So I transformed my old laptop into a gaming desktop...

[Noaminaropato]

Hi,

so I had that one old laptop from like 2012 and I thought why not to upgrade it a little bit and let you guys rate if this was a good idea or not...

the laptop is a Lenovo g580 model 20150 which originally came with some low spec components which were not the best for gaming

the specs:

- i3-3110M

- NVIDIA GeForce 610M

- 1x DDR3-1333 8gb ram

- SSD Kingston A400 240gb

 

I changed those to:

- i7-2620M

- INNO3D NVIDIA RTX 3060 (egpu, also I overclocked it a bit..)

- 2x Corsair Vengeance SODIMM DDR3-1600 8gb ram

- 2x Samsung 870 QVO 1TB SSD

and added a

- Thermaltake 700W PSU

- USB hub

 

and this is how it looks like now

I used my TV as a second display because as you see i can't use the laptop while it's closed..

 

I get average of 70-100fps on maxed settings in many modern games

and managed to get the max of 2122fps which is.. not bad..

Well I think that's all and i'll let you guys say what do you think

[GuiltySpark_]

So many questions. 

 

The CPU was socketed? How is the GPU connected? Did that laptop have a mini PCIe slot?

[da na]

 

Did something similar a few months ago but your implementation seems more thorough. 

 

[Noaminaropato]

8 minutes ago, rickeo said:

So many questions. 

 

The CPU was socketed? How is the GPU connected? Did that laptop have a mini PCIe slot?

The CPU was in a G2 socket which made it possible to change

this is how it looks like

 

and the GPU is connected to a mini PCIe slot with a adapter which looks similiar to this one

https://www.amazon.com/JMT-External-Graphics-Docking-Expresscard/dp/B08133NZDL/ref=sr_1_9?crid=5TEANZDEIV91&dchild=1&keywords=mini+pcie+egpu+adapter&qid=1632511530&sprefix=mini+pcie+to+egpu%2Caps%2C288&sr=8-9

[Noaminaropato]

13 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

 

Did something similar a few months ago but your implementation seems more thorough. 

 

Great video! I liked the idea and how you explained everything,

the performance of the laptop is surprisingly good as well!

[da na]

3 minutes ago, Noaminaropato said:

Great video! I liked the idea and how you explained everything,

the performance of the laptop is surprisingly good as well!

Yeah, that RX 560 does really do it well. the 4 core, 4 thread CPU is starting to fall behind in more demanding titles though. 

And with the PSU... I'm guessing you use the laptop power brick, CPU pins on the PSU shorted so it supplies power to the GPU? 

[Noaminaropato]

2 minutes ago, Mel0nMan said:

Yeah, that RX 560 does really do it well. the 4 core, 4 thread CPU is starting to fall behind in more demanding titles though. 

And with the PSU... I'm guessing you use the laptop power brick, CPU pins on the PSU shorted so it supplies power to the GPU? 

the power brick is connected to the laptop and the PSU is connected directly to the GPU to supply the power, it also turns on directly after turning on the laptop

[adarw]

the bottlenecking just hurts me..... oh well, its cool tho but pls put that 3060 with a proper cpu...

[YoungBlade]

Not gonna lie, that's pretty nifty. Quite an ingenious way to repurpose old hardware. And it looks good, too. Well done!

 

27 minutes ago, adarw said:

the bottlenecking just hurts me..... oh well, its cool tho but pls put that 3060 with a proper cpu...

Which bottleneck? The mini-PCIe 2.0 connection to the GPU or the 10 year old dual-core CPU?

[adarw]

1 minute ago, YoungBlade said:

Not gonna lie, that's pretty nifty. Quite an ingenious way to repurpose old hardware. And it looks good, too. Well done!

 

Which bottleneck? The mini-PCIe 2.0 connection to the GPU or the 10 year old dual-core CPU?

both i guess.

[Noaminaropato]

15 hours ago, adarw said:

the bottlenecking just hurts me..... oh well, its cool tho but pls put that 3060 with a proper cpu...

I saw few more powerful CPU's which are compatible with a G2 socket like i7-3940XM but I wasn't sure if the cooling would keep up with such a processor and that's why I chosed a less powerful one

[adarw]

4 hours ago, Noaminaropato said:

I saw few more powerful CPU's which are compatible with a G2 socket like i7-3940XM but I wasn't sure if the cooling would keep up with such a processor and that's why I chosed a less powerful one

no, if you really want to use the gpu to its full potential you need a pc with a good cpu.

[YoungBlade]

6 hours ago, Noaminaropato said:

I saw few more powerful CPU's which are compatible with a G2 socket like i7-3940XM but I wasn't sure if the cooling would keep up with such a processor and that's why I chosed a less powerful one

I think the mini-PCIe using a PCIe 2.0 connection is a bigger problem than the dual core in most gaming situations. That's very limited compared to the PCIe 4.0 x16 connection that the 3060 supports.

 

If you do upgrade, go with a modern desktop setup with at least a 6 core. It can be a PCIe 3.0 system, but it needs the full 16 lanes.