egpu Help. Noob to PC building. Outdated Terrible Laptop. EGPU help.

[BrittJ95]

Okay. So let me first start out with saying that I fully understand that I have an outdated laptop with the added heartbreaking truth of no longer having driver support and it is in no way (except the RAM sticks) upgradeable or interchangeable. I am also VERY new to the PC world in that I do not understand most of anything yet when it comes to custom PC building except the components that make them up and the basics of what the jobs of said components are (and also that custom RGB and water cooled PCs are drool worthy). I have never built a custom PC, but I have already found the glorious GOD SEND of a website, Newegg, and am in the process of buying parts to build a custom PC since my eyes were opened 2 days ago that laptops are good for nothing but portability and MS paint and Office programs... The thing that set me off was that my GPU and CPU are soldered to the board and can not be removed or interchanged for better parts. Yes I realize there are nice gaming laptops out there but I am not able to shell out 2,000+ on a new laptop. The budget does not allow it and will not in the foreseeable future. So, to the point. I have a Alienware m14xr1 (will post current specs below). I would like to play pubg. My husband has a nice gaming rig and can beyond handle the game and I assumed that maybe, just maybe, I can run this game at at least 20-22 FPS on lowest settings. Wrong. I was so wrong. 10... 10 FPS... that was my average after loading in all players. It was terrible. (I used FRAPS to watch FPS in game). I tried so hard to make it work but it was futile.... So my first thought was, "Hey, why not get an egpu so you can run newer games until your case gets here and you can start putting blood, sweat, and tears into building a decent rig so you can actually game." No. My answer seems to be no. Which is crushing my love of this laptop and making me want to make it a glorified drawing tablet and portable video watching device... So looking online I have found no answers to if I can use a egpu other than removing the battery and wifi card so I can plug one in there. I have no idea how to do this and would rather not pursue this route if at all possible. Also I have no idea what a mPCIe adapter is but the same site says I will need one to make that solution work. Problem is my battery already can't last 3 minutes without the charger so it has become a lifeline at this point just to keep it on and I would rather not have to have any more 30ft cat 6 cables running through the house.. Its becoming ridiculous how many cables are running across the house to the office just to use the husbands rig. That we found out today does not have WiFi or Bluetooth capabilities and has to be direct connected with a cable. It is fine but would be nice if it had those options. Anyway, getting off topic here. The quwestion is, can i run an egpu on this laptop or am i going to have to just build a rig? Posting the specs and I'll let the experts handle it from here.

 

My Laptop is a Alienware m14xr1:

OS: Win 8.1 Pro

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT 555m

          Supports DirectX 11.0

          Memory Type DDR3 (Hynix) 

          Memory size 3072 MB

          Driver version 22.21.13.8541 (ForceWare 385.41) WHQL/Win8.1 64bit

          GPU clock 590 MHz

          Memory 900MHz

          Shader 1180 MHz

RAM: 6G

CPU: Intel core i7 2860QM 2.4GHz 4 cores 8 logical processors

I have an SSD but no HDD wich is strange to me but nice in the fact that my OS startup time is minimum.

Available Ports: 2xUSB3.0, 1xUSB2.0, 1xHDMI1.4, 1xMiniDisplayPort, 1xVGA, 1xEthernet1000mbps

 

(If you need more information on anything I will try my best to provide it. I went a little extra on the GPU because I have no idea what could be important so I put what I thought may be relevant information.)

[NumLock21]

External gpu requires a Thunderbolt 3 port or their proprietary connector, which is only found on their new Alienware laptops.  Your laptop is too old and does not support any external gpu setups. Time for a new build or new laptop. And they don't cost over $2K, somewhere in the $1K+ range now.

[BrittJ95]

Thank you. You have just solved a large headache of a problem for me. Custom PC build here I come! 

[D13H4RD]

You could try one of those mPCI-E eGPU solutions, but if you want portability, that’s a no-no.

 

If your laptop spends most of its life on a desk, build a custom desktop. Spending below a grand or even slightly above it nets you a pretty potent 1080p system, which can even go QHD on some titles.