Hi all,
Wanted to chime in and thank everyone here for all their help.
I have been using an EXP GDC Beast with my R9 290 and Lenovo W520 without any issues.
One small hiccup I've been encountering is that the cable from expressscard adapter to the Beast is far too short. So I got a 6ft HDMI extension cable to try and lengthen this. The computer is able to boot up and I can get to about the welcome screen (eGPU is working for just a bit), and then I lock out and blue screen and it resets. My guess is the signal is degrading in quality just enough in 6ft that the laptop can't receive enough signals and treats it like hot-unplugging the graphics card (immediate death).
I've done a few searches here, but no one has really provided many sound answers or potential solutions.
Does anyone have any experience on this topic? Surely people must be experiencing the issue of this cable not being long enough. I'm thinking of getting a 1.5ft and 3ft length cable and testing it out to see which one may work and provide stable results.