DIY eGPU experiences

[kizwan]

I made up a nice enclosure using a whole bunch of scrap parts.. The following goes into the build


- NVidia GTX 560 Ti
- PE4H
- Some sheet aluminum: 5mm and 2.5mm offcuts (free)
- A power supply from a recently retired Dell 1850 server: 12v at 44 amps (free)
- A box from another video card that I installed in the missus PC (free)

Congratulation for successful DIY eGPU setup! It's really nice setup.

Hey guys so I just bought a EVGA gtx 560 1gb for my diy vidock. Could anyone confirm if this card supports Optimus?

Yes, with combination of Intel HD Graphics/3000 it will support Optimus. GTX560 alone will not enabled Optimus.

[seb555le]

Did you connect 6-pin cable to the graphics card? Read this:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gami...ml#post5964738

not because I do not have a 6 pin connector on my graphics card.

[Failcat]

When it comes the choice of laptop candidates for eGPU, you guys seem to avoid the Sony Vaio. I looked at the forum's review of it and it seems great to me, just the hard drive and the monitor that gave it a slight minus.

Is the Sony Vaio less suitable for an eGPU? Is there any points that I've missed? How do I know if the iGPU is switchable or not?

[User Retired 2]

When it comes the choice of laptop candidates for eGPU, you guys seem to avoid the Sony Vaio. I looked at the forum's review of it and it seems great to me, just the hard drive and the monitor that gave it a slight minus.

Is the Sony Vaio less suitable for an eGPU? Is there any points that I've missed? How do I know if the iGPU is switchable or not?

There are no pci-e 2.0 (5GT/s) capable Sandy Bridge Vaios with expresscard slots. Need to go back one-gen and then you get pci-e 1.1 (2.5GT/s), so not recommended if you want best performance. See the thin-and-light link in my sig for suggest eGPU candidate notebooks (eg: 12" Lenovo X220, 13" Toshiba R830, 14" Toshiba R840 (900P) or Lenovo T420 (900P/NVS4200M, 15" Dell M4600 (1080P/FX2000M) ).

[EpicBlob]

For any 2011 13inch or 15inch macbook pro owners, I will soon be testing this set-up:

Macbook pro 2011 13inch + PE4L 2.1 + 400w PSU + EVGA 560 + Sonnet thunderbolt/expresscard adapter. Hopefully this works and I'll have up numbers a few days after the 20th!

[kevmanw4301]

Very anxious to see your results EpicBlob! Good luck.

[kevmanw4301]

Well, these are my final overclocked results on 06.

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2520M Processor,Dell Inc. 0D1CTR score: 16475 3DMarks

I've got it OC'd to 925/1157. I have HD Audio disabled, along with my SD/SmartCard reader, which were shown to be on the PCI Bus. I had a mouse & keyboard plugged in during the test.

Any thing else I could do to up my score? As I see this, this puts me as the second fastest 460 1GB, and faster than one with a 2540M, a faster CPU, just barely behind an i7-2620M. If I decide to keep this, I'll get a PE4L 2.1 soon.

Edit: 3DMark11 score: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2741696

Internal 11:
http://3dmark.com/3dm11/2743468

[timohour]

For any 2011 13inch or 15inch macbook pro owners, I will soon be testing this set-up:

Macbook pro 2011 13inch + PE4L 2.1 + 400w PSU + EVGA 560 + Sonnet thunderbolt/expresscard adapter. Hopefully this works and I'll have up numbers a few days after the 20th!

Hope you can make it. Are you sure that the 560 will work on OSX? I mean over the 560ti.

[kevmanw4301]

I'd think he'd be testing it under Windows? Although maybe it'll work on Mac.

[azori]

And here it is running.

Quite nice setup! Props!