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igel

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  1. Same setup works just fine with the XFX Radeon RX 460 (the compact one that has an external power). As expected performance is about 35-40% lower than the GTX 960.
  2. There was another thread around here, asking for Alienware Alpha, so here is the answer - yes it is possible to have an eGPU on the Alpha, at least on the first generation Alpha. While the hardware setup was relatively easy, the driver installation was somewhat tricky. The PCIe signal cable for the eGPU needs to be very flexible, luckily the GDX EXP cable is. Hardware: Alienware Alpha R1, i3 4130T, 16GB RAM, 750GB HDD (GTX 860M dGPU) Windows 8.1 (the original one coming from Alienware) GDC EXP Beast v8.3 + M.2 E cable EVGA GTX 960 SC EVGA G2 550W PSU with the test tool connected on the 24 pin connector. Hardware connection: 1. To open the alpha turn it on it's top with the vents facing you, there are 4 screws deep inside, 2 on the left side and two on the right. 2. Once the case is off, with the fans on top and vents facing you, unclip the fan housing of the dGPU (there is a label) - the right one, and put it to lay somewhere. There is no need to unplug the fan wires. 3. With the fan housing out of the way, the M.2 E slot (occupied with the wifi card) is located forward on the right side. There is a small piece of transparent plastic covering the antenna cable connectors and the screw for the M.2 slot passes through it. Remove the screw, and make sure not to lose the plastic piece, then unclip the antenna cables and remove the wifi card. 4. Put in the M.2 E cable from the GDC EXP and lay the cable straight back towards you, just on the right of the dGPU heat sink and over the top of the vent plate. 5. Replace the dGPU fan. The dGPU needs the cooling as it is powered when the computer is on. 6. Optionally you can file a short section of the plastic edge of the top cover (above the vents, where the signal cable is going out). Or run your alpha without a top cover. 7. Connect the rest of the eGPU, PSU and external monitor to the eGPU directly. For the initial setup you need both the eGPU and dGPU connected to a monitor. Startup procedure: 1. Monitor 2. PSU 3. Alpha Initial setup: After powering on, the post and bios screen will automatically appear on the eGPU, but as windows loads, it will appear on the dGPU, so you will need to have that on your monitor. Windows does not install the drivers for the eGPU automatically, and will present an exclamation mark in device manager. Installing the proper drivers (win 8.1 64bit) from nVidia doesn't work - produces a error message that the package and the OS don't match. Tried with multiple downloads, same result. Also tried installing the various versions of the 960 driver that are already on the system, but the same version incompatibility. Luckily Alienware have left an nVidia folder on the root of the system disk, with an older version drivers, but they still support the 960. From device manager select the standard vga adapter and install the drivers manually, making sure to select the folder. These did install fine. Once the drivers are installed you can restart the Alpha and unplug the dGPU HDMI cable in the mean time. Observations: Even though I haven't tried updating the drivers any further from the old version that is already on the disk, the GTX 960 eGPU even at PCI 2.0 x1 provided 45% to 50% boost in frame rate in synthetic bench marking (Heaven, Valley) at the highest presets. Lower resolutions where the frame rate is above 90 FPS do suffer because of the x1 bandwidth; at 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 the framerates don't bottleneck the x1 link. The scores are the same as with the same eGPU running on the Lenovo Ideacentre 200. The Withcher 1 and Minecraft with shaders also showed about 40% increase in FPS.
