I'm gonna measure the dimension of the psu, the gpu, the connector, and get a good idea of how I want the parts situated in the case design, then i'm going to cut 1/2'' thick wooden peaces to form a box around the psu, and cut holes in the sides for the power supply and expresscard connector to run through, and air to ventilate for the psu, then i'm going to use a thin sheet of plywood as a shelf about an inch from the rim of the box, cut a port for the adapter cable, and some leds later, drill some small anchor holes in the middle of the shelf for wood glue, paint the box black and white Victorian print, and affix the card side of the adapter to the shelf, now painted, where the anchor ports were drilled earlier, so the card, when inserted is oriented in landscape position, upright, like an n64 cart.

there are several ways to tackle a display window if you want one in your design. in my design, i do so ill be cutting four rectangular shaped pieces of plexiglass to size, so they can be affixed to the inside rim of the box around the card.

 to do this ill get eight screws and washers, and ill carefully cut matching eight pilot holes about 3/4 of an inch in from each inside edge of the box, and 3/4 of an inch, minus plexiglass thickness, from each side of each plexiglass panel, about half the way up from the bottom edge in both instances, being extra careful that your holes line up, then with holes drilled i'm going to put the washers over the screws and screw each panel to the wood. 

 next i'm gonna use some silicone caulk to affix the outside edges, and inside corners to get a nice sealed enclosure, after that, or before probably would be better, we'll get a few holes drilled into the plexiglass at strategic points for ventilation and finally we move on to installing the leds, and making a lid, so the leds will affix to the inside rim on top of the newly installed plexiglass, or if you're super pro you can cut a groove into the wood of the rim to fit them under the plexiglass when you install it, but it will make replacement a hassle as you'll have to unbolt your plexiglass assemply and risk compromising the caulk, however you can use a different method for your window by using one sheet of plexiglass that slides into cut grooves in the box and etc. but for this particular build just adhering it to the plexiglass will be fine, last but not least the wooden lid so it's optional whether you use a hinge or what have you, what i'm going to do is get piece of the same wood, cut it to size plus wood thickness, and then i'm going to affix 1in thick rectangular pieces of wood to make a bezel around the edge, so after drilling the necesary pilot holes with my dremmel, i'm going to add screws and screw each edge piece to the lids edge nice and carefully.

all that's left is to paint the lid with the aforementioned victorian print, put it on top, plug it into the lenovo, and run the video cables to the tv for modular setup glory.

attached is a pic of my setup as it sits, i'm going to do my damndest to fit this egpu enclosure under the bottom edge of my laptop, nice and even.

also that storage stool started to give, so i swapped it with a small office chair, and its being used as a footlocker at the end of my bed which is also partly in the pic, as my setup doubles as my nightstand.

i don't know how true to the plan i'll be, and i may end up changing it before it's all said and done, but that is the nature of these hopes and dreams, at least i'll have my money up to try. ^=^ 

[OPSJono]

Followed.

 

It will be sweet if you can get an eGPU working like this. (I doubt Hotpluging will work, but that would be the best case scenario).

 

I would get the adapter and test that a GPU works in it at all first, before doing any fabrication of an enclosure.

[servivigiledeus]

i'd really have to as i have to consider every part in the design, although i did see videos of people just plugging it in and windows just detected it and was off to the races.

 if for some unforseen reason this doesn't work, which looking through the technicals it all checks out, but still, if the express card slot is hard whitelisted, which i don't even think the minipcie slots are whitelisted on the thinkpad, although i did choose the more expensive expresscard adapter for that reason, as well as a potentially better pipeline, 

but anyway if it refuses it, then i can still throw the card in this old tower i've got stown away, and schedule a processor upgrade later, so that's an abandon ship scenario, that'll ensure i can still make use of my investment, and be occulus ready, which i'll have to save for a couple months to get in itself, but i've always been a serious 3d enthusiast, and a gamer separately, so when 3d came to consoles, iz3d and later 3ds came out, i was all over it, i ended up reselling that stuff later cause i wasn't making as much back then, and when expenses came up i had to give some things up, that's life, but i do make enough now, and this is one of the first steps of my upgrade plan for 2016

[OPSJono]

