Integrated GPU

[abdun_00]

Hi there, i have a dell Inspiron 3580 with a dedicated amd radeon 520 (2Gb) gpu. I was thinking if there is any way to uninstall this GPU and use the pcie for a thunderbolt port in order to get thunderbolt connectivity.

Thanks in advance 

[podkall]

What do you mean, like remove the hardware part of GPU and put a thunderbolt instead?

[mariushm]

No I don't think that laptop has thunderbolt at all (there needs to be a chip made by intel on the circuit board to have thunderbolt) and  I think the video card is soldered to the circuit board (not removable)

[podkall]

4 minutes ago, mariushm said:

No I don't think that laptop has thunderbolt at all (there needs to be a chip made by intel on the circuit board to have thunderbolt) and  I think the video card is soldered to the circuit board (not removable)

laptops also don't have motherboard IO

[kb5zue]

Just out of curiosity, if you could remove the GPU, then just exactly how do you propose to get any video?

 

Thunderbolt™ ports provide high bandwidth for connecting high-speed devices. Thunderbolt™ cables help to ensure a quality connection between the device and a PC. Thunderbolt™ accessories make it easy to expand the capabilities of your PC with docking options and external devices.

 

https://www.google.com/search?q=what+does+the+thunderbolt+port+do&rlz=1C1UEAD_enUS1031US1031&oq=what+does+the+thunderbolt+port+do&aqs=chrome.0.0i512j0i22i30l4j0i390l4.14749j0j15&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

 

[abdun_00]

5 hours ago, podkall said:

What do you mean, like remove the hardware part of GPU and put a thunderbolt instead?

yes, if I remove the gpu is there any way then and  according to my knowledge the gpu isnt soldered to the board

 

[abdun_00]

5 hours ago, mariushm said:

No I don't think that laptop has thunderbolt at all (there needs to be a chip made by intel on the circuit board to have thunderbolt) and  I think the video card is soldered to the circuit board (not removable)

if i wanted where could I get such thunderbolt chip

[abdun_00]

15 minutes ago, abdun_00 said:

yes, if I remove the gpu is there any way then and  according to my knowledge the gpu isnt soldered to the board

 

upon multiple inspections and help from quora, i now know that the gpu is soldered and hence non-removable.
Now, considering the 2nd option i.e., The optical drive, but I dont know if the drive uses sata or pcie. And if SATA , is there any workaround to get thunderbolt from .. um.... sata to pcie???

[mariushm]

No, you can't get a thunderbolt chip and it's not as simple as just placing it somewhere in the laptop.

A thunderbolt chip has to be connected to pci-e lanes, and to the processor and there must be code in the bios to make it work.

It can't just be on a tiny board inserted in the laptop like a M.2 ssd or something liek that.

 

Sata is for storage only - it's not possible to convert it to pci-e lanes and it's not possible to put thunderbolt on it.  Stop with this line of thought it's not possible.

 

What MAY be possible is if your laptop has a miniPcie slot (sometimes used for a removable wireless card) then that slot would basically have ONE pci-e lane. In theory you could use a special cable (very carefully made to reduce the number of transmission errors) to bring that single pci-e lane outside the computer. 

If you then figure out how to also power the video card, you could plug a video card in a pci-e slot to which you connect that single pci-e lane, and you MAY have a video card working.

But with just one pci-e lane, the performance of the video card would be very bad, worse than the video card you have now. Thunderbolt is working because it has multiple pci-e lanes and special connection to cpu and other things.

 

 

[NF-A12x25]

1 hour ago, abdun_00 said:

yes, if I remove the gpu is there any way then and  according to my knowledge the gpu isnt soldered to the board

Nope.