2012 15" ASUS K55VD (GT610M) [3rd,4C,Q] + RX 580 @ 4Gbps-mPCIe2 (EXP GDC 8.x) + Linux Ubuntu 20.04 & Win10 1909  

Hi all,

I finally jumped into the eGPU world. After some research it seemed like my laptop is a good candidate but mPCIe gen2 would potentially fairly bottleneck the setup but i had not much to lose and my laptop is still fully functional for everyday tasks so i had no reason to upgrade. I just thought that this would turn into an easy project and give me the opportunity to play games

System specs

Operating System: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (10.0, Build 18363)
System Manufacturer: ASUSTeK COMPUTER INC.
System Model: K55VD
BIOS: BIOS Date: 06/13/12 10:38:13 Ver: 04.06.05 (type: BIOS)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.3GHz
Memory: 8192MB RAM

iGPU: Intel(R) HD Graphics 4000

dGPU: GeForce 610M

External Monitor: Philips 40" 4k 60Hz

eGPU hardware

EXP GDC 8.4d (Mini Pcie interface version)

ATX power supply Corsair V550 (given by a friend)

eGPU: ASRock Radeon RX 580 Phantom Gaming D OC 8GB Video Card

Cost of the build: 280 AUD (GPU) + 42 AUD (EXP GDC) = 322 AUD or about $224 USD

Hardware pictures

Installed in a cabinet i found in the street. Which provides a surface for the laptop, perfect to keep a clean desk. Not really compact though

Installation steps

Ubuntu 20.04: Nothing to do, the external display works out of the box. However, i had some kind of weird lags so i decided to give windows 10 a go before launching an investigation. Haven't been back yet to test the setup under ubuntu.

Windows 10: Install Radeon latest driver, reboot. All good ready to play.

Insane plug and play experience!

Bonus steps:

A week before receiving the eGPU connector, i did some investigation and realized that my laptop suffered from intense CPU throttling.
I disassembled the laptop and cleaned most parts, reapplied thermal paste (almost none was left), then i got back a PC that can go 100% CPU load.

This was essential for the whole setup to be meaningful

Benchmarks

Everything is done using external monitor, i have no interest in the internal monitor

dGPU

eGPU

Same poor resolution as with dGPU to compare apples to apples

Comments

Well, i could barely play any new title and i am now equipped with a setup that will let me play a lot of games in decent conditions.

I am not experiencing any kind of instability so far. I'll come back with some in game numbers soon.

The only crash i experienced was setting the unigine valley benchmark to 1440p and High quality, i had blue lines all over the screen. However, strangely when playing games it seems like 1440p can work

Games

The forest: High in 1080p + Vsync, mostly 60 fps