System specs
- HP ZBook 15u G6
- Intel Core i7-8565U @ 1.8GHz CPU
- Intel UHD Graphics 620 iGPU
- no dGPU
- 15" (internal display) FHD [1920x1080 @ 60Hz]
- 28'' Samsung U28R550UQUX UHD (HDR, FreeSync) [3840x2160 @ 30Hz], [2560x1440 @ 60Hz]
- Windows 10 20H2
- NVIDIA driver version 460.79
eGPU hardware
- Razer Core X
- PNY GeForce RTX3090 24GB XLR8 TRIPLE FAN (2 x 8 pin connectors)
- Thunderbolt 3 cable provided with the enclosure
Hardware pictures
Installation steps
- Unboxed everything.
- Pulled enclosure handle to open it.
- Unscrewed thumb screw.
- I fixed the graphic card in place.
- Screwed thumb screw back.
- Put the handle back to the initial position to close the case.
- Connected the power cord.
- Connected Thunderbolt cable.
- Powered laptop on.
- Logged-in.
- Powered up the enclosure.
- Opened device manager and choose to install a driver to "basic graphic card".
- Device manager asked to use Windows Update to find a missing driver, and I agreed.
- It worked without reboot just after driver installation was completed.
TB3 cable connected
Driver installed from Windows Update
Benchmarks
TL;DR
| Benchmark name | Internal display score | External display score | Difference |
| Time Spy | 8084 | 9509 | 1425 (14.99%) |
| Time Spy Extreme | - | 4760 | - |
| Fire Strike | 13096 | 16011 | 2915 (18.21%) |
| Fire Strike Ultra | - | 8829 | - |
CUDA-Z
CPU-Z, GPU-Z and HWMonitor
3DMark (internal display)
3DMark (external display)
Hashcat
hashcat (v6.1.1) starting in benchmark mode...
Benchmarking uses hand-optimized kernel code by default.
You can use it in your cracking session by setting the -O option.
Note: Using optimized kernel code limits the maximum supported password length.
To disable the optimized kernel code in benchmark mode, use the -w option.* Device #1: WARNING! Kernel exec timeout is not disabled.
This may cause "CL_OUT_OF_RESOURCES" or related errors.
To disable the timeout, see: https://hashcat.net/q/timeoutpatch
* Device #2: WARNING! Kernel exec timeout is not disabled.
This may cause "CL_OUT_OF_RESOURCES" or related errors.
To disable the timeout, see: https://hashcat.net/q/timeoutpatch
This OpenCL driver has been marked as likely to fail kernel compilation or to produce false negatives.
You can use --force to override this, but do not report related errors.CUDA API (CUDA 11.2)
====================
* Device #1: GeForce RTX 3090, 23336/24576 MB, 82MCUOpenCL API (OpenCL 1.2 CUDA 11.2.66) - Platform #1 [NVIDIA Corporation] =======================================================================
* Device #2: GeForce RTX 3090, skippedOpenCL API (OpenCL 2.1 ) - Platform #2 [Intel(R) Corporation] =============================================================
* Device #3: Intel(R) UHD Graphics 620, skippedBenchmark relevant options:
===========================
* --optimized-kernel-enableHashmode: 0 - MD5
Speed.#1.........: 59559.7 MH/s (45.45ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 100 - SHA1
Speed.#1.........: 20181.0 MH/s (67.37ms) @ Accel:16 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 1400 - SHA2-256
Speed.#1.........: 8690.5 MH/s (78.35ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 1700 - SHA2-512
Speed.#1.........: 2883.7 MH/s (58.89ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:256 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 22000 - WPA-PBKDF2-PMKID+EAPOL (Iterations: 4095)
Speed.#1.........: 991.1 kH/s (84.12ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:512 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 1000 - NTLM
Speed.#1.........: 108.4 GH/s (24.60ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 3000 - LM
Speed.#1.........: 59989.5 MH/s (44.43ms) @ Accel:512 Loops:1024 Thr:64 Vec:1
Hashmode: 5500 - NetNTLMv1 / NetNTLMv1+ESS
Speed.#1.........: 60751.6 MH/s (44.50ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 5600 - NetNTLMv2
Speed.#1.........: 4545.2 MH/s (74.84ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:512 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 1500 - descrypt, DES (Unix), Traditional DES
Speed.#1.........: 2441.1 MH/s (69.01ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:1024 Thr:64 Vec:1
Hashmode: 500 - md5crypt, MD5 (Unix), Cisco-IOS $1$ (MD5) (Iterations: 1000)
Speed.#1.........: 28925.4 kH/s (88.37ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:1000 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 3200 - bcrypt $2*$, Blowfish (Unix) (Iterations: 32)
Speed.#1.........: 78523 H/s (22.95ms) @ Accel:1 Loops:32 Thr:24 Vec:1
Hashmode: 1800 - sha512crypt $6$, SHA512 (Unix) (Iterations: 5000)
Speed.#1.........: 437.9 kH/s (75.87ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:256 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 7500 - Kerberos 5, etype 23, AS-REQ Pre-Auth
