I commented on the t480 video suggesting a complete upgrade of it and received a reply of "Unfortunately, I really can't justify spending that much money on a laptop for a video to FULLY upgrade it... but I do currently have a GTX 1650 hooked up to it", this was 2 months ago, this absolute legend basically spoiled this video to me 2 months early and I didn't even think about it until this came out, dude's amazing, wish ya the best aChair leg
Theres 2 problem why the performance sucks (excluding the pathethic cooling on T480 that doesn't have dGPU model heatsink on). First one is the thunderbolt 3 port on T480 is running at PCIe x2 gen 3 speed instead of standard x4 speed per Thunderbolt 3 spec. Second one is because youre using internal display for gaming, which further worsen the already limited PCIe tunneling bandwidth on T480 since the display output from the external GPU need to travel back via PCIe bus, and tunnel it down to integrated graphic on the CPU, instead of just outputting it via the HDMI/DisplayPort on the GTX 1650.
I wanted to go for an external display, but that would increase the budget even more, and make this an even worse deal. Didn't seem like the performance was that much better but I could be mis remembering
@@aChairLeg in this situation on T480? its definetly helps, and hey, also you can make a new intresting video about making DIY screen from a laptop that have busted motherboard, etc
Dude i've been thinking for a while now ago about pairing my T480 with an egpu!! Egpus are soo underrated imo. I've seen many egpu adaptors on Amazon for less than 50$ whith good reviews. And if you used a 1660 or a 1660ti you'd easily see a 30% increase in performance. Anyway great video!
it's been a while since i've uesd it. will let you know when i use it. but as far as i remember, it goes pretty strong even with >450 cycles on the secondary battery @@wizard_pirate_9085
Btw few years back i was really invested for the upgradable laptop with the external GPU. It sounded so cool to be able to revive old laptop and make it gaming. But after seeing your video i think this is more of a gimmick more then a real thing that's why i saw almost no one doing something similar. Also if you use external GPU without a monitor you loose a lot of performance (the part i hate the most btw because you loose the entire reason why you doing that 😅).
It can be a good solution on other laptops, but the t480 isn't ideal for an egpu it seems sadly. Adding an external monitor adds even more wires, mess, cost and bulk sadly
i got a laptop that doenst have a screen and i daily drive it, and the GPU sucks (it's a 920mx) and if i had the money i'd love to do it since it seems like a fun project if you cant use the internal screen at all it might be a cool thing to try out
@@edivad7888 Benefits the performance and like you are losing 30-40% on the bare minimum of your GPU power if you are not using external monitor 😔. That's why the concept of upgrade your laptop with external GPU is dead . Also i believe if you have older laptop the CPU have less core counts + low GHz. My processor was i5-8250U i believe and had 4 cores with 1.80 GHz which is quite low to be honest
why do you say it's a gimmick?? you can literally install RTX4080 as egpu to a thinkpad that has tb3/4... although the performance is not as good as the desktop but you can finally play your latest game on a thinkpad
Not sure if anybody brought this to your attention, but if you ran the egpu to a monitor, and NOT back through the thundbolt to internal monitor, you would get a MASSIVE jump in fps....
You can often eek out a little more performance from these laptop cpus by undervolting them (using e.g throttlestop) . Undervolting can allow them to boost a bit higher since they are severly power limited.
The main advantage of ThinkPads and similar business laptops is that they've been designed to last for some time. While gaming laptops, even more expensive ones, seem to be designed to last for 2-3 years until the user buys a newer model.
Thank you for doing this. I was considering something similar for my son (a light laptop for school, with an external GPU for home), but will give that idea a miss now.
Early gang! I've been thinking about getting a t480 with an egpu like rtx 3060 or something. I've read if you connect an egpu to a monitor you can get even more fps.
You should find a Thinkpad with an m.2 NVME slot if they exist, and get an pcie adapter to use an eGPU with. I believe it has more bandwidth than Thunderbolt if the m.2 slot is 4-lane
T480 does have M.2 slot if the adapter installed, but its still running on PCIe x2 gen 3 speed. T480S is the more better option since its have full x4 lane.
@@one_step_sideways the delta in upgradability between the T480 and T480s is really the RAM. Max ram on T480 is 64GB while max RAM on T480s is 40GB. Most users won’t need that much RAM.
