DIY eGPU experiences

[ualwayslose]

Hey, the PE4H came in today, I was going to test my AMD RS780m chipset with a 8800GT just to see if everything works out, and if it does probably get a 465,

Anyways I was just wondering to make sure I have everything down right
1) PSU unit to power video card
-- saw pics, does something from the PSU have to plug into the PE4H?
2)PE4H with Card adapter
3) Video Card
4)?????
5) Profit

[JohnnyEM]

Fardavid,

That's sad, but it was Intel's conscious decision to reduce their PCIe 2.0 at PCIe 1.1 speed.

If you look at the Intel Series 5 Datasheet page here, you see that it says "PCI Express 2.0 specification running at 2.5 GT/s", but that's PCIe 1.1!

Reason? According to an Anandtech article here: "We believe with the DMI link continuing to operate at 1GB/s in each direction, a decent 6Gb/s SAS/SATA RAID card and a few upcoming 6Gb/s drives could easily saturate the link."

Reading through this thread, I see there's been several attempts at establishing a PCIe 5GT/s link, but no success so far. Apparently, the laptops with real PCIe 2.0 5GT/s will be released later this year.

[clmerlin]

Ok, so I have been pouring through all the posts in this thread, and I haven't not found an answer to my problem. I ordered the PE4L and an HD 5770 with PSU to run it all and the switch to turn it off and on. I hooked everything up and got it running....kinda....after a couple hours I figured out that I needed to install the drivers through Device Manager to get everything going. The only game I play online currently is WoW and when I was testing this out and found 2 issues I need to work around:

1) After about 1-2 hours of use I lose all of my USB ports (as in they no longer work until I reboot) and also lose most functionality of the laptop's builtin keyboard.

2) I received a wonderful little stop error that said something about memory and rebooted my comp too quickly for me to get the error. (this lovely blue screen has only happened once, but still an issue)

I am running a Toshiba Satellite A215 (wish I had better, but this is what I have to work with) that has the following:

AMD Athlon 64 x2 Dual-Core TK-57 1.90GHz
4GB RAM
Windows Vista 32-bit

If anyone has any suggestions they would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance

[krazmych]

Hey guys love the work that you're doing here!

I'll be a college student next year, and I'm hoping to pick up an Alienware M15x (Believe me, I know its heavier than most laptops, but 4 more lbs doesn't phase me, and if battery becomes a problem, then I'll just pick up another battery). I was wondering, though, if this DIY viddock would work within an M15x, say, with a 5870 or a 5970 graphics card. This would be amazing, even if it only worked with 80% or the power available (maybe I could even power an eyefinity setup). Anyway, I know the laptop has an expresscard slot for sure, I'm just wondering if you guys know if the Alienware M15x has an internal mPCIe slot so that I can setup an x2 link or something like that. I don't know much about how this stuff actually works... would anyone care to explain if I could get both slots on the Alienware M15x to work? Thanks so much in advance!

[ithildin]

I admire the effort you're going to. x2 link mode supports lane reversal so could use the second lane (port2,port4,port6) to do the extra signalling and use the first port (port1, port3, port5) to supply the extra 4 tx/rx pci-e lines and the GNDs around them (8-wires all together) to do x2. The possibilities with your setup being:

* hunt down pci-e tx/rx pins from port1 or port6. Could be a bit of effort. The idea port would be port6 as then you could combine it with your expresscard slot port5.

Yeah I have the distinct impression I am way over my head here but I'll try anyway

* hunt down pci-e tx/rx pins from port1 or port6. Could be a bit of effort. The idea port would be port6 as then you could combine it with your expresscard slot port5.

I've managed to find a BOM file for the motherboard (so I can see which pins connect to which components) but sadly it didn't come with the PCB connection layout. So I took the laptop entirely apart, took some pictures of both the top and bottom sides of the PCB over the Southbridge chip and I am now trying to correlate the position of the holes on the bottom side with the chip ballout. My idea was to hook up the links to the to appropriate plated-through holes on the bottom side of the PCB underneath the Southbridge hoping that the pins I need are all connected with PTHs. Unfortunately, it does appear to be the case - I'm having difficulty matching the layouts so I'm not 100% sure yet but the odds don't look good. If confirmed, this means that the only way to access the pins for port#1 and #6 is going between the top of the PCB and the Southbridge to access the BGA array directly. That's a nightmare - I either have to remove the Southbridge, reball it and fit it with new connections (with no experience on doing so) or somehow touch the 8 pins with thin wires between the chip and the board like here...!!

* use port3 (LAN) to work as lane2. This would be the easiest route. The way to do that would be to disable/disconnect the LAN controller and hijaak it's 4 tx/rx pci-e lines. You'd need the datasheet to identify the pci-e tx/rx pins and some ultra fine soldering. Using port3+port4 to do x2 means you'd lose port2 functionality, since it gets switched to x2. Another disadvantage of doing a port3+port4 x2 implementation is it doesn't allow you to run x2E mode. Need port1+port2 for that (x2E=x4 with last 2 lanes not connected- extra 15% performance).