8 minutes ago, servivigiledeus said:

i'd really have to as i have to consider every part in the design, although i did see videos of people just plugging it in and windows just detected it and was off to the races.

 if for some unforseen reason this doesn't work, which looking through the technicals it all checks out, but still, if the express card slot is hard whitelisted, which i don't even think the minipcie slots are whitelisted on the thinkpad, although i did choose the more expensive expresscard adapter for that reason, as well as a potentially better pipeline, 

but anyway if it refuses it, then i can still throw the card in this old tower i've got stown away, and schedule a processor upgrade later, so that's an abandon ship scenario, that'll ensure i can still make use of my investment, and be occulus ready, which i'll have to save for a couple months to get in itself, but i've always been a serious 3d enthusiast, and a gamer separately, so when 3d came to consoles, iz3d and later 3ds came out, i was all over it, i ended up reselling that stuff later cause i wasn't making as much back then, and when expenses came up i had to give some things up, that's life, but i do make enough now, and this is one of the first steps of my upgrade plan for 2016

 

Ah sweet! Keep us updated with how you get on!

 

And welcome to the Forum.

[servivigiledeus]

1 minute ago, OPSJono said:

 

Ah sweet! Keep us updated with how you get on!

 

And welcome to the Forum.

Definately! ^=^ and thank you, it'snice to be part of a community ^-^

[servivigiledeus]

i've been looking around and there's a $6 minipcie to pciex16 adapter i can try, if i find my ports aren't whitelisted, i might grab a lower end tesla coprocessor with the 6gb ddr5 and 1gh+ core speeds and stack it on for extra horses, alternatively/additionally i can use a sick video capture card too >o> either way these breakout cables really are something special for someone who wants an all in one modular solution.

[servivigiledeus]

Okay, update bros! I got an Ark Technology ARK ARK550 Black ATX 12V 550W Computer Power Supply, a SAWAKE EXP GDC Beast Laptop External Independent Video Card Dock, expresscard version, a PCIe 1x to 16x Powered Flexible Riser Extender Cable with Molex, Sold by: EDEALGO, an EVGA GeForce GTX 960 2GB GAMING ACX 2.0+, and finally a Nvidia Tesla M2090 6GB GDDR5 SDRAM Graphics Processing Unit 90Y2310, all to go in the aforementioned design with both cards, instead of just one.

so that's my hardware plan and i'm currently waiting on the parts to come in.

wish me luck guys!

 

[OPSJono]

I legit can't wait to see how this turns out and what the benchmarks will be like!

[servivigiledeus]

21 hours ago, OPSJono said:

I legit can't wait to see how this turns out and what the benchmarks will be like!

just got the first part in the mail bro!

[servivigiledeus]

And that's the second connector in ^o^

[servivigiledeus]

Alright guys I got my gtx 960 in!!! i'mma see if i can go ahead run some initial tests on my old power supply, but here it sits in all its glory ^o^

 

[OPSJono]

10 hours ago, servivigiledeus said:

Alright guys I got my gtx 960 in!!! i'mma see if i can go ahead run some initial tests on my old power supply, but here it sits in all its glory ^o^

 

 

YEAH BOY!

 

I have that GPU too.

[servivigiledeus]

it's all you'll need ^=^ even the seven hundred series can push the Rift according to oculus's website, but the tesla was a steal, and i thought i'd give it a try, you never know how far this equipment will go, they let you know the bare minimum specs but because chips aren't all the same when they get printed, what with inclusions and whatnot,

you could end up with the bare minimum spec, or get lucky and get something really rare and special from the line with a more perfect etch, it's like the reverse of getting a green potato chip, this has only happened to me a couple times with gpus in refurbished laptops, but you could just cut to the chase, pay extra, and get a more perfect etch from the higher end of the series, but with this card being pretty well spec'ed anyway, you may as well pay half the price, and gamble on the overkill, rather than pay for what you won't need, not that i'll need that tesla, but like i said it was cheap, and the specs are murderous, so it'll be a nice piece just to have. B)

[servivigiledeus]

amazon was putting me on saying the 25th on that Tesla piece, it just came in. I hadn't even got to test the 960 yet! all i'm waiting on is the PSU and some lights for the case build, and I'll need to check if i've got the plexiglas and paint in the shed, i know i've got the wood, but in the meantime, i'm going to go ahead and run some tests and maybe i can pull off a video of the ordeal! ^=^ If i can get this to work, then it's all asthetics ^o^

 

[servivigiledeus]

that chair replaced the storage stool for my setup

[OPSJono]

9 hours ago, servivigiledeus said:

that chair replaced the storage stool for my setup

Chat best desk!

