jacobsson

It's the memory of the system, GPU memory/ram is almost always referred to as vram.

@Dewos Just wanted to say that I love it! Good job buddy.

@jcagara08 I have my PCIe cables wrapped like yours, no problem at all!

Hahahaha yes of course, I love @Tech Inferno Fan =)

Haha nooo! At least some of us here had a good run with it hope? =) EDIT: For fun, Imagine this DIY stuff as a company, headlines would be something like this: Breaking News Nando4, one of the founders of the eGPU, is a suspect of sabotaging a good deal for the community. A colleague who want to stay anonymous, says: "He just couldn't keep his mouth shut!" This is the last seen of nando this morning:

Put your implementation thread linked in the sign =)

@Arclite I'd definitely add the capacitor for the reasons ithildin mentioned, and also because it's just as easy as the adding the cables.

Make sure to remove the protective tape on the mPCIe connector, I made that mistake once =)

I would advise you (as said in earlier post) to solder one split of the proposed 6pin PCIe to the 5.5/2.5mm line as well (if the board needs it), but that can be done afterwards if it shows to be necessary. I will look at the exact references on my x4 PCIe Riser for the capacitor and get back to you. Wish I too had the Akitio-board, this mod seems very fun and right up my alley! =) Also, I can make a rough "sketch" for you to show my vision of how the new cabling would look like and post it here? EDIT: Here is my powered riser for instance: Of course it's important to cover the exposed wires with electrical tape or hot glue to be safe from any shortage.

It would be very interesting to see if the adapter is capped at 5GB/s or not. How much bandwidth does the M.2 have normally?

No this is actually as good as it gets! Just add a little extra solder to the pins (so the joint heats up), then add solder to the stripped wire tip, then add them together with heat of the iron =) This is the pinout of the x16 connector (down to the x4 for the Akitio board), as you might know the soldering will take place on first mentioned "key" pins that you will find with the multimeter: what do you think @Tech Inferno Fan `?

I fully understand the warranty issue, sometimes I get lost in this DIY stuff, which has cost me both economically and headaches =) If I was to implement the solution for this board I'd use skip the original power adapter fully. My take would be changing the original 5.5/2.5 plug to a 6-pin PCIe female, or at least route one beside it. The 6pin PCIe female would be split internally in three ways, one split would be soldered to the 12V and GND of the original 5.5/2.5 line (to ensure power to the daughter board) one split would go to the "molex" attached on the pins original PCIe 16X board (as powered riser would) one split would go to GPU itself, maybe a 2 x 6pin+2pin as the EXP GDC cable have? That's nice! Since I haven't looked at the PCIe 16x board myself I can't tell right now where to solder these two 4 wires and capacitor. Finding out would be fairly easy though. Take a powered riser and attach it on the original '16x PCIe board'. 1. The riser has bare pins under the (usually) blue tape and you will see to which pins the molex is soldered. 2. Take multimeter and diode/beep test the corresponding pin to find which pin on the '16x PCIe board' that corresponds. 3. Move wire by wire to the correct pins of the '16x PCIe board' 4. Now you have two 12V and two GND wires hooked up. I did a similar thing yesterday for my setup where I desoldered a powered 16x riser to make my 4x powered riser, works like a charm! I don't see that this would be much of a difference except it's the '16x PCIe board'. Is this what I suspect it is, the backside 16X PCIe interface of the Akitio board (plus smaller daughter board beside)? If so, one can clearly see it pins, so soldering some cables would be piece of cake.

Sorry for my total confusion! 1. "Akitio enclosure without the PCIe 16x Board" Are you intending to remove the PCIe 16x board, it's modular/detachable I guess? Then adding 16x riser, plus extended 4x Riser to connect to PCIe interface of the main board. If I'm correct so far: What stops you from adding 12V powerd molex connectors straight to the original PCIe 16x board? Would be a total 4 cables and one capacitor. Or is the new "16x riser + 4x riser" needed to get rid of the limiting fuse of the original 16x board? I'm only asking since I'm too considering making my own mod to this hardware + GTX670 mini (ITX) or newer GTX 900 series. In my case I will stay within the 220W limitation in order to use the excellent and cheap DA-2 adapter. Thanks for your contribution!

@Arclite @arclord Wouldn't soldering be the easier/cheaper alternative in the end to have 220W (I read through some pages of proposed adapters and power bricks etc.)? My earlier post

Oh that sucks, waiting for nothing I'd love to see a PE4C V2.0 Implementation, go for it! EDIT: Forgot to answer your question. AFAIK it's minor design changes to the board layout and added support for the NGFF/M.2 interface. Could mean some additional hardware inside the adapter, not really sure.

@trollinteemo A unique Thunderbolt from you is a no go. Intel will not include you as a developer. The best you can do is take other Thunderbolt product (eg: Firmtek Thundertek or AKiTiO Thunder2 board) and try to create a product out of it. Though given the DIY eGPU community's ingenuity, you'd be competing against individuals doing the same already. There is a Russian seller BIZON that has pretty much taken the ingenuity expressed here added some laser etched acrylic enclosure with his logo on it and tried to make a huge upmark out of it: DIY eGPU experiences [version 2.0] Then the only item on your list that gauges interest is the USB 3.0 product. While I'd love to see one I'd 95% sure you will be able to deliver one. Why? BPlus tried several years ago using a PLXTech adapter backend and couldn't do it. The hardware wasn't the problem, there are USB 3.0 to PCIe adapters.. The problem is the transport protocol. eGPUs use PCIe and there is no readily available driver to deliver a PCIe over USB 3.0. The demo above worked only because they used a heavily modified S3 video driver. So then that is a dead end. If you did manage to make a USB 3.0 eGPU then you'd have a unique, never-before-created product and so could expect a great reward for your efforts. So all in all, I do not see any products here. As such I'll ask: 1. Please be mindful of introducing vaporware. It intrudes on genuine DIY eGPU discussion using tangible eGPU adapters/enclosures. 2. Please consider adding a poll item "Not interested. There are great and affordable expresscard, mPCIe and Thunderbolt adapters/enclosures already" option to give a more comprehensive response to your poll. No insult intended!

NEWS: "Say Hello" to EXP GDC V7.0: M.2 / NGFF support! Link to yoybuy NEWS: Metal enclosure for the EXP GDC v6.0 is here! Link to yoybuy

@Kaas93 Thanks, It's now included in the first post! I was thinking to wait until someone actually tried it but what the heck =)

I'm confident that you are right! The rectangular hole in the side aligns pretty well with what you could expect from the power input and HDMI port of the V6.0. None of his current products supports the older versions of the EXP GDC, the new data cables doesn't even work with the old v5.7 that I have at home.

Just wanted to say that I love your write-up, especially with all game content! Good job.

Thanks, looking forward to it!

OK I see =) Then it's probably normal due to mechanical HDD speeds.

If it's extremely slow/halting it's could very likely be a hardware problem. I had this symptom when connecting a mSATA SSD (turned out to be broken), my system took ~10min to boot, when removed it booted normally ~1min.

It's probably powered through the riser, just like my Thundertek PX board is.

Good job buddy! If you happen to have any of the following games I'd love to see some gaming results: Borderlands 2, left4dead2, CIV5 or DOTA2. Other games would be awesome too, Thanks man!