badbadbad

Has anyone tried using a bulk ordering site like MassDrop for getting the adapters at an insanely reduced price? If not, then I've taken the liberty of setting up a poll for our eGPU adapters (needs a sign-up). Please vote for the adapters so that the MassDrop team can contact the suppliers ASAP and arrange for a discounted bulk order price.

Voting does not mean you will join the bulk ordering group. We just need the 200 votes to get the item to the BUY page, where other eGPU enthusiast can benefit from a discounted price.

If this pay-it-forward strategy works out for us, then we can most definitely take advantage of this every time a new, worthier adapter arrives. It's not everyday we can get lucky with price drops (Akitio).

Any thoughts on this?

2. A shorter cable will have less signal degradation. But I don't know if the shortest cables will reach, hence getting both 30 and 60 cm cables.

This will be more of an experiment than just a one and done project I hope everyone will benefit from. I'm curious to see what kind of difference trying out connections will do.

Wow, nice..hoping for the best here. Could you also take photos of the cable management? It would be nice to see how much hassle it is to organize the Flat cables.

Thank you for the reference @Tech Inferno Fan. And yes @Dschjin, I might just wait for the Pascal cards to launch.

Just asking cause I don't know if the bandwidth bottleneck (for x1.2, x2.2, TB1, TB2) would be the main issue here, compared to the raw processing power of the GPU.

So Oculus just announced it's Optimal Specs for running the rift today.

For the full Rift experience, we recommend the following system:

• NVIDIA GTX 970 / AMD 290 equivalent or greater
  
• Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater
  
• 8GB+ RAM
  
• Compatible HDMI 1.3 video output
  
• 2x USB 3.0 ports
  
• Windows 7 SP1 or newer
  

I'm not an expert with hardware, but given that we have a decent Quadcore CPU, would notebooks running GTX970 eGPUs be ready for VR? Or will the bandwidth bottleneck take a huge hit in performance and render an unacceptable VR experience?

Thoughts anyone? Especially to those with a rift developer kit.

As far as I understand with a PM4N adapter you would probably won't get reliable 2.0 signal. I am not sure though if someone have tested connecting a PE4C with PM4N. If you are interested in a smaller cable I see here that they also ship the PM050C V1.0 which is 50cm, just 20cm bigger.

I did see the 50cm flat cable option. And right beside that tab is the option for a PM4N adapter with 95cm cable. I inquired with the sales department and there was no mention of signal degradation. They simply offered their $8 30cm flat cable as an option over the 95cm round cable.

Not an expert with hardware. But in the event that the PM4N does not degrade the signal that much, would it be possible to use a coiled HDMI cable instead?

EDIT: Can we just solder this ultra thin 30cm HDMI cable to the PM4N?

+[ATTACH=CONFIG]14708[/ATTACH]

How bad will the signal degradation/stability be if we use the accessory PM4N adapters they are selling?

I was hoping to get either the 30cm flat cable they are offering, or find a short coiled HDMI cable and keep it tucked underneath the laptop (after a slight case mod).

Regarding the cabling, would it be possible to just separate the male and female HDMI attachment of the eGPU adapter, then use an extender to keep the HDMI port outside the laptop?

The rounded wire of the extender has a smaller surface area than the flat cables and can be left dangling outside the laptop case (with proper modification).

What do you guys think?

Apparently, the eGPU setup made the 9gag Hot page.

@timohour, thank you for the guide. Your instructions are very helpful and understandable.

Struggled a bit with the picture but soon realized that that bump looked like the resistor you were referring to.

When booting after bridging, will you have access to the laptop keyboard? Or do you need an external keyboard?

Hello everyone! I've recently acquired an E6430 (HD+, NVS5200) and found it to be a suitable upgrade for my 2570p. Currently waiting on the caddy, but I'm glad to know that x2.2 looks to be up and running.

@timohour, I'd very much like to see your step-by-step guide on how to unlock the Flash Descriptor. Looking forward to working with you guys soon.

Thanks!

Hi guys. Can someone explain why it is cheaper to pull a 2Tb Samsung Spinpoint M9T from a Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2TB Portable External Hard Drive than to buy it without the casing? It's 9.5mm too, so it'll fit in the secondary HDD Bay.