 

Good luck with the testing, hope this works!

[servivigiledeus]

Good news everyone! i actually ran tests and am running on just the card right now, however i need to find some way of getting windows to automatically switch between architectures, because as i write this, my laptop will not post graphics without the card.

some important notes; windows has a hard time dealing with two separate graphics architectures, you've gotta flip the toggle switch on the adapter to ptd mode or it will not work, at least with my system anyway, and drivers are a bit of a tangle to deal with, i ended up having to turn off automatic updates, to keep it from replacing the nvidia driver with its own non functioning generic video driver.

 if you keep messing with the configuration, it will work.

i can still test and install the Tesla separately, but i ordered a pciex1 to x16 cable accidentally, which doesn't fit the mini pcie slot, luckily there was a cheap minipcie to pciex1 adapter i snagged for use in the meantime, and i'll likely get the ares adapter, the mini-pcie sibling to the beast expresscard to x16 connector, and i'll actually get a handful more pipelines that way when i do. ^=^

 

[servivigiledeus]

i'm gonna do some benchmarks, and come back to ya with the results, and whatever else i can find out ~-O

[OPSJono]

1 hour ago, servivigiledeus said:

i'm gonna do some benchmarks, and come back to ya with the results, and whatever else i can find out ~-O

Ah sweet! I was almost expecting it to not work at all with GPU's tbh

 

Glad you got somewhere with it so far though!

 

Hot swapping between GPU's will be an issue I think.

Hopefully I think you should be able to get to the point of:

Boot the laptop up with a GPU installed -> using the GPU as your main display output -> play games with the power of a 960!

Turn the laptop off -> unplug the GPU -> boot the laptop -> uses onboard graphics just like it normally would.

 

That's how I hope it would work anyway!

[servivigiledeus]

Well dont get too excited my bro, it seems 10 outright refused to allocate resources to the card, which meant even though the card was alive, seen by the hardware, and forced to run the proper driver, it would not function, i believe i did see real improvements in minecraft, and the r4 visualizer, however benchmarking made me believe otherwise crawling along at 1 single fps in benchmark valley, not what i was expecting at less than 1080 p, so I think there is a chance some of the cards resources may have been loosly available to the system, but not the system to the card. I did pick up that Windows 7 was always used in videos of other similar systems, so im going to attepmt that, and see how it goes, software is the hurtle right now. Not windows 10 approved though it seems.

 

[servivigiledeus]

Windows seven seems to supprt the card without issue, j ust got 1571 in single monitor mode on benchmark valley, around 60 fps on benchmark valley, but oddly 60fps on rabidhamster's r4 vis which makes me think something somewhere is capping the frames, perhaps to meet the monitors refresh rate, more testing, more digging, 7 is a go though it looks like. 

 

[OPSJono]

7 hours ago, servivigiledeus said:

Windows seven seems to supprt the card without issue, j ust got 1571 in single monitor mode on benchmark valley, around 60 fps on benchmark valley, but oddly 60fps on rabidhamster's r4 vis which makes me think something somewhere is capping the frames, perhaps to meet the monitors refresh rate, more testing, more digging, 7 is a go though it looks like. 

Awesome! Glad it looks like it's working!!

[servivigiledeus]

For sure, the only real difficulty in this was windows 10, its totally easy in 7. 

[OPSJono]

25 minutes ago, servivigiledeus said:

For sure, the only real difficulty in this was windows 10, its totally easy in 7. 

Huh, I would of thought that Win10 would be able to handle it better...

[servivigiledeus]

one wishes, but it seems to me that 10 has systems in place to coerce users into certain hardware configurations, likely as apart of a deal with manufacturers, after all if all you have to do is shove a titan onto an expresscard dock to get next gen results, it might make it harder to move that alienware, at least that's what it looks like to me, but 10 is still in it's infancy as far as working out specifics like hardware configuration, so you never know, malevolence, or just lack of development, either way it's a setback i hope they fix.