@@swrrvr You're missing the point. With soldered 8GB of RAM, the moment the user tries to use more than 16GB RAM - his performance drops further and further, because past the first 16GB the RAM would only work in single-channel mode, since there is no physical space left on the soldered 8GB of RAM. Thus less performance, which is exacerbated by all the background apps there would be running, straining such memory and core-starved system further. The T480 wins by not only having more RAM, but faster RAM (especially when using 2x8R sticks) and a better cooling system (once you upgrade it).
So you got the right idea but where you're going wrong is playing on the laptop screen, you're loosing about 20% performance, hook up an external monitor to the EGPU and you will gain a significant boost.
You could have gotten yourself a Lenovo Z40-70 and saved yourself a LOT of trouble. Bought mine for $76, and it handles a solid amount of games on Steam. On Windows 10, I’ve played Injustice, Sleeping Dogs, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and the Batman: Arkham games. The battery still holds a great charge, and to prevent overheating, I bought an affordable USB fan.
I've done something like this. Had an i5 with a 1650 Max Q and set up a fast fan that I sealed to the inlet and basically made a jet engine in the casing of my laptop. Didn't drop temps, but it did reduce throttling a ton, thing just blasted out heat regardless.
The i7-8650U isn't that much faster than old 4c/8t laptop i7's because it only has 15W TDP while the old ones were 35-47W. Before 8th gen the 15W ULV CPUs were only 2c/4t
@@Pasi123tdp is just heat outputted. With throttlestop you can actually run a constant 25w provided your upgrade the heatsink ( t480 dgpu ) or its a t480s ( stock heatpipe is dual )
you should try to get a t530, slap an extreme edition i7, overclock (yes you can mod a t530 to support overclock) above 4.5ghz, add a gpu on it, and game. only suggestion would be getting either a model with dedicated gpu (that will be disabled) or upgrading the cooler to a regular one. the models with gpus have a better cooling solution that's needed for overclocking
the bottleneck will be the thermals. Express card only gets you x1 PCIe ~0,5 Gbit/sec, which in my research only gets you about 70% of full capacity for a mid range old card like a 1060 or a 1080, so in theory it will work with an overclocked 4940mx
I have a T480 with an egpu and about all the common upgrades. I really like it and would still recommend in 2024. With the dual channel heatsink and a 1080ti egpu, I can run games like Fallout 4 on Ultra (consistent 60fps) while my temps stay really reasonable. Plus, 5tb of storage and 48gb of ram is really nice. Although, it's not like all these setups were budget friendly.
Interesting video. You mentioned performance was poor'ish perhaps due to the Thunderbolt specifications at around 10.26 on the timeline. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt connection is the next port from where you plugged it in. It looked like you plugged it in the charging port - and if you think about it, it makes sense that you would want your laptop probably to be powered - although I have extra large batteries (physically and capacity wise). The Thunderbolt port will also take the charge if you break the charging port - and I can't remember if these two ports are one single unit soldered to the motherboard. I bought 6 of the T480's to set to a charity. I also upgraded a few of them. Funny thing (bit annoying actually) that the T480 altered over time and so when you go to order spares, you find it's for the T480 - but not for your model. I managed to get my laptop with a Nvidia card in it - but would still like extra performance. Best laptop I have worked on, especially for fault finding and repairs, but I still prefer Desktop for working. Thanks for you research.
I dont have a T480, but you should have used throttlestop. On my x1 Tablet 3rd gen (8250U) it increases long term cpu clock by 30%, and seeing how the cpu in your benchmarks only runs at 75°C I see potential here. I have no idea if this would have changed anything, but by using the internal display the limited bus was stressed even further. in the case you have an outlet and a GPU, a monitor to hook to the egpu seems realistic to have as well.
Also, if you stiol want to penny pinch and get super jank. Get an amd radeon mi25 and run that in the egpu. You do need to flash the vbios to a wx9100, and need a fan to coop it, but it is a fun project and they arent very expensive. Top end vega.
The Thinkpad X395 would be a great budget option. The Vega 10 iGPU is reasonably stout backed by 4 cores/8 threads and 16GB RAM. I came across one recently on Marketplace for $400 CAD.
on minecraft, with the gtx 1650(or any newer nvidia card), you can use a mod called nvidium to take a lot of the strain of chunk loading off of the cpu, and on to the gpu, (which is not really needed much for minecraft of all things) for a MUCH smoother experience.