  3. Quite an easy setup for eGPU on Lenovo Ideacente 200. * Lenovo Ideacentre 200 - Intel Celeron 3215U, 16GB ram, 500GB HDD, Windows 10 with original powerbrick * EVGA Supernova G2 550 * EVGA GTX 960 SC 4GB single fan (1962 model) powered by 6pin from the PSU * GDC Beast 8.3 with M.2 A/E cable , powered by the PSU There are connectors on the back side of the Lenovo, I bent the the metal plate covering the place of DB-9 or DB-15 connector just enough to pass the M.2 A/E board with the connector cable to the GDC beast. I recommend that this is done only once the cover is off , the HDD plate is removed (two black screws towards the side of the case), and the WiFi card residing originally in the M.2 E slot under the plate is removed. Under the HDD plate is also one M.2 M slot (more on it later). Run the cable, fasten the bolt of the M.2 E slot, re-seat the HDD plate, bolt it down, reconnect SATA cable, make sure the antenna connectors aren't touching the mobo anywhere, reinstall case cover (if the cover is not closed the Intel CPU isn't cooled at all, as the fan is on the side of the heatsink) and tape around the signal cable to the beast as you want air to come into the Lenovo only though the front plate. You will lose the WiFi capability, so you need to install another WiFi Card either in the M.2 M slot, a USB based one or just use the wired RJ-45 Ethernet port. * When the V8 GDC beast is used with M.2 the power on doesn't work, so the power supply needs to be turned on (pin shorted) BEFORE the computer is turned on. * Delay switch on the beast should be in position 2 or 3 * Post and bios screens are displayed on the eGPU, no need to connect HDMI/DP cable to the iGPU at all. If the Lenovo triple beeps on startup - it didn't properly negotiate with the card, shut it down, shut the card down, power in reverse. * UEFI boot works just fine * Once Windows boots, installing the drivers is simple (Windows 10 x64 package from Nvidia) - the bios of the Lenovo has already completely disabled the iGPU, so it won't show in Device Manager * Performance (framerate) in 1920x1080 and 1920x1200 is 10-12 times better than the iGPU for same settings. In 1280x720 though, it is only 3-4 times better the iGPU as the CPU isn't fast enough to feed 180+ fps to the eGPU. * Enjoy - e.g. Minecraft at 1920x1200 with resource packs and shaders keeps the FPS between 40 and 80. * Once you shut down the computer, power off the PSU to the card. As mentioned there is a M.2 M slot on the Lenovo. I was very excited as the M slots are supposed to have x4 PCIe in them. Alas, with the same card and PSU and PE4C-M4060A V4.1 (PE4C with M.2 M) I was never able to boot to a situation where Device Manager will at all see the card. Either the M.2 M slot is only wired for SATA and the PCIe x4 lanes are missing, it is whitelisted, or there was no good contact - the M.2 M slot on the Lenovo board is 2242 but the cable from the PE4C is 2262, even though I believe I set it up without moving and under the appropriate angle. Since a 2242 SSD works just fine in the slot, my current thinking is that for whatever reason the PCIe lanes are not connected on the slot, but I don't have a WWAN card to test it. The M.2 M slot is also printed as "sata" on the mobo.
  4. Succeeded in running EVGA GTX 960 SC 4GB (1962 model) on MSI Cubi 006 (Celeron 3205U, 16GB RAM, 128GB SSD), using GDC beast V8.3 connected over M.2 E slot with Windows 10 Pro in legacy boot. Power to the eGPU is provided by EVGA supernova G2 550. The connection of the M.2 cable (A/E combined) is straightforward - goes into the M.2 E slot of the Cubi (instead of the wireless card). Some minor issues: * The card has UEFI capable bios which causes conflicts when the Cubi has UEFI enabled in bios. The card will actually force the Cubi to legacy mode on each boot. In order to avoid this the Cubi needs to stay in legacy mode. (This for example prevents me from trying SteamOS) * The beast doesn't turn the PSU with the M.2 connector so the 24pin connector needs to be shorted (I used the test tool provided with the PSU) before turning on the Cubi. If you don't power the eGPU before powering the Cubi, the Cubi will appear to have hanged (no logo, no post), if you power the eGPU after the Cubi, it will take another about 30-40 seconds for the Cubi to complete post. * The nvidia drivers need to be installed with the eGPU plugged in, powered on and a display connected to it. The iGPU also needs to be connected at this point - different port on the same monitor (projector in my case) was ok. * The bios/boot screens of the Cubi will only display via the iGPU, but it can boot fine without DP/HDMI cable in the iGPU. Once Windows loads, the login screen will display on the eGPU. There is no need to disable the iGPU in device manager. As soon as there isn't a cable connected to it, it won't be powered as Intel Power Gadget shows. * The TD switch on the beast needs to be set to the 3rd position (had no success in other positions, and in the first position it conflicts with the sata controller). * The eGPU runs in x1 2.0 configuration only, even though the M.2 E slot should be an x2 slot per NGFF spec. The CPU however has 4 x1 and 2 x4 lanes, and I haven't had the time to trace the slot to the CPU and compare diagrams, may be there is really only an x1 connected to the slot. * The other slot - labeled MINI_PCIE1 on the PCB does seem to act only as mSATA. Tried with an old mPCIe wifi card and with the mPCIe cable to the beast - no devices are showing in Device Manager. Haven't tried hotswapping and such. * GPU-Z gets confused about the GPU subvendor, reads the one of the motherboard. * Unigine Heaven and Valley don't seem to read the card clocks correctly - they show in excess of 1400Mhz, and according to manufacturer spec this card should not clock nearly that high. * Will need to cut a small portion of the plastic case - either under the RJ-45 Jack on the back or under the stereo jack in the front to be able to close the case with the eGPU cable connected. The metal frame is already cut below those sockets from the factory. * Performance seems to be a bit on the low side of expected. link speed in GPU-Z (x1 2.0) Valley Extreme HD (1233) Heaven Extreme (935) All connections Cubi (detached bottom plate) GPU (and power cables)
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