Turning My AMD Ryzen Mini PC Into Gaming PC! M.2 PCI-E to eGPU Upgrade
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- How to add a dedicated GPU to your laptop or Mini PC. M.2 PCIE to eGPU. All it needs is a PCIe M.2 PCIe 3.0 x 4 slot and a spare SATA3 M.2 or 2.5" for your boot drive. And the PCI-E x16 to M.2 PCI-E external GPU (m2 eGPU) stand I bought can be found here: s.click.aliexp...
Tested on my ASUS PN-50 Mini PC with AMD Ryzen 5 4500U. Reviewed here: • AWESOME AMD Ryzen 5 Mi...
The Dell DA-2 Power supply for GPUs up to 220W cutt.ly/Qgk3ZWP otherwise you need a dedicated 400-600W PSU etc to meet your GPU needs.
R43SG with the GTX 1080 Ti PCIe x16 vs PCIe x4 eGPU: • M.2 PCIe x4 to Externa...
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ALTERNATIVELY if you dont have an SSD slot for an alternative hard drive, you can use an external m2 USB-C adapter hub. This is especially convenient if you only have one m2 slot that was taken by your old SSD. you can just pop the SSD out, free up the slot for your external GPU and put the SSD (m2) into the external enclosure that plugs into the USB-C. USB-C data transfer rates are fast so it won't affect read and write speeds much.
What do you do if the new GPU doesn’t show up on the device manager?
@@echofoxtrotwhiskey1595 usually it will show up, it could be:
•check connections
•your pc's m2 slot may not be compatible with this kind of set up
•make sure you have the most recent DRIVER FOR YOUR GPU installed.
•your adapter may have an issue (the platform you slotted the graphics card on) and you may want to buy a different one.
•you will want to disable the integrated graphics
•you will want to use an external monitor via hdmi from the back of the EXTERNAL GPU to your monitor.
•make sure you are using a BIOS version that is compatible with your GPU.
•Google and youtube are your friends. look for other solutions and solve it yourself.
These are just from the hip thoughts as I was trying to think of reasons you may have issues.
@@myname-ns1rp Thanks
@Chris, thank you so much for this review and extra thanks for considering my request. This is a great solution for not only gaming but for content creation as well. Since current Vega iGPU doesn't work with editing software like Premiere Pro or The Vinci Resolve, this little tweak can give you immense flexibility with such a small pc. If we have the 4700u or 4800u model, and with even a moderately powerful GPU like GTX 1650 Super, user can have a small and cheap editing rig.
Thank you for these in depth experiments. Would be amusing to plug a gigantic 3080 or 3090 with a 400W+ PSU just because why not.
It would and I would have done it if I had one! The 4500U would have limited it of course but still be fun to do!
@@Techtablets yly
@@Techtablets if you are running at 4k I actually don't think that the CPU would bottleneck it much. If it was, you can actually increase the power limits and allow for more performance. I think the PCIe 4x link would be the major bottleneck. I would love to see an AMD version of the newer Intel nuc where you could install a discrete gpu with a mobile chip.
If you can afford a 3090 you would have it sits outside of the case. You would have a shrine for it and LED lights around it.
6800 XT would be better over the 3080 and 3090
Hey, Chris, nice to see you back on track. Please know that we, your subscribers, will be watching & liking your smartphone reviews even if they come later than those released by other bribed reviewers! Please keep up the excellent job of thorough analysis!
Bribed reviewers 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😛😛😛😛
When your graphic card is bigger than your pc.
And it's also a single fan gpu
I think there's a way to limit the number of PCIe lanes a NVMe drive uses, so that may also help the GPU to work in that scenario, but the setting would need to be available in the BIOS. That 1060 card isn't bad, I used to have the same one, if you look at the exhaust you should see a piece of tape covering the fins, you can open it up and remove that to get extra cooling. It should undervolt quite well too.
