Options for DIY External GPU?

[Phoenixstar117]

Hi, I recently bought a Lenovo Ideapad that has a decent CPU and even has a PhysX GPU (MX230). The GPU is designed for power conservation which is great for battery life and simple games, but is staggeringly slow compared to any gtx GPU made after 2010 (despite being a 2019 chip).

 

So for at home where I can plug the laptop in and not worry about battery, I am thinking of getting an external GPU. I actually have a GTX 1060 spare, but I really don't wanna spend $200-500 on an external mount for it... what are my options for making my own mount?

 

Should note that my laptop has no free M.2 slots as one is being used by the WiFi and the other is being used by my SSD. Only option is the Type C port (and perhaps the two 3.0 slots or HDMI, but I have no idea how bottlenecked that would be)- which is my current problem because the only adapters I can find that aren't a $200 mount are M.2.

 

Any ideas?

[Electronics Wizardy]

There really isn't a good way to do a egpu on your laptop without thunderbolt 3. You can replace the wifi card with a egpu, but then its much less portable, and some laptops have whitelists for the wifi slots.

[Mnky313]

14 minutes ago, Phoenixstar117 said:

Hi, I recently bought a Lenovo Ideapad that has a decent CPU and even has a PhysX GPU (MX230). The GPU is designed for power conservation which is great for battery life and simple games, but is staggeringly slow compared to any gtx GPU made after 2010 (despite being a 2019 chip).

 

So for at home where I can plug the laptop in and not worry about battery, I am thinking of getting an external GPU. I actually have a GTX 1060 spare, but I really don't wanna spend $200-500 on an external mount for it... what are my options for making my own mount?

 

Should note that my laptop has no free M.2 slots as one is being used by the WiFi and the other is being used by my SSD. Only option is the Type C port (and perhaps the two 3.0 slots or HDMI, but I have no idea how bottlenecked that would be)- which is my current problem because the only adapters I can find that aren't a $200 mount are M.2.

 

Any ideas?

eGPUs require some form of PCIe link so the options are M.2 (A+E) (usually used for a WiFi card), M.2 NVMe (usually used for an SSD), Thunderbolt, mPCIe (older, usually used for WiFi/other expansion cards), and ExpressCard (older, usually on old business laptops).
Your laptop probably only had M.2, so if the M.2 slot for your SSD is capable of NVMe then this would be the best option as A+E M.2 would probably bottleneck even a 1060 a small amount.

There are a few cheap options, the cheapest would be to use something like this to convert M.2 to standard PCIe 4x, then a 4x to 16x riser cable to plug the GPU in. This doesn't power the slot so it's not recommended, I recommend also picking up something like this to use as a powered dock for the eGPU (and replace the 4x to 16x riser with a 4x to 4x one to connect to the dock.)