This is starting to look like the only feasible option for a x2 link with this machine. OK does that mean I could hook up 2 sets of 4 tx/rx plus GNDs to a single mPCIe slot? If so, how do I accomplish that?

[User Retired 2]

This is starting to look like the only feasible option for a x2 link with this machine. OK does that mean I could hook up 2 sets of 4 tx/rx plus GNDs to a single mPCIe slot? If so, how do I accomplish that?

I take it you want to be able to plug in a PM3N into a slot, just as a physical placeholder that has all the correct wiring to your LAN controller from which you'd like to run the mini HDMI cable to PE4H's x2 connector. The way I think this could be done is:

- take a PM3N and mask off the bottom of all the pins with cellophane tape. Means that when plugged into mPCIe slot it doesnt connect any pins.

- Ensure there a little room on the top edge of the pins. It is there where you would solder the 4xtx/rx pins and 4xgnd.

- attach 80pin IDE pcable (can just use 8 strands of them) that links the PM3N and LAN controller. 80-pin IDE cable pitch is close but not quite 100%. The 4xGND and 4xtx/rx must run parallel to do the shielding.

The PM3N soldering is a fine art. Might consider a reflow method (tin top edge of PM3N pads, apply flux to cable pins, hold down the cable wire on the pins, then heat with a heatgun to form a connection). It's like $20+$22-shipping for another PM3N so they're not such cheap replacements if you bugger it up.

Consider too that the lan chip mod would have a negative affect on the resale of your system. For that reason you may just consider a GTX465 instead running at x1E until can id a system that can do x2 1.0. Then could just do a complete system upgrade. Maybe expresscard 2.0 will be out by then.

There are PNY and Point-of-View GTX465 units with 10mem chips that can be unlocked to GTX470 speed. See here.

[ualwayslose]

Hey, when I hooked up my Power supply (350 watt) the 2nd LED light turns on but I get a really loud beeping noise. Whats going on?

Edit: Ok it seems to only make the noise when my 8800 GT is plugged in. Any ideas?

[User Retired 2]

Hey, when I hooked up my Power supply (350 watt) the 2nd LED light turns on but I get a really loud beeping noise. Whats going on?

Edit: Ok it seems to only make the noise when my 8800 GT is plugged in. Any ideas?

Boot up system with DIY ViDock switched off. Power it on when get past your bios screen, eg: at Win7 bootloader screen.

Likely problem is your bios is halting with a beep alerting you it's detected a video card and has no idea what to do with it. Workaround is to ensure the bios doesn't see the video card and allow either Win7 or DIY ViDock Setup 1.x to do the correct PCI allocation for it.

FYI: PE4L 1.5 and PE4H 2.1 will have a PCI Reset Delay jumper so will effectively delay the DIY ViDock poweron without needing user intervention (switch on/off) just for this circumstance.

[hershbergien]

Hello,

I'm a MacBook Pro user and I've taken the plunge to see if I can get a the PE4H working with my laptop.

I'm using an NVIDIA 9800GTX+, 480W power supply, and PE4H 1.0 with EC2C express card.

The results were less than promising on the first attempt. With the graphics card attached on boot, the system would continually try to POST without continuing to the grey apple loading screen. If I toggled the power to the graphics card quickly the laptop would continue to boot and would now show a video card as being attached but most of the video card information is missing. Attaching the video card after boot does not work so hot swapping is not an option.

Laptop: MacBookPro 2,2 15"
CPU: Core 2 Duo 2.16ghz
Internal GPU: ATI1600
MEM: 3GB
Boot ROM: MBP22.00A5.B07
SMC: 1.12f5


The following information was pulled from System Profile with the graphics card attached (after I do the toggle power on boot):
Under "Graphics/Displays" I now have an adapter label "Display" with:
Type: GPU
Bus: PCIe
Slot: ExpressCard
PCIe Lane Width: x1
Vendor: NVIDIA (0x10de)
Device ID: 0x612
Revision ID: 0x00a2

Under "PCI Cards" the ExpressCard lists:
Type: VGA-Compatible Controller
Driver Installed: Yes
Bus: PCI
Slot: ExpressCard
Link Width: x1
Link Speed: 2.5GT/s

Any suggestions or thoughts on why the system would pass POST? Would trying a different video card help? The baseline mac video card is a GT120 which I could pick up to test.

Thanks!

[ualwayslose]

The beeping noise was coming from the PE4H itself, not the computer, because I was just testing if the device itself was working, ie
PE4H attached to 8800 GT with PSU stuff connected, and none of it is connected to computer.
EDIT:
Or... it could be coming from the 8800 GT, not sure going to look into it further.