I should have just tried a SATA3 2280 M.2 and then it might have worked. I'll have to try again on my XMG Core 15 Ryzen 7 4800H laptop! It's not the best of the 1060s' as the VRM's cook themselves as have no contact with the heatsink, I had to mod it. Undervolts okay and overclocks a little to help making up for the PCIE 16x Vs 4x loss which isn't much.
@@Techtablets Yes, I believe that was an issue with them when they first released and EVGA offered a free kit to fit your own thermal pads on to make contact... luckily mine wasn't one. Developed a whine issue eventually so got rid of it.
Finally set this up today for my Dell AIO and experienced the issue you discussed towards the end (re boot drive). Fun experiment finally came to an end. Thanks for the upload.
Thanks for sharing
Quality mad PC building, with a GPU bigger than the rest of the computer.
I have no intention of trying this, but found this very interesting if not a bit cryptic due to all the variations possible.
THE MINIS FORUM have a set up with its own frame that takes the gpu and the mini pc in 1 neat and tidy package.
Amazing you can have such a compact minimalist setup. Fun experiment 👍
Hey Chris, could you investigate something regarding eGPUs and Intel Ice Lake? Since eGPUs experience worse performance compared to PCI-E, a couple new technologies attempt to mitigate this penalty. Windows 10 has an experimental memory scheduler whereby the GPU manages the VRAM (instead of system managed). This may improve latency, a major reason for the TB3 graphics penalty. Additionally, Ice Lake integrates the TB3 controller on-die, which may also further reduce latency.
Could you benchmark both a Whiskey Lake laptop and Ice Lake laptop with Thunderbolt 3? Comparison to a desktop can provide a reference, but the more important data would be
(1) Whiskey Lake / no mem scheduler
(2) Whiskey lake / yes mem scheduler
(3) Ice Lake / no mem scheduler
(4) Ice Lake / yes mem scheduler
By understanding these differences, we can infer how well these approaches reduce the eGPU penalty. I have seen both the memory scheduler and Ice Lake benchmarked against the standard, but not against each other or in conjunction. While the individual tests show promise, I'm interested in how they play together, and how much further I am from buying a high-powered ultraportable and relying on a eGPU when I want to do more serious gaming/work.
Sounds good and I would love to see the results and what about the new Tiger Lake TB4 support for later TB4 eGPUs. But I have no plans to buy any Ice Lake laptops or a Whiskey Lake one, such tests would be super expensive and only result in a huge loss for me. Sorry but that's how it is.
@@Techtablets is there any viable thunderbolt budget egpu option (i.e. like your setup here) that would work with a laptop without having a cable hanging out of its guts? - would the TB4 in Tiger lake do it and can you get a thunberbolt version of the m.2 gpu card holder (R43SG)?
you could try asking LTT for this test
@@huzcer There aren't TB3 versions of this, you have to get a proper full enclosure for the luxury of TB3. Tired scouting them out myself. Your best bet is to scan ebay and find one up for auction.
Jarrod's Tech has recently put up a video regarding eGPU performance on Ice Lake vs Comet Lake, maybe you can try ask him
Huh. Never would have thought of doing this, but it makes perfect sense given the slot-availability. Thanks for the info, mate!
Is the mini-PC able to power up fine with the m.2 card in but the GPU box not powered on? I'm thinking of using the internal graphics for most things and only power up the GPU when doing video editing with Davinci Resolve. Obviously I'd have to figure out a monitor switch to go between the two I think.
Long Short story, no. Whenever you plug eGPU docking, you need to power both MiniPC and eGPU simultaneously.
Buy if you intend to save Electricity Bills, then the overall setup of MiniPC and eGPU Actually consumes about 50% Less wattage than a full Build Desktop PC.
Would be far better to trim the bottom cover, and far easier as well as neater, the feet risers will give the cable clearance to tuck under and in.
While your comment is absolutely CORRECT, there is actually another MiniPC of the same Processor, but is assembled by different company and it has built-in Holes for the cable.
Like HYSTOU MiniPC
You won't get shocked by 12V, you'll be fine :D The most dangerous mishap would be shorting those leads and blowing the PSU up in case it isn't properly protected :)
👆 This! ;-)
And possibly frying the card.