🤝🤩Hey, I have a T480 that could use an eGpu, too! Also, there’s a GTX 760 in my desktop(replacing with a ~cheaply $188. won eBay MSI RTX 3060 soon)that I’ll have to run this experiment with. Thanks for sharing the exact situation I needed to reference from. 👍🏽
I really do have a bit of a soft spot for tinkering with old/budget hardware. (I haven't done much myself. Currently waiting for the delivery of a cheap ssd to pop into a Dell latitude 5500)
If you look into this, i recommend just getting a legion 5. similar specs, same price, without the gpu throttling through the thunderbolt pci. it's also still lenovo.
@@junkmail5924 One of the main things that affect the performance of the T480 is heat. The CPU will slow itself down to avoid cooking itself to death. Undervolting reduces the amount of power used by the CPU, which in turn reduces the amount of heat generated without affecting performance. If done correctly, you can get a faster and cooler CPU that uses less power too.
@@junkmail5924most of them run overvolted so the tolerances are higher. Precisely volted cpu means tighter tolerance and less yield. Basically you can be lucky and do a 0,15v undervolt or get a "bad one" and have it max out at 0,05v without crashing
I couldn't help but mention: u plugged TB3 cable into PD/psu port, did this work? Either way solid video! In my experience, eGPU really does need an external monitor to even approach desktop performance, especially on AMD gpus (which is all I have) so I'm kinda impressed that the 1650 did so well on built in display, hats off to nvidia Edit: ps: u nailed the precise use case for this; having a t480 already & wanting a boost As u may have noticed, I love the workflow of eGPU/thin portable laptop. Looking forward to more videos bud, keep em coming 👍
hi, so in the video he says about attaching the eGPU, but shows in the footage a cable being plugged into the PD port. which i actually asked him about on his discord server. was asking a sincere question, as i own a t480 and use it with egpu, and was curious as to whether id missed a trick n hope that i might have 2x TB3 ports. i was in fact correct in my assertion and it was editing/footage related. thanks for the confirmation though @@siontheodorus1501
As a person that played Metro 2033 at average fps of 4 back when it came out on my igpu dual core dell vostro, I dont really have much complaints in games anymore unelss it varies the framerate too much; but this is a great example what thunderbolt GPU works, but darn the cost for the GPU "box" is a bit too much
Damn, really cool video, and yes, used business laptops are amazing deal. I recently got dell latitude 5420 with i5-1145g7 and 32gb of 3200 ram for 300 bucks. The battery life is good, the processor is great, temperatures are surprising good and the best part is that igpu is pretty capable, I'm able to play witcher 3, switch emulators, valorant and cs on it, plus work in after effects, at least in 2d(thanks 32gb of pretty fast ram). I also wanted to buy an igpu, but enclosures were way to big and expensive, vut today I saw your video and it will be wonderful setup for me, really, so soon I'll try it out, and I think with i5 1145g7, which is quite capable, it will be great. Also what i like about my laptop, is that I can buy a motherboard on ebay less than for 200 bucks with i7 1270p(14 core, 20 threads), so when my i5 will not be enough I'll just buy new motherboard and upgrade it substantially. Thanks a lot, great video!
your uploads are always a very pleasant surprise. keep it like this and dont puke out a Video every few days like so many others. Also wich gpu do you think would go best with my t480s with the i7 8650u? which by the way i got after watching your t470 and t480 videos. ❤
Thank you! I mean the 1650 is a pretty solid GPU for the T480, even if you can't use the whole thing plus then you could use it for future builds. Other than that, maybe a 1050ti or 750ti?
I have a P52, which I use mostly for music production... but I also edit video with Davinci Resolve from time to time and the built in 4gb nVidia can barely keep up, mostly because it's constantly running out of V-Ram. So I'm interested in this eGPU solution, because I want to keep it cheap, small and not upgrade the laptop yet. But I will need at least a 6gb or higher graphics card to make any difference... which one would you suggest that works with this adapter?
Got a p51 With an m2200m and a 1535 xeon. Not the best experience, but the cooling is great. Screen is great (4k) Keyboard is great. I have an MSI gs66 stealth, i7 10750 and rtx 3060 mobile. I hate that bloody thing, i wont even start, id rather Game on the p51. Gonna get a P15 g2-3 for my next Laptop in 3 years.
I chose the T580 for 190€ bc of the bigger screen and when it arrives I'll upgrade it with 4K 120Hz for ~100€ (needs nvidia-gpu for this, otherwise QHD 120Hz would be max) - but for entry-level gaming / workstation I'd choose the ThinkPad P50 with an GTX 950M mobile (M1000M), starting from just 190€. So no need for costy clunky egpu setup. should get ~140+ fps in BioShock @1080p low. My T580 for also 190€ luckily got the MX150 and it gets ~100 fps in Bioshock @1080p low. I will just upgrade the machine with 4K 120 Hz internal display (for office and work) and be happy. Also 14h+ battery life with 105wh battery while being cool&quiet. I'll attempt to change the built-in keboard with a 65% mechnical low profile wireless keybard aswell. the slimmer and lighter P53s with better stock FHD screen than P50/P51 and MX250 equivalent for ~250€ would be a solid choice aswell.
I love your vids .please upload bit frequently if possible. Can you make vids on psp and also on smartphones. Btw do you still use pixel 4a , how it’s going?
in all seriousness, I am watching this video on a Zenbook 14X oled from this year (I think), that i got refurbished for $1400 cad. thats abput double the price of the setup in the video, but its modern hardware and its... you know... an actual laptop... (and the screen is awesome). i don't mean to hate on the video, as a reeeeally frugal person myself i totally understand the urge to get used stuff vs buying new, and it was interesting to see what kind of experience I would have gotten, but it just does not seem worth the trouble.. here is my take: when it comes to laptop you either need a type-writer (get a used business laptop), you need something really portable (get a used macbook air) or you need something with actual performance (get a refurb/open box gaming laptop).
I choked at "renderererer" 😂 btw I just got my p51 i7 78**hq. Having problems with stopcode memory management on win 10. I had to use a stick, double boot it and delete the win10 after. Maybe I shlould repaste thermal paste
I wonder how this would stack up to a steam deck? you can get them used/refurbished really cheap and throw in a portable mouse and keyboard and you are good to go lol i know i know, the screen is tiny so maybe a portable monitor but I am just curious how it would stack up
Buy a cheap used sfx or flex psu unit, they all come in 500 and 600w power now. It maybe a bit bulkier. But some double sideded tape and boom cheap powered egpu enclosed and you can run a 3060 or 4060 easy.
I've owned a Thinkpad X12 for over a year now and only just discovered some eGPU options in the BIOS. I knew it supposed USB4 and DP but now I'm curious to see how it handles this 3060 I've got lying around.
Your showing an Asus Tuf Fx series laptop, I have an Asus Tuf fx505dt. I paid like half of what it's pc counterpart was worth during lockdown back 2020, it has a ryzen 5 3500h and a gtx 1650, came with 256gb ssd and 1tb hdd, and the screen was 120hz paid around 700$ in my country Can it run most games like 90% yes sure, but it not any some titles? Yes, doom eternal and other extremely demanding games like Rdr2 or Cyberpunk 2077 will absolutely make this laptop struggle, but with FSR they are more than playable Keep in mind I had a Ps4 pro and a gaming pc (pc didn't have a gpu just a lonely trash 3400g, still use it but was able to get a rtx 2070 with it) Now, if your a gamer on a tight budget, just go with a console and get the game especially if your on playstation or xbugs. these low end gaming laptops are only good for eSport titles even that they aren't so good as the display is usually 250 nits and small I still use that laptop as my daily driver added a 16gb ram to the 8gb and made it 24gb, that's the only upgrade I made to it. Is it as good as a ThinkPad? No. Does it get the job done for an ECE student who does light coding and some gaming on it? Yes
Bro the issue is that your CPU isn't good enough, those kaby lake undervolted cpus are not for gaming. My thinkpad has a haswell cpu that's 4 years older and has a higher base clock.
Isn’t there heappppps of performance loss if you play it back on the laptops screen as opposed to using a monitor from the gpus port?? Would be good to see a comparison
sir i have t480 with same i7 and mx 150 it would be more playable if u tweak tdp cpu with throttlestop on tpl section bcs mine with mx150 can run gta 5 60+ fps it run worses bcs t480 has powerthrottle after few minute during gameplay cpu tdp is 15 watt burst watt is 25 wattage when gaming its powerthrottle to like 7 watt less i manage fix it by throttlestop .
i am thinking that a potential bottleneck of this setup is using laptop's screen. you probably want try running the same tests on an eternal screen plugged into the gpu.
i know i am 4 motnhs old - but i am myself thinking about building my own eGPU for my T14 (intel based thank god so tb port) and maybe pair it with like rx 6600
Would the fps be different if you were using an external monitor plugged into the gpu? That way the bandwidth doesn't need to be shared with up stream and downstream stuff?
I have a T440p with an i7-4800MQ and GT 730M. It can run some games decently for being a decade old laptop with a low end dGPU, for example GTA V 