omvomv Posted June 20, 2016 Share Posted June 20, 2016 I've got a Akito + GTX 960 setup working pretty well with my rMBP 2012 (w/ 650m), under both OSX and win7. I went the Bootcamp + DIY eGPU 1.2 route for windows, and it seems fine - a PCI compaction is enough to get things running. Been enjoying the setup for a while now, and it seems nice and stable, especially after following the advice for hacking the power connections on the akito board. I decided to try Win10 while the upgrade was still free, but haven't figured out how to get the eGPU working there. The postings I've seen in this forum seem to have people using the EFI install, though I would imagine that requires a fresh reinstall of Win10 - I assume that requires an install CD, and not sure I want to spend the money on Win10, especially if there's a risk of it not working. I have managed to get into the DIY eGPU setup, run the compaction like Win7, but once I chainload I get black screens on both the internal laptop display and out the GTX 960. Downgrading back to Win7 brought everything back to usable -- didn't even have to use my backup image. Was curious if anyone managed to get this working with the 2012 / dgpu model or have useful suggestions? Or if I should just stick with win7 and say screw it... Thanks in advance! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
errin Posted June 20, 2016 Share Posted June 20, 2016 So you use MBR or EFI? I have 2012 non-Retina and it works pretty well with Win 10 MBR (Though don't upgrade it) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyKip Posted June 20, 2016 Share Posted June 20, 2016 I'm working on a similar setup, albeit Akitio with GTX970 on 15' Retina MGP - havent' tried to get it running in OSX yet, been focussing on Win10 and haven't had too much joy so far. I can see both display adapters are listed under Device Manager, but the GTX 970 has an error code 35 showing. In that state when I boot, at the choose boot drive screen I power on the Akitio, and choose Windows. The Blue Windows logo appears on the display connected to the GTX 970 briefly along with the spinning balls, then that freezes & the boot continues on the internal display with the external going black. I tried to disable the 650M display driver in Device Manager, and when I did the error code 35 went away, only to be replaced with error code 12 - so i've been trying to use the DIY eGPU Setup 1.2 to get it running, but i'm very n00b to what's going on there and I haven't found a step by step guide for what it is exactly I need to change to get it running. Any advice anybody can give is more than welcome, and if I make much headway tonight i'll let you know what I did to get it running. I may be completely off the rails here, but i'm assuming the end goal is to have either 650M driving internal display, 970 driving external, OR 970 driving both internal & external. I'm just a little lost on how to get to either result Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyKip Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 1 hour ago, JimmyKip said: I tried to disable the 650M display driver in Device Manager, and when I did the error code 35 went away, only to be replaced with error code 12 - so i've been trying to use the DIY eGPU Setup 1.2 to get it running, but i'm very n00b to what's going on there and I haven't found a step by step guide for what it is exactly I need to change to get it running. Having read through a few other similar setups (that have succeeded) i'm thinking I need to use eGPU Setup to do both PCIe compact & chainloader. I think last night I only did the compact so will give that a crack this evening & report back with results. It'll be something similar to this (anybody who knows better, feel free to correct me ) Boot windows normally with Akitio off, disable 650m, shutdown Power up, holding alt - at boot screen power up Akitio then boot windows. Choose 1.2 Setup and do PCIe compact & Chainloader steps. Reboot & hope for the best! If no good here, then shutdown PC, shutdown Akitio, then do step 2 again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimmyKip Posted June 21, 2016 Share Posted June 21, 2016 So, good news & bad news (for me). Firstly it turns out I have an early 2013 15" Retina MBP not a late 2012 like I thought. But the good news is that last night after disabling the 650m the GTX970 worked first pop, I booked into the 1.2 setup but got distracted and instead of choosing the 1-6 menu options on the first screen the countdown expired & it booted. I was annoyed until the boot finished & my external display was working; once booted I was able to set the resolution of the internal display to the max Retina resolution so it seems like the 970 was driving both ok. Everything was working great, World of Tanks with everything on maximum was giving solid 60fps and looking amazing. But later on I started to have the eGPU die mid-game. I'm pretty sure this is because when I ordered a DA-2 PSU I was sent a DA-3 which only outputs 180W. The whole PSU would die until unplugging & replugging at the wall. I should have a DA-2 arriving in the next couple of days so after doing some re-wiring i'll hopefully have better luck. By the way - when it comes to the wiring, I decided not to use the molex connector on the PSU at all. The moulding around the plug is very flimsy & is easy to remove and expose the wiring; i'm then using a screw-down connector to join that directly to the wires on my 2x 6-pin PCIe connectors and the Akitio barrel-plug. I also put a switch on the sense wire which effectively turns the PSU on or off which makes it nice & simple to get it turned on at the right time during boot etc. Once i've re-done it all with the new PSU & it looks tidy i'll take a couple of pics to show what it looks like; its much tidier than using multiple molex connectors. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
omvomv Posted June 26, 2016 Author Share Posted June 26, 2016 UPDATE: After more screwing around, I did manage to get Win 10 running in EFI mode. Keys bits: - Used Microsoft's media creation tool to make a bootable USB installer so I could fresh install (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows10) - Installed EFI mode - I didn't use bootcamp assistant except to download drivers. Used disk utility to split the SSD, booted into the installer in EFI mode, nuked the extra partitions, and told windows to install in the free space. - Installed bootcamp drivers & NVidia drivers. Disabled HD 4000 (not sure if this helps or not) - At this point I get the typical error 12 issue - so I used the DSDT method to resolve. Seems more robust than what I was doing with DIY eGPU in windows 7, and doesn't require any interaction during the boot. After that, everything seemed to work fine! My boot does seem a bit slow - the login screen seems to have a bit of image corruption at first, though as soon as I start typing it clears out. Based on notification messages I saw, seems like the NVidia driver might get be crashing & restarting (?). But once I'm past that point everything seems to be great. If the laptop goes to sleep, the egpu seems to get 'lost' - fan's ramp up to full and never come down, and the screen never comes back. So I disabled sleep and hibernate. Accidentally 'ejected' the thunderbolt enclosure once rather than my external hard drive. That seemed to crash things - wish it wasn't an option in the Remove Hard / Eject media menu, since its easy to hit by accident. No idea if optimus works or not -- I run a 4k external and disable the laptop lcd. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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