It's all about heat, not about electric shock. 🌚
He would if he licked it.
12V is no issue!! In general < 48 V will NOT kill you and is know as "low voltage"
BUT the question is how much ampere?
e.g: To get 300 Watts from a (single) 12 Volt line you will have 300 / 12 = 25 A. = No fun!
Underrated UA-camr. Just missing some wall power usage numbers :)
I hope for a PN50 with 2-3 nvmes one day :)
PN50 Ryzen 5 4500U wall power usage is in the review but it's max 49W at the wall under full load and 6-8 idle
@@Techtablets reply faster 😂
Joking. Actually I saw full pn50 review. I was wondering about the power draw when using the external card.
Seriously on the fence here..
I need a new home server that uses little power.
The a300 from asrock won't support the new ryzen and the pn50 is quite expensive..
It says a lot when you find a way to make your MINI GPU bigger than your pc....You've earned my sub 👍🏾 lol
Just a note: the PCIe scaling with a 3080 is going to be much rougher at PCIe 3.0 x4. Tech power up has an analysis and the equivalent methodology was about 75% of the higher bandwidth configurarions
Edit: unless this is 4.0 x4, not familiar with this board
You were looking at PCIe 1.1 x8 numbers? That's equivalent of PCIe 3.0 x2. With PCIe 1.1 x16 RTX3080 retained 87-90% of it's full performance.
It's kind of mind boggling to think that RTX 3080 on PCIe 1.1 x8 bus is still slightly faster than RTX 2080 ti on PCIe 3.0 x16 bus. After all PCIe 1.1 x8 offers slightly less bandwidth than AGP 3.5 bus from the year 2003!
Weirdly enough internet doesn't tell if that's PCIe 4.0 or 3.0. Not even Asus specification list or manual for this product tells that.
This dock is different from usual ones. Be sure to find out which cards it actually supports.
You said PCIe times 3, that's wrong. It's PCIe gen 3 times 4 i believe in an m.2 formfactor
def best e gpu video ive seen and ive been on this for a few montsh now because im on a tight video editing pc budget
Great video, thanks for doing this eGPU
Very cool little piece of kit. I would totally build something like this for low power gaming. Too many back catalog games that don't need a +600w gaming machine to run at 100fps.
That the way PC should be Mini powerful and you can add a killer card to it fi you want externally and always upgrade !!!!
Quite fun but strange to see a bigger gpu than the main unit.
Eh, that's where things are headed, especially as 4K is even more GPU-dependant than 1440p.
Good heads-up on the DA-2 series PSU. Really cheap way of getting lots of power to something neatly!
Thunderbolt 3 is slower. But neater
a soc mini pc and the mini gpu card format on an egpu custom case meant to hide its pc contents and look like contemporary cable managed room decor.
Love the idea! What would be the best graphics card for the above cpu, to avoid bottleneck?
i have one too, nice solution for gaming on a mini pc
Which RAM are you using? I have the PN50 4800u, and I’m having nothing but trouble with 2x32GB Kingston HyperX, to the extent that I’m running it with one stick of memory to avoid crashes multiple times a day.
In most MiniPC or Laptops, the RAM is always fixed Frequency and Latency which means you can only use that same kind of frequency. And also fixed amount of Maximum RAM capacity.
So when the Manufacturer say it supports Sodimm LPDDR4 2666Mhz, that means any other frequency is not guaranteed to work. And sometimes also need a bit slower frequency of running Dual Channel RAM to justify the Voltage distribution.
The Reason your 2x32 GB crashing a lot is probably not enough Voltage to supply both RAM sticks. It might be doable if you try to undervolt and underClock the CPU just a little bit.
