For a while there has been a few problems with it. And for a long time, the laptop has some screws and joint problems in there. But I'm not concerned over the aesthetics of it because I'm more concerned of the performance of the laptop was not up to par.
Overwatch and Fortnite simply crashed. Diablo 3 ran slow and even games like CS:GO was a slideshow fest at a few SECONDS per FRAME, not Frames per second. My guess was that the Aftershock X11 / Clevo's thermal paste had probably dried and the GPU simply was probably on its last legs. It had IC Diamond in it and I'm having a heck of time removing it. But it has to be done as it's completely hardened and dried.
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| Maintenance of my Clevo W110ER |
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| Grease mostly removed |
So my solution for this one is this, Thermal Grizzly's Kryonaut. That solved most of my heat issues I'd may have with this Netbook.
And while I was at it, a thought came up saying.... why don't I convert the mini PCI-E slot that is being occupied Wireless WIFI Adapter to an External GPU? That way I can draw a lot of the heat away from the internal GT 650M it had and just leave that to the CPU which even 5 years later still kicks serious ass today. And I've a few components that I can use and further make it into a desktop conversion.
Components added to Conversion
USB Wireless Adapter
GDC Beast 8.0 (The Highlight of this project)
Corsair RM1000
External Peripherals
Assortment of GPUs to test (Primary Gaming will be a GTX 970)
1440p Monitor (advisable to have an external one)
The Build
The reason I prefer to go with nVidia Cards because of their driver support and it'll be less of a conflict and AMD Crimson drivers are normally like a few months late to even worse a year late to the party. In general, nVidia Drivers and cards are just better in almost every way in terms of power and noise and efficiency.
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| A GTX 970 will be the primary driver after the tests. |
But let's get to the build, shall we?
The connections are pretty straightforward with plugging the cables to a Power Supply and linking with the provided ones to the GPU. Having a modular PSU would be great because it'll be a lot less messy and unsightly. But generally any ATX PSU will be fine.
Disabling the on-board VGA was a little finicky because there was no function on the BIOS to disable the GT 650M. But upon reading a tutorial to disable internal PCI-E lanes that power your dedicated GPU, that did switch off the GT 650M and the eGPU is ready to be installed which of course includes the usual install of the drivers too.
But that said, I did test that with an R9 290 as shown in the following photos and it works fine too after installing its Crimson Driver. This I finally got around to testing 2 years after I received it free as a gift from an NUS lecturer. It was his R9 290 before his PC died and I ran a FF XV Benchmark merely to test that his old baby checks out. At the same time I reapplied Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut on it... I had to, cause' I mean seriously, when I opened Dr Matt's Card, there was hardly ANY grease in it no wonder it was always throttling.
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| Repasting (Above) and testing Dr Matthew's R9 290 on the GDC Beast eGPU Dock (below). Works with no problem. |
Also I know the Corsair RM1000 was many times overkill to no end, but the whole rig remained cool and quiet and the PSU was hardly emitting any heat even when the GTX 970 is fully loaded as well as less unsightly cables to handle. So that turned out working pretty well.
First Impressions
The difference after going full desktop GPU was night and day. It's good to go for some really nice gaming even if it's operating on a 1x PCI-e Gen 2.0 which reduces some performance. I don't mind the drawbacks of operating in such narrow PCI-E buses so long it does what it needs to do. Click on the Link or the YouTube Boxes to watch the videos for the various gameplay tests.
1. Final Fantasy XV Benchmark: 1080p Lite Settings.
2. Forged Battalion
1440p with the GTX 970 eGPU works nicely with some of the lighter titles like Forged battalion. Then again it's a super light title, so let's toss it to the deeper end of benchmarks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zjbGTLlMhQ
3. Battlefield 1
Battlefield 1 was playable, though not super smooth. Partly because I hadn't fully downloaded the game and just dived straight in. The difference between 1080p Ultra and 1440p Ultra in terms of fps isn't particularly huge, definitely a PCI-e Bus limitation somewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zqCwls_6W4
4. 3DMark Firestrike
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| 8900 Score on 3DMark. I had a 10,500 on a single GTX 970 and an i7 2600K overclocked. But still, nice boost |
5. Doom 2016
This title, actually, surprised me a lot, not only working at all but performing very well across 1440p at Maximum settings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrREGRQzaF8
6. Crysis 3
Testing.... TBA.
Conclusion
This was a fun project and it has been working beautifully for the week I've been using it. Sure, the mini PCI-E 1x limits performance and bandwidth but I love it so far and that has opened a new path for GPU upgrades in the future. What will be interesting to find out later is how much more of a Graphics horsepower we can squeeze in there can give us good benefits till the 1x Bus becomes a bottleneck and will not benefit us any further. But for now, stay tuned as this article will constantly be updated.
You can purchase the GDC Beast v8.0 eGPU Dock here:
Banggood
https://www.banggood.com/Mini-PCI-E-Version-V8_0-EXP-GDC-Beast-Laptop-External-Independent-Video-Card-Dock-p-1011222.html?cur_warehouse=CN
Gearbest:
https://www.gearbest.com/laptop-accessories/pp_229101.html
Aliexpress:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/EXP-GDC-Laptop-External-Independent-Video-Card-Dock-with-PCI-E-Interface-Black/32456172794.html
Lazada Singapore
https://www.lazada.sg/products/v80-exp-gdc-laptop-external-independent-video-card-dock-mini-pci-e-for-beast-intl-i102419952.html?spm=a2o42.order_details.details_title.1.56b646929D99F3
