Framework with Oculink 8x Expansion Bay

Lendari · August 4

There is an unofficial Oculink 8x expansion bay module for the Framework laptop. Using this with something like the Cablecc Oculink 8X SFF-8612 8611 to PCI-Express PCIE 16x Adapter should enable 128 GB/s of bandwidth to an eGPU. If this works as advertised, it would make the Framework one of the best host platforms for an eGPU docking solution. Is there anyone out there who has actually tried this configuration and written anything about it? I know LTT was promoting the Framework laptop at some point. This could make a great deep dive video.

SUPPLEMENTAL NOTES:

The best videos I've found on the topic of Oculink compare TB4 to Oculink 4x and Oculink 4x to PCIe 4.0 x16. These results seem to suggest that Oculink 4x to 8x should provide additional gains.
The only other Oculink x4 capable devices that I know of are a special Lenovo ThinkBook that is only for sale in China and the GPD WIN 2 MINI which is a handheld, not a laptop. There's also the Razer Blade 18 with TB5 but with a price tag that can reach over 5K USD it has its own issues.

manikyath · August 4

as far as i'm able to find the GPU bay is essentially just a pcie 4.0 8x connection, i dont suppose the question is as much about if it can work, but will hotswap work.

Lendari · August 5

Right, the GPU bay on the Framework exposes a PCIe 4.0 x8 bus. Someone with electrical engineering skill worked out how to wire this interface to an Oculink 8x port. I'm wondering how this configuration benchmarks vs. the Oculink 4x mods people are doing with M.2 slots. It will start to answer the question if the bottleneck of eGPU is laptop CPU limitations or external IO connectivity.

Hotswap will not work with Oculink. You'll have to turn the PC off to connect and disconnect from the dock. A reasonable price to pay? Theoretically you could also swap in the mobile GPU module at the same time to go full mobile.