Ryzen Master app is very useful you know :)
Wow a breath of fresh air, a real UA-cam video it’s been awhile! Thank you! Now I don’t feel like I wasted part of my life. 👍
Has anyone found a eGPU stand like this but with some kind of chassis that still allows passage of the m.2 cable? The exposed power connectors are a little too hazardous for my space ... Thanks!
just hope you can convince the Asus , Acer built 1 more NVME M.2 behind the laptop for future upgrade . btw , their might worry affect their notebook sales .
YES! More NVMe slots the better since it allows to accommodate 90wh or higher battery and easier eGPU or more NVMe storage
It's time to 'cablelize' PCIe. An optical PCIe standard will make a revolution in the PC world. Imagine stackable small 'bricks' connected together by optical cables.
Curious. Has any company introduced hardware that connects to multiple m.2 ports? 2 ports I guess for example for 8 lane. Not sure if the chipset would be able to make sense of the 2 ports connecting the same device or if it will just see it as 8 lanes. External graphics aren't necessarily my end goal with my thought process. I'm thinking of HPC and heavy analytical work. I've also wondered if any of the multi GPU mining rigs could be repurposed for this idea. I'm sure I probably am unaware of other ways of adding GPUs for calculation so any suggestions or pointers would be appreciated. Cool video, thanks.
I think most chipsets only connect with 4 lanes, so maybe it wouldn't matter anyway unless I'm misunderstanding what I've seen.
I honestly care more about space than I do having the most best gaming PC ever (my last PC was so bad with gaming, so as long as the game looks good and runs at least 60 fps, that's all that matters to me), and my current PC just takes up a lot of space on my desk, so a solution like this seems pretty interesting to me.
Nice video. Chris, when you turn off PC, did the Dell DA-2 go into stand by Yellow? and turning on PC wakes it up to Green? Same as when you use ATX PSU, I am wondering if the board is controlling the soft start of PSU and isolating common ground from PC PCle and PSU to ADT-LINK board, if common ground is well not isolated then there will be noise heard from audio and shorten all electronics life, PC and GPU
Does anyone have info on which low wattage GPU selection would work with the SER 4800U? I've maxed the overclocking as far as it will go, just needs more muscle from GPU but although the install and setup are easy there's not a lot of info on compatible GPU with the AMD Ryzen 7 4800U. I'm looking to stay below the 200 watt threshold as to not have an insane power bill. Thank you in advance
nice build but the used M2-NVME PCIE adapter is way to expensive there are cheaper ones that cost 1-third of the price, also the used DELL-PSU only handles 200watts thats not enough for any decent GPU like 1660ti / 2060s
wrong it was becuase NIVDIA wont let you install driver for older cards when it can see a newer card even if it is disabled.
Why isn't this standard plug and play already
Glad I got this ADT Link before COVID 19 pandemic. Recently purchased Odroid H2+ to test it out and still on the way. Hope it gets home and I pray nothing happens to it because our Country Nigeria is now is serious revitalisation. Lolz. I dont want to call it a mess. Its for the better of our country. The AMD Ryzen Mini PC looks tempting like a future budget.
The real question; is could you have used the m2 slot that the wifi card is in; and forgone wifi. (I know the board for the egpu is the longer m2 standard; but its only for the screw...)
And the said WiFi adapter card is WiFi 6? Then it might be only applicable to NGFF based eGPU like EXP GDC eGPU NGFF.
Hi Chris, great to see you making more content, and good to see you have a sense of humour. Nice, keep it up!
Now all the mobos with a dual m2 slot make a huge sense
The mini pc's are perfect for a simple minimalistic cloud gaming setup, use mine to play Geforce Now Ultimate, mostly Cyberpunk 2077 at max settings. Would be fun if they started to understand that the fast growing market of cloud gaming could be a great way to advertise these pc's, maybe make one with some built in RGB :D
6-8% loss is fantastic, I thought it would be much worse i sold my deskmini as when you are used to discrete gpu its hard to go back to just integrated. great video Chris
Theoretically, this could be done with the m.2 slot on my laptop as well? It is a V4 PCIe m.2 slot. What kind of throttling do you find with only 4 lanes on the m.2 drive?
Just imagine using PCIe Gen 3 X4 Lanes.