Speed.#1.........: 1339.1 MH/s (63.34ms) @ Accel:256 Loops:64 Thr:64 Vec:1
Hashmode: 13100 - Kerberos 5, etype 23, TGS-REP
Speed.#1.........: 1309.7 MH/s (64.77ms) @ Accel:256 Loops:64 Thr:64 Vec:1
Hashmode: 15300 - DPAPI masterkey file v1 (Iterations: 23999)
Speed.#1.........: 168.7 kH/s (84.30ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:512 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 15900 - DPAPI masterkey file v2 (Iterations: 12899)
Speed.#1.........: 100.9 kH/s (63.58ms) @ Accel:2 Loops:512 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 7100 - macOS v10.8+ (PBKDF2-SHA512) (Iterations: 1023)
Speed.#1.........: 1246.5 kH/s (64.60ms) @ Accel:32 Loops:31 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 11600 - 7-Zip (Iterations: 16384)
Speed.#1.........: 924.8 kH/s (75.79ms) @ Accel:4 Loops:4096 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 12500 - RAR3-hp (Iterations: 262144)
Speed.#1.........: 122.8 kH/s (42.43ms) @ Accel:1 Loops:16384 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 13000 - RAR5 (Iterations: 32799)
Speed.#1.........: 108.5 kH/s (96.31ms) @ Accel:16 Loops:256 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 6211 - TrueCrypt RIPEMD160 + XTS 512 bit (Iterations: 1999)
Speed.#1.........: 774.5 kH/s (49.16ms) @ Accel:8 Loops:128 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 13400 - KeePass 1 (AES/Twofish) and KeePass 2 (AES) (Iterations: 24569)
Speed.#1.........: 127.6 kH/s (109.31ms) @ Accel:4 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 6800 - LastPass + LastPass sniffed (Iterations: 499)
Speed.#1.........: 6995.4 kH/s (61.84ms) @ Accel:16 Loops:249 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Hashmode: 11300 - Bitcoin/Litecoin wallet.dat (Iterations: 200459)
Speed.#1.........: 13421 H/s (63.64ms) @ Accel:2 Loops:1024 Thr:1024 Vec:1
Started: Mon Dec 14 00:32:25 2020
Stopped: Mon Dec 14 00:34:18 2020
Comments
- Stable 30/60 fps in 4k/almost-4k in Age of Empires III: Definitive Edition on best settings (won't even start on iGPU).
- AoE I/II up to 250/500 people per player, Lift-off, Spyro Reignited Trilogy, GTAV, Cyberpunk 2077 all playable on max settings (most of them being slides on 720p with iGPU).
- Hashcating MD5 up to 7 bytes almost "instantly"; ~16h for my WiFi password (need to change it on all devices, inducing this IoT crap, as it's too simple).
- Crashed once in internal and external display settings (expanded desktop).
- Transfer rates looks cut in half. I expected it to be twice as fast, around 2.4GB/s.
- Up to 47°C on the top of the enclosure.
- Noisy as hell. I'm always playing in Bose noise canceling headphones.
- Finally, I'm back to PC gaming after 15 years of having more important expenses. 😉
- Everything I needed for my eGPU setup I learned here. Thanks!
@nq4c, Thank you for sharing this build! Your system has a x2 PCIe lane connection for the Thunderbolt 3 port. 3DMark numbers show huge difference between internal display and external monitor modes.
• external graphics card builds
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2020 14" MSI Prestige 14 EVO [11th,4C,G] + RTX 3080 @ 32Gbps-TB4 (AORUS Gaming Box) + Win10 2004 [build link]
@nq4c, Thanks for your build, i appreciate your work!
Your system has a x2 PCIe lane connection for the Thunderbolt 3 port.
Yes, I can confirm that (screen from WHiNFO64 below). It was a bit surprising to find out TB3 can have x2 or x4 configuration. I wasn't' aware I should verify that beforehand. My bad. I probably could get a similar laptop for a very similar price with x4 PCIe configuration for TB3 port. After reading a bit about TB3 I also tried, and can confirm, that Power Delivery works fine with this laptop. The battery is charging pretty quickly.
But hey, as it maxes all the benchmarks and games on "Ultra" (Spiro and Quake II RTX) or "almost Ultra" (GTAV, AOE3, Cyberpunk 2077) settings renders more than 60 fps, I don't care. I will take it into consideration when I decide to upgrade my laptop. I think I should first upgrade the monitor to something capable of UHD (2k/4k) in more than 60/30Hz.
I did a few more benchmarks. Here is Port Royal's score on the internal display. Even with x2, it's all way green with the dot at the end of the scale.
I also learned how to show overlay in games with some stats (with MSI Afterburner software). What is strange, I got the "LIM" message with the "power" or "voltage". Does it mean that GPU has to throttle down because PSU cannot deliver enough power (voltage drop-down)? I have these "LIM" messages in Q2 RTX and even in the Spiro. Screens below.
Finally, I need to learn how to make it less noisy. Without the headphones, it's a pain to sit near to eGPU for a longer time. I think to start with a longer TB3 cable to put it under the desk to distance fans from my ears.