@jacobsson has a custom 3D-printed enclosure for one of his projects. But his old case did not have space for an SFX PSU since he used an EXP GDC.

Would an HDPlex work? That looks more portable and will use an even smaller case.

From the mega table, you can infer that no two CPU chips are built/perform the same way. This is a standardized test used for benchmarking and comparision of CPUs purchased.

Oh, silly me. I thought I read PE4L 2.1b. Yeah, that makes more sense now. haha

If you don't have a backup then you could use the 2570P BIOS dump I obtained from hpfocus.com to try recover: 68ISB16.F34 .

You may too need to re-tattoo the machine with your specific details (PCID, serial, model, etc): NbDmiFit-2.03

Ok I will try that but I might need some help setting it up. Thank you Tech Inferno Fan.

Well, he says I've got a partially crippled ME FW. I tried taking a dump and flashing the ME through FreeDOS via Setup 1.30.

Since it had a bad ME flash, I tried the fptw64 in UEFI Win7 x64. Did another dump and flashed to another bad ME.

I'm hoping the Windows backup dump did not overwrite the FreeDOS backup dump or else I've got no original backup left.

@Tech Inferno Fan, I sent my bios dump to Khenglish but it seems like I must've screwed it up prior to dumping the original one. Don't know if it was because I was dumping from Legacy first instead of UEFI. Is there any hope for this? I don't plan on getting a bios chip any time soon because my soldering skills aren't that good.

Do you have a picture of the Setup? Did you attach the Dell DA-2 8-Pin Adapter directly to the GTX970?

Thanks buddy.

I tried the flashing the modified ME Firmware with both a Legacy Windows install and UEFI Windows install (for Clover).

It always results in a bad ME flash (no icon in the system tray). Should I submit my originalbios.bin for inspection?

And to add, I did a -BIOS dump then opened the dump with UEFITool but couldn't search for the SetupPrep module. What am I missing?

iGPU was set to Max Battery already. That's good to hear about this non-OEM CPU, since my choice was either the i7-3740QM (BGA->PGA), or this. At the same price point, I think this was the better choice.

Tried it again, but couldn't get x34 anymore. Should I get a 2.5 x 2.5 x 0.8mm copper shim sandwiched in between the CPU and Heatsink? Or is 1mm thickness ideal?

So I finally got my i7-3840QM QCF1 pasted with a 3-mm dash of AS5 (about a week ago) and without any cooling mods.

I took the benchmarks feeling hopeful, but not expecting any great results (since it's not an OEM). For the cheap price I got it, I'd say it was worth it though.

Results of my 3840QM (QCF1):

x12

0.8656

12.9

x23

0.8906

20.6

x24

0.9056

21.8

x25

0.9207

23.2

x26

0.9407

24.7

x27

0.9557

26.2

x28

0.9707

28.3

x29

0.9957

30.0

x30

1.0107

33.0

x31

1.0358

35.5

x32

1.0558

37.6

x33

1.0608

38.1

x34 (When lid is off, holds x34 for a second)

---

---

I guess the i7-3740QM really is the most efficient power-per-cost CPU for our Extremebook.

Any suggestions to improve my clock speeds? Just ran Throttlestop without any pre-benchmark preparations.

The first page should be useful for you to get started on modding ideas. Most, if not all of the possible upgrades discovered are there.

And yes, SSDs are possible. Even Raid-0 SSDs (switching the Optical Drive for a second SSD and running them simultaneously in Raid-0 array).

Hope to read more on your upgrades.

I'm referencing the fact that this eBay price is still WAY cheaper than the same 3840QM(QCF1) sold in Aliexpress.

The seller made it clear that though the price matches that of a 3740QM QCF3 in Aliexpress, it's in fact a 3840QM QCF1. Probably a clearance sale of some sort.

Good to have you on board! For the information of everybody, there's a 3840QM being sold for $249!

Limited supply only. Check the link out here.

Great work everyone! This thread has indeed evolved into a noteworthy guide for getting the most out of the compact beast of a notebook. Looking forward to more healthy discussions!