That is equal to PCIe Gen 2 X8 Lanes, or equal to PCIe Gen 1 X16 Lanes.
That's what you get.
Overall, still faster than Thunderbolt 3 eGPU because Thunderbolt 3 only using 22 Gbps Max. Meanwhile this video is 32 Gbps.
If you had a pcie 4.0 x4, would it make og more ideal?:) bandwith wise
Thanks a lot for the great presentation and clear explanation. Just have a question. Your mini PC has one m.2 slot and one SATA slot. But what about two m.2 slots which my NUC has? Both are PCI-e 3.0 x4. One for OS boot and another could be used for eGPU. Actually I don't see any reason not to work but would be great to be sure. Have you tried?
That will work two M.2 PCIE 3.0 x4 drives use one for the boot and one for the GPU. It's only an issue if it's a laptop with 2x PCIE 3.0 and say a dedicated GPU like the RTX 2060 that's where I ran into issues.
@@Techtablets i'll give it a try, thanks!
Watch 2x speed. Totally fine
I assume this DIY-idea also works on ASUS PN-52 which has 2x m.2 slots!
How about pairing one of thos epgu bays with a hd plex or pico box psu? Could use a 1650 or 1660 to make a small external gpu addon.
put some risers on the case for the lid
Du you need power supply unit even on very little GPU that are powered by the PCI Express (like GT 1030 ?)
The Mini PC's power supply isn't designed to power an extra dedicated GPU.
Yes, usually it would be powerd by the pcie slot but since there is no real power coming through the nvme cable you still need a PSU to power the pcie slot
Hello from Florida mate .. I'm plying around with my minisforum um790 pro and I need both M.2 drives but I could use the PCIe4 on the wifi card, and then plug an USB dongle for WiFi .. but I think the edge plug connector might be different between SSD and WFI female receptacles
Well done video. Great performance for a very small form factor system.
It would be so nice if these tiny SOC's had PCIe X16. Being able to hook up over PCIe X4 is nice but we're bottlenecked because of it.
I wish they could get rid of the 2.5 drive mount and use that space for an Nvidia GPU module. I'm not against having storages, but they are the easiest to expand and the weakest point in these tiny machines are the graphics performance.
Great video Chris 👌
Maybe I'll try and get a couple 1650 D6's for filling slots. Got one ryzen rig just running off the vega 8 cores. And want to give my nephew something he can play/code on.
How much slower are your graphics cards when used in a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU on an Intel NUC? Is it comparable to this M.2 setup as I use a NUC and Thunderbolt 3 eGPU which is really easy to disconnect if I just want to take my NUC somewhere?
I'm gonna try one of these with my 390X by Christmas time. Need to source an SFX Full Modular power supply with enough watts & amps for a fully overclocked AMD R9 390X 8GB clocking to near 1250Mhz core & 1800Mhz memory which is 80 Giga Pixel per second & nearly 500 gigabytes per second memory bandwidth. Requires a lot of juice.
Amazing review!!
Could you test a 1660 Super paired with a Ryzen 5 5500u Laptop?
Can you please do a video using the Beelink GTR9?, 5900RX would love to see the performance on that
Pretty cool, just ordered mine.
Excellent review and very useful and detailed!
Is there way to enclose gpu, wouldnt house bugs be a small risk thou, they cud go in the gpu
Thanks for sharing.
5:42 yeah I'm sure you'll feel a shock when you touch a 12 volt pin... Crazy that a tech youtuber never heard of ohm's law
Awesome vid! Thanks!
Glad you liked it!
the slot is not called NVME. is pcie express x4 ngff m.2
Thanks for this review. I wonder will it works on my asus g731gv if i buy rtx 3070. Do u think i7 9750h is a good combo?
Has anyone figured out the max throughput of PCIE x4? Surely you hit massive diminishing returns with high end cards? A flat 8% value for losses doesn't make sense.
