Let's figure out how to make a DIY eGPU (previously DIY ViDock)

[Khenglish]

Can visually inspect the pins. If pin 23/25/31/33 are connected, then it has pci-e lines. If only 36/38 are connected, then it's only USB. See full pinout details here.

If the pci-e lines are connected, can enable all the ports just in case the mPCIe slot is a port that the bios has disabled. Then can swap over the wifi and see if it's detected. See here and here to see how to access RCBA+3418h to enable/disable ports.

When just looking at the slot no wires were visible at all, however, no wires were visible either on a fully functional mini PCI-E port so I tried the BAR-edit thing to see what would happen. PCI-E x1 port 6 popped up in everest, but it said "empty" when the wireless card was installed so it looks like the slot isn't wired for pci-e. Even if it worked it's port #6 anyway so it wouldn't have helped. I knew it would be #6 ahead of time but was hoping that maybe they would renumber with it enabled.

Well idk what to do now. My internal card is decent (9600m gt) so I need x4 or a highly overclocked x2 to get a significant upgrade. The ports I have available for an external card are 1-3. Port 4 is hooked up to the ethernet card. Maybe I could disconnect it and reconnect if to an external card but that sounds incredibly difficult and then I'd have to figure out how I'd get an internet connection. Overclocking the PCI-E bus seems practically impossible because of the PLL type.

[ruhtraeel]

I am now waiting for a 13.3 inch or under laptop that has USB 3.0 and Expresscard 2.0 support, to make it able to do a higher performance 1x 2.0 link, AND enough bandwidth in the USB slot to pipe the image to the laptop screen, without the need for an external monitor.

[User Retired 2]

I am now waiting for a 13.3 inch or under laptop that has USB 3.0 and Expresscard 2.0 support, to make it able to do a higher performance 1x 2.0 link, AND enough bandwidth in the USB slot to pipe the image to the laptop screen, without the need for an external monitor.

+1. A great setup. Means too somebody needs to make a USB 3.0 frame grabber that can accept HDMI input for redisplay on the notebook LCD. BTW - I did try using iremote (like UVNC), creating a loopback network interface to clone the image from desktop video to the internal LCD. It was really s-l-o-w.

I've added a DX10-centric performance table in the experiences thread. The x2 1.0 linked T2050-1.6 DV2000 offering faster FPS than any x1E linked system. We see that serious DX10 framerates with current games require a x2 1.0 or x1 2.0 (expresscard 2.0) system. DX9 appears to be usable with a x1E link per comments here. Not sure if a 2GB VRAM video card + x1E link would improve things.

Any DIY ViDock users wanting their system in that table please link their 3dmarkvantage and DMCV DX10 benchmarks.

[Khenglish]

So look what I did:



Not as good as it looks though. All I did was disable ports 2-4, then put them all in x4 mode.

So my port 1 is the expresscard slot, 2 and 3 are mini pci-e slots. My wifi card is in port 3 and port 4 is the network "card" (it's integrated into the MB so it's not really a card). I tried just setting the PC to x4 with the wifi and network card active and it results in an instant crash. My network card dropping out when overclocking gave me the idea of disabling the wifi and network card, then with nothing active on ports 1-4 try activating x4 mode. It worked. This is great because it means that I could wire an external card to port 4, and just turn off the network card and activate x4 mode when I want to use the external card, and the opposite when I want to plug in an ethernet cable. I found the datasheet for the network chip and got the pin numbers for the pci-e. Now all i have to do is find the chip and connect wires. Hopefully it isn't too small to hook things up to. I have a usb wireless unit so I'll still have internet with the wifi removed and ethernet turned off.

BTW I can overclock the PCI-E bus by 22% so I'll have basically x5 pci-e bandwidth if this miraculously works.

K so I need some way to get the mini pci-e signals to the card. The mini pci-e to zif converter looks nice but I'm not sure how I would know which signal was which in the ribbon cable. The hwtools mini pci-e stuff seems kinda expensive.

This looks doable! Just a lot of work.

[hallucinate]

Any idea when hwtools will start shipping PE4H v2 to us regular folk?

I've waited a long time to hop on this band wagon... lurking and absorbing all the great info created by nando4 and the "DIYVD" community at large.

My X200 will be so much better once I get this rockin.

[geddesign]

Hey everybody. First post here. I am wondering if anyone out there would be willing/capable to build me a DIY ViDock that would work with my setup:
17" macbook 2010 macbook pro, core i7 processor, nvidea GeForce GT 330M w 512mb, 8g ram, running Snow Leopard. Need to power 3 external 22" monitors at 1680x1050 each. I'm of course willing to pay for it. Any takers? (And yes, I realize it's a little ironic for a "Do It Yourself", but I'm a software guy - my hardware skills are lacking). Thanks!

[Khenglish]

Well I found the network chip. The pins were too small to solder to and they immediately went into the middle layers of the MB straight to the southbridge so there is nothing else to solder onto instead.

[exe163]

Hey everybody. First post here. I am wondering if anyone out there would be willing/capable to build me a DIY ViDock that would work with my setup:
17" macbook 2010 macbook pro, core i7 processor, nvidea GeForce GT 330M w 512mb, 8g ram, running Snow Leopard. Need to power 3 external 22" monitors at 1680x1050 each. I'm of course willing to pay for it. Any takers? (And yes, I realize it's a little ironic for a "Do It Yourself", but I'm a software guy - my hardware skills are lacking). Thanks!

I don't think that's possible since unibody MBP lack expressslot IIRC.

I just ordered a X201 hopefully you guy can help me out with what hardware to get to maximize the performance of my 5850.

I have really hard time understanding why doesn't X201 support 1x 2.0 since on your front page you stated:

- x1 2.0 (single port): Intel-chipset: HM55-chipset notebooks?

Which I am pretty sure that's the mobo all Arrandale laptop atm use.

[nowai]

The 17" MBP do have expresscard slots. The fact that they're the only model with them is making me look into buying another PC notebook instead

[AmazingGracePlayer]

Hey Nando4, I'm very interested in making a ViDock myself, but I'm a computer illiterate and know next to nothing about how this works... How hard is it to set this up myself? I've read your tutorial, I think plugging in some cards together is easy (although finding out what type of port I have is hard haha), but I don't feel comfortable messing too much with bios and such as I know nothing about it.