Naming is not (that) hard. What's usually hard is ignoring the ego that tells us to leave a mark or that we know better than others; i.e. putting your self before the whole.
It _MIGHT_ be possible today... Kind of... With an ugly hack.
If said laptop has a m.2 port that exposes PCI-e lanes you might be able to use a m.2 to PCI-e adaptor. Dump the Thunderbolt binaries from a Intel UEFI, init a Thunderbolt PCI-e card on an intel system (to load the firmware onto that Thunderbolt Card) and then get Thunderbolt at least under Linux.
Wendel from Level1Techs was able to get Thunderbolt working on a Desktop Threadripper[0].
Obv it would be an ugly (both in looks, as you will have things hanging off the laptop and software as you will have to be injecting code into your UEFI). And if you have a M.2 port with PCIe then might as well just hook the GPU directly to the M.2 <-> PCIe adaptor[1]). Either way you would be limited to 4 PCIe lanes.
And with either method, you still might not get it to work. You might want to check out the eGPU Forums[2].
if you are going to use an m.2 to PCIe adapter might as well dump the middle man and just plug in a PCIe GPU straight into the x4 slot since that would work just fine.
Have a PCIe x4 cable going from the laptop to a box instead of a Thunderbolt cable the only thing you might "lose" is hotswap but technically even that is mainly an electrical problem if you don't use the PCIe power pins hotswap can work just fine.
> if you are going to use an m.2 to PCIe adapter might as well dump the middle man and just plug in a PCIe GPU straight into the x4 slot since that would work just fine.
I did say that and even linked a video of someone trying to do just that (The part about using the M.2 port is about 5 mins into the video).
> And if you have a M.2 port with PCIe then might as well just hook the GPU directly to the M.2 <-> PCIe adaptor[1]). Either way you would be limited to 4 PCIe lanes.
It does depend on what bios settings you are running and if you bios allows you to change those settings to get the card seen by the laptop. Linus (from LTT not Linux) wasn't able to get it to work, but then again it is Linus and his projects often don't go to plan.
I'm aware of hacks involving m.2 slots. I find them interesting, but not helpful for a machine i use every day.
eGPU means my laptop is a mullet: Business in the front, party in the back. I want to be able to take it with me to presentations, server rooms, client offices and not have RGBBS dripping out of my keyboard. Then, when I get home, I plug it in and have a gaming rig. TB3/USB4 does this while other solutions are lacking.
This is good for everyone. Hopefully the adoption is swift and we can pretend the myriad Thunderbolt/USB-C/USB 3.0 issues, differences, and confusion never happened.
23 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 38.9 ms ] threadBecause naming things is hard.
[1] https://usb.org/sites/default/files/2019-02/USB_PG_USB4_DevU...
Hopefully USB4 won't be the energy-guzzling disaster that Pentium4 was.
You see, lines up perfectly
But that's assuming they don't find a creative new way to name USB4 versions poorly.
If said laptop has a m.2 port that exposes PCI-e lanes you might be able to use a m.2 to PCI-e adaptor. Dump the Thunderbolt binaries from a Intel UEFI, init a Thunderbolt PCI-e card on an intel system (to load the firmware onto that Thunderbolt Card) and then get Thunderbolt at least under Linux.
Wendel from Level1Techs was able to get Thunderbolt working on a Desktop Threadripper[0].
Obv it would be an ugly (both in looks, as you will have things hanging off the laptop and software as you will have to be injecting code into your UEFI). And if you have a M.2 port with PCIe then might as well just hook the GPU directly to the M.2 <-> PCIe adaptor[1]). Either way you would be limited to 4 PCIe lanes.
And with either method, you still might not get it to work. You might want to check out the eGPU Forums[2].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uOlQbP63lDQ
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDyL2tPyXFA
[2] https://egpu.io/forums/
Have a PCIe x4 cable going from the laptop to a box instead of a Thunderbolt cable the only thing you might "lose" is hotswap but technically even that is mainly an electrical problem if you don't use the PCIe power pins hotswap can work just fine.
I did say that and even linked a video of someone trying to do just that (The part about using the M.2 port is about 5 mins into the video).
> And if you have a M.2 port with PCIe then might as well just hook the GPU directly to the M.2 <-> PCIe adaptor[1]). Either way you would be limited to 4 PCIe lanes.
It does depend on what bios settings you are running and if you bios allows you to change those settings to get the card seen by the laptop. Linus (from LTT not Linux) wasn't able to get it to work, but then again it is Linus and his projects often don't go to plan.
eGPU means my laptop is a mullet: Business in the front, party in the back. I want to be able to take it with me to presentations, server rooms, client offices and not have RGBBS dripping out of my keyboard. Then, when I get home, I plug it in and have a gaming rig. TB3/USB4 does this while other solutions are lacking.
We have one that has 270 comments here [1].
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19304857
40 or "40"?, because currently: "dual-port '40 Gbps' Thunderbolt controller has 32 Gbps of PCIe bandwidth total, and each port supports 22 Gbps"