I have a mini pc with 2 pcie slots, 1 m2 sata and 1 nvme 2280. I connected my rtx 2060 super on bolth slots, but the performance is always the same, it shows x1 on cpuz
Hi great. But you could have tried to boot from usb3 with external ssd to test if the egpu was better running on the r4800, Thanks
Just to clarify... You don't need to output the video source through the GPU in order for this to work correct? So if i were to take my older Acer Nitro laptop (or any older laptop with a decent CPU) and run this set-up it should be playable through the laptops screen?
Does the RTX 3060 TI GPU work on this adapter?
the PN62 has a Thunderbolt port, have you tried a different eGPU enclosure that connects via Thunderbolt?
if you plug in your monitor on the mobo hdmi out, can you still render with the external gpu?
If you have HDMI cable, why bother plugging it to the MiniPC HDMI output rather than the main GPU HDMI output?
The Performance works far better if you set it exactly like this video.
Love your video’s.I was wondering if I’d be able to use that adapter to plug a 3060 to into the second m.2 slot on my Beelink gtr 5 with a 5900hx. Would that allow me to do it without using a sata ssd for the os?
Hi there, what software do u use for the ingame performance overlay?
Great Video... Will AMD Ryzen Mini PC work through Sonnet eGPU Thunderbolt cable??
Hopefully someone will produce a NVME to Thunderbolt adapter (I'm aware the reverse exist).
Hi Chris, the mini pc you are using for this video does not have a usb type c connector with the lightning signal next to it, is not that type of usb supposed to be able to output image? I ask if it has that capacity can be connected to the egpu adapter out there, thank you very much, greetings
Just wondering, i know that a mining card can be used for an external gpu to be used as Video rendering, why do u need a pcie to nvme adapter, usb -c to hdmi output of your gpu does not work?
Waiting for the Ryzen 4700G or 4750G with integrated graphics. If the mobo supports Thunderbolt 3 then I could use an eGPU solution of course.
Thunderbolt eGPU is way slower than this. There's Bigger bottleneck in Thunderbolt eGPU interface.
Great video mate! Perhaps investigate thin clients with actual hidden pcie slots . Ie ryzen Lenovo thinkcentre mini or veritons.
Lenovo is notorious for implementing whitelists for m.2 and msata ports on their mobos. My Thinkcentre 93p Tiny has such whitelist and I was not able to find patched bios to go around it.
Does it work with the rtx 2060
What form factor are the motherboards used in these mini PCs?
At this rate and cost, you may as well just set up a small form factor pc.
Definatly
I'm subbing because of his perfect English.
Hey Chris. Didn't know you'd made such a video. I usually watch your phone and mini PC reviews. I'm looking to use an RX 580 GPU in such a setup on a laptop. But another video said that the laptop dedicated and eGPU should NOT be of the same brand (i.e, should pair Nvidia and AMD GPUs). Might be the reason why your 2060 laptop had issues with this 1060. Possible to verify? Because the laptop I plan on getting is a Ryzen APU 😅
I've had issues with laptops that have s
Dgpus already the best ones are those that only use intergraded graphics.
can we use RTX 4060 with i5 12500H laptop with that connector@@Techtablets
It can't seem to work with my Dell Optiplex Micro PC any ideas ? It's just plug and play right ?
Thanks interesting, would like to see same thing for Intel NUC 11, via either NVME or TB3 connection, R43SG-TB3 version perhaps. i7 Slim version 1185G7 ideally.
Does the TB4 on the NUC 11 help relative to TB3 on NUC 10?
do you think this combination is better than upgrading dell optiplex tower with 3rd gen i5?
Hi Chris, maybe you can help me? I have the Minisforum HX90 Mini PC and I want to use the Nvidia RTX 3080 Ti FE with the ADT-Link PCIe Board connecting to the NVMe PCIe slot. The power supply is the Dell DA2. I placed the ADT-Links connector instead of the NVMe SSD. Before I installed a 2,5" SSD. Unfortunately the RTX 3080 isn't recognized of the system and isn't shown in the device manager. Do you have a device solving this problem? Kind Regards Jens