Laptop + egpu + hub + external ssd = data going back and forth too much?

imbrock · April 7, 2019

So I'm running an hp spectre x360 15" with a Auroris 1080 egpu and a plugable thunderbolt 3 docking station.

My understanding is that the spectres two thunderbolt 3 ports each get 4x pcie support, though I'm unsure if that combines to 8 if I just have one plugged in. So I have the egpu plugged into one and the docking station plugged into the other. Into the docking station I have my ethernet cable and a samsung 1tb ssd full of games, also some games on the PC.

Now worst case scenario I think my pipeline is looking like this;

SSD > Hub > PC > EGPU > Screen. - This loads pretty quick but does get a bit stuttery if I crank the texture resolutions to max in game.

Or the worst worst case scenario when I'm streaming from this setup to my ShieldTV

SSD > Hub > PC > EGPU > PC > Hub > Ethernet - This absolutely gets stuttery on the shield end, has a bit of a hiccough every five to ten minutes. Occasionally overwhelms the ethernet on the hub and it just stops being detected.

I'm considering picking up a dedicated usb ethernet dongle. But I'm not sure if it would be better to plug it into the Laptop itself or into the EGPU, could it go straight from the gpu when streaming or would it need to go back to the cpu and then out the ethernet?

Would I be better off plugging the ssd into the PC? Do the PCIE lanes collapse to 8x? Would I be better off removing the hub, or plugging it in through the available usb3 port?

So many questions with this jank setup.