DIY eGPU experiences

[squawkBirds]

One advantage of an eGPU is the ability to time-share a graphics card between a laptop and a desktop. I wonder- how many insertion/removal cycles can a graphics card withstand before the card or the slot breaks? From my experiences with the PCIe slot, it seems fairly robust, but at the same time, it was designed as an internal connector, not something seeing daily abuse. Now that the new adapters have soldered cables, those who use mPCIe to connect their eGPUs will have to pull out the graphics card every time they want to move their laptops or pull out the mPCIe card- how long do you think these connectors can last?

[flekx]

So, here are my benchmark result:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2410M Processor,FUJITSU FJNBB10 score: 16393 3DMarks
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2410M Processor,FUJITSU FJNBB10 score: P13167 3DMarks
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti video card benchmark result - Intel Core i5-2410M Processor,FUJITSU FJNBB10 score: P3991 3DMarks



UPDATE!! I had a new 3DMark11 Score of 4360, which seems quite better...

GPU-Z showed it works at x1 2.0, so I guess it works properly, although it doesn't show a big difference. It was quite strange once, because when I moved the cursor over "Bus Interface" it changed back to x1 1.1, no idea why.
I tried quickly Skyrim (modded as hell), but it was lagging as much as before, but perhaps it is CPU bottlenecked. On the other hand, The Witcher 2 was as smooth as never before with much higher details. Now I use the highest possible settings, and no issue. I will checked them with fraps if I'll have time.

UPDATE:
SWTOR (1080p, maxed out even by the client_setting.ini) - ~40 FPS
Skyrim (1080p, maxed out + 100 mods) - ~ 40 FPS (sometimes drops to 5 FPS, but I guess due to one of the mod)
The Witcher 2 (1080p, maxed out + ubersampling) - ~ 15-20 FPS W/O ubersampling - ~35 FPS
Alan Wake (1080p, maxed out) - ~35-40 FPS (sometimes lags a bit)

Any benchmarks on Battlefield 3?

[thaatz]

so for the past few days now, ive been wanting to purchase a PE4H from Harmonic Inversion Technology, but first they were out of stock and said that they would be back in stock by Feb 24, 2012. It said that until Feb 29, when it changed to say it would be back in stock by Mar 2, 2012. It is now March 2, 2012, and the SSL certificate on the website has expired, so the connection is untrusted, and the PE4H is still not in stock. Does anyone have any advice for me? I would really like to purchase from this vendor in particular (for setup 1.x) but the website seems to be updated very slowly and as of right now, a little shady since the SSL certificate is expired. any tips?

they have two differing pages linking to the same product, one saying that it is out of stock, and the other, not mentioning stock, but allowing you to place an order.
this one says it is out of stock
this one does not

so i would like to know, if i can purchase from this vendor and can i trust them?

[kizwan]

Hey guys, I'm looking for a little bit of help. I just bought an ATI Radeon 4850 and when it arrived, it urns out that it doesn't have a 6-pin connector because it noramlly get all its power from PCI-E 2.0. I was wondering if this still would work with my PE4H?
Thanks

HD4850 power requirement is 114W. So, you can use either 120W AC adapter or ATX PSU (using floppy power connector to drive PE4H & the HD4850).

[HITRC]

thaatz,

I work at Harmonic Inversion, I will let others commit on their experiences with our company and our trustworthiness. I do apologize for PE4H being out of stock and our issue with the SSL certificate. We have missed a couple of dates of being back in stock for various issues and unfortunately it looks like we just missed another. It is always difficult to state when a product will be back in stock. A delay in receiving one little screw can put a whole product behind scheduled. Of couse we can always error on the side of caution and provide a date far off knowing we will probably meet that date much earlier. But that does not really work either. We try to provide a time when a few things can go wrong but still hit the date we said. Unfortunately that did not work this time. The latest information we have is our production house will ship to us (from Taiwan) on the 8th. Depending on the shipping company and US customs we should receive the product the 12th through the 14th. A day or so to do quality assurance on our end and we should be back in stock, shipping all back orders around the 15th/16th. Hopefully this date will be earlier but that is the latest information we know. Regarding the SSL certificate, it is a I thought he was doing it, but I thought she was doing it situation. Either way it is being taken care of now. It should be fixed very very soon.

If you decide to order from Harmonic Inversion (HIT) I will do everything I can to ship your product on or before March 16th.

Again I apologize for the delay.


Randy

[chx1975]

I am considering using a Dell SFF case as an enclosure, with this DELL Combo Full Height PCI/PCI-E Riser for Select Dell OptiPlex Desktops : Desktop Accessories | Dell accessory you can use one single full size card in there. Like the new Radeon 7750 single slot. Now, the power supply I found had no floppy power nor PCI Express power but it had a (single) SATA cable. Power SATA Cables - Cpu Stuff has both kinds of adapters for cheap: one to convert the SATA power connector to floppy the other to convert that SATA power to PCI Express.

Also, the way I see this (although not tested IRL yet) the card would face the nonexisting motherboard and that space can be used to add, for example, an Accelero L2 Plus for quiet operation. Already I read that some of the Dell SFF Power Supplies are quiet.

[kevmanw4301]

So, I did a full review of the E6220 for those of you looking for a nice, thin, ultraportable to use with an eGPU.

Dell E6220 User Review

Also, I made a new enclosure. Link to the old one:

DIY eGPU experiences

It was really ugly, so I set out to make another cheap, shoe box enclosure, but one that was alot more attractive. This is the result:











As you can see, it's alot cleaner, with no duct tape. I also, instead of cutting one big hole, but a few smaller ones for the ports. The big blemish is the PSU fan hole, which I messed up pretty badly. Either way, it's still a great option for someone looking to get rid of a shoe box and have theit eGPU in an enclosure.

Be sure to check out my review!

[hizzaah]

For my enclosure I used plexiglass I had in the garage. I definitely wish I'd used thicker material as mine's a bit flexy. Make sure you score the heck out of it too. I have a couple of unclean breaks in my plexi. I filled the corners and uneven breaks with caulk though so its not that bad looking. I also wasn't happy with the glue I used. It took forever to dry and isn't that great.

One thing I'll recommend to anyone that's going to paint plexiglass, buy Krylon Fusion, and also consider painting the inside of the plastic. I painted the outside a matte black, but when I assembled the box (I painted before assembly), I realized it would have looked A LOT cleaner had I painted the inside of the plexi.. Doesn't really matter now as I'm getting rid of my eGPU lol. Got ~$30 in the box, guess I'll just trash it now

[hlgr]

hey nando,

has there been any word from bplus regarding the thunderbolt implementation of this product? really itching for that to become reality...

[User Retired 2]

hey nando,

has there been any word from bplus regarding the thunderbolt implementation of this product? really itching for that to become reality...

The holdup isn't BPlus or any of the other vendors wanting to release a Thunderbolt enclosure (Sonnet, Magma, Villagetronic - they can all smell the ch-ching$$). The holdup is Apple+Intel releasing devel kits to these manufacturers. None of those vendors can make a Thunderbolt enclosure without having availability of the Thunderbolt chips to do the pci-e+DP muxing/demuxing.

See the Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, PCIe 2.0 eGPU update for latest up-data-info on Thunderbolt enclosure status.