Lenovo Legion BoostStation Thunderbolt 3 eGPU Enclosure  

@, on April 24th my laptop decided to upgrade it's BIOS, I was just going to turn it off then I saw the proposition. Battery is charged, adapter is plugged in, what could gone wrong. But it did, and there was the black screen of death. So I had to replace the MB. Aaaaand.... Now the Boost station pairs with it without any difficulties. So it was either the motherboard itself, or the previous BIOS. This time I could plug the Booststation in whenever I want, restart laptop with it plugged in etc. No problems. So. MB or BIOS. But be ready for an unpleasant surprise if you'll go for the upgrade. Backup files etc.

Hello there,

As @hewhocannotbenamed, I've bought this Bootstantion for Lenovo 720S-15IKB, but with i5-7300HQ processor. It costs for me around EUR650.

At the moment (2 weeks) I can conclude:

• CPU is bottlenecking my setup strongly for games
• Zotac RTX2060 has crackling noise under load (I guess from the supply choke)
• Sometimes image isn't showing after could boot and reboot is needed
• GT1050 Ti should be disabled in device manager (if not, there would be freezes in 3D activities)

Userbenchmark: https://www.userbenchmark.com/UserRun/50675145

Hello everybody,

I have been using this Lenovo Booststation (with Nvidia's RTX 2060 and a 6 TB HDD 3,5" SATA) since mid 2020, first with a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 6 Gen, then a ThinkPad X1 Carbon 9 Gen (bought recently).

I have had no problems with it until now: it works totally reliably and very quietly on the Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020!

The main advice I can give to Lenovo laptop users is to download both the respective Thunderbolt Firmware and Software from the Lenovo homepage. These were the only ones that were not installed automatically when initializing my laptops.

To do so
1) I first navigated to < https://pcsupport.lenovo.com> and had my Laptop identified with the serial number.
2) Then I clicked on "Drivers and Software", "Manual Update", and typed "Thunderbolt" into the search field.
3) Finally, I downloaded and installed the two drivers.

Restarted the laptop(s) ... of course not without checking that the Thunderbolt was activated in the BIOS ... connected the TB3 cable (which should be good quality!), and switched on the Booststation, and that was it. Since then, unless travelling (which I do a lot), I am usually leaving the TB3 cable connected and just switch on the Booststation AFTER booting my laptop, when needed. When finished, I first disconnect in my taskbar the "Nvidia USB Type-C Port Policy Controller", switch of the Booststation, and finally shut down my laptop.

Cheers,

M

@, I have posted here before. Until today The lenovo boost station has been working without any issues. Since I have been thinking about some upgrades a question appeared in my mind.

Anyone tested the boost station with internal capture card?

@cross_shame, Most PCIe cards should work just fine through the TB3 enclosure. 

Got this station. I have a Huawei matebook 14s laptop. Initially, there were such problems - the station could work without problems for several hours, or it could constantly disconnect / connect at an interval of about 15 seconds. And even when removing the video card and simply connecting an empty station, everything was the same. At the same time, on another laptop (checked with a friend), everything is fine. After a few days of observation, I noticed that disconnects occur only if the laptop is charging (the charging indicator next to the port is blinking). I checked through the PC Manager - I set the charging limit to 70% and the battery is 70% - everything is fine. I put a limit of 90% - disconnects immediately begin. I return by 70% - everything calms down. My laptop has a 90 watt charger, the one on which everything works is 65-67 watts. When the station is connected, the laptop writes that supercharging is in progress.

When starting heavy processes (compiling a project, games), apparently, a small discharge-charging occurs and disconnects begin. At least the indicator is flashing.

Maybe someone can suggest something?

I have just got a Lenovo Legion BoostStation (with pre-installed RTX 2060) to use with my Surface Pro 8 running Windows 11. At £400, when I had been waiting months for delivery of a seemingly non-existent Thunderbolt 4 dock without the eGPU costing £266, it seemed like a good move to get this for a smaller USB hub but also much more graphical processing power for things like Photoshop, which the Pro 8 on its own can sometimes struggle with, more than my old desktop PC did.

The graphics aspect of it is working OK and I've installed the latest Nvidia Studio driver etc., but I have two other problems with it:

1. As I've seen lots of people report on  here with lots of eGPU setups, the USB hub element of this is very flaky - I have my keyboard and mouse feeding into it (via my monitor's own powered USB hub for ease of switching monitor inputs between work and home laptops) and the mouse stutters and the keyboard drops on and offline. I have followed loads of suggestions I've found on this forum and reduced this issue a lot but it is still present - the stuttering happens maybe once every 30 seconds of mousing around, and the keyboard dropout/in maybe once every half-hour. Before I tried all the stuff from all over the forum, the mouse was stuttering more like every couple of seconds and the keyboard dropping out more like every minute. But this still needs improvement.
2. I'm not sure if I'm missing anything regarding software/firmware for the BoostStation. Lenovo's instruction manual that I found online I think may be assuming you have a Lenovo laptop in the first place. I downloaded lenovo_leigon_optimization.exe and tried running this. This executable produces a lot of high-speed screen redrawing as if about ten command prompt windows are appearing and disappearing very rapidly, then says it's going to reboot to do some config changes. It does reboot, but I have no idea what it did, or if any of the unseen command prompt windows said anything useful or succeeded in whatever they were meant to be doing. I have no idea if there could be or should be any kind of driver or management software for the BoostStation that this utility should have installed - nor if there is a way to check for new BoostStation firmware or other updates (the Lenovo support page for the device only contains lenovo_leigon_optimization.exe under Downloads, as far as I can see).

Can anyone help with any of this? For instance has anyone run lenovo_leigon_optimization.exe and can tell what it's actually done? Should I see some sort of results beyond flashing windows and a reboot? And can anyone tell me how I would check for or apply any updates for the BoostStation (firmware etc.)?

Thanks!

Where are people even getting these things? They appeared 2 years ago and have virtually been unsold anywhere outside the UK

Nice seems like Lenovo has joined the party with the launch of the Legion BoostStation, their first-ever eGPU enclosure.