Laptop External GPU - antonizoon/antonizoon.github.io GitHub Wiki

Parts

PCI Express Connection Board

  • BPlus Tech - A great Taiwanese company with strong connections to the eGPU community. It's $50 more than the usual Chinese adapters, but quality control is significantly better in our experience.
    • $90 - PE4C 2.1 - Full 16x slot for GPUs.
    • $90 - PE4L 2.1 - Only a mini 4x slot, generally designed for PCI prototyping. You will need a riser for 16x GPUs.
  • EXP GDC - A decent choice for the modder on a budget, since these Chinese-made adapter cards are $50 less than the PE4C. But note the pros and cons (see comparison thread below).

Connection Method

Finally, we get to the all-important connection method.

  1. Thunderbolt - A Thunderbolt is a no hassle, direct PCI connection to the motherboard. It has the highest performance of any connection method.
  2. Expresscard - An Expresscard is the second best method of PCI connection, though somewhat slower.
  • You need an Ivy/Sandy Bridge Intel CPU or better to use the Expresscard at decent performance.
  1. MiniPCIe - If your laptop doesn't even have an Expresscard, a more inconvenient method is to use MiniPCI.
  • On the other hand, if you want to drive two GPUs at the same time with your laptop, you will usually have to resort to the MiniPCIe slot. Though at that point, it's probably worth looking into desktop rigs.
  1. PCI Express - A PCI to PCI adapter? Seems useless, but it does have merit for desktops that are too small to fit a giant GPU and decent ATX power supply.

ThinkPads

T430s i7 (Intel GPU) Thunderbolt

Note: Only the T430s with a Core i7 processor, and Intel GPU has a Thunderbolt port. The Nvidia GPU version doesn't.

T430s Thunderbolt eGPU

Ivy Bridge with Thunderbolt gives you the best eGPU experience of them all. It basically runs at 93% speed.

xx30 Series TOLUD Issue

Note: Check on TOLUD issue. Apparently Lenovo staff was on the case.

Apparently they fixed it later on, so now eGPUs work fine.

However, it seems to have introduced a new issue: these laptops become unstable when more than 8GBs of RAM is installed.

It has been escalated to the Lenovo Staff again. Some anecdotal reports by campanella in May 2014 claim that 16GB of RAM now works with eGPU, but I will have to test it myself to be sure...

W530/T430 (discrete Nvidia GPU)

Apparently the W530 can use 16GB of RAM without issue, unlike the X230.

X230/T430 (Intel GPU)

Note: The X230 has issues with more than 8gb of ram.

T420/X220

Note: Not sure if TOLUD was ever fixed. Here's a quick and dirty workaround.

Installation Instructions

Techradar - How to make an eGPU

Techinferno Forums - Prepurchase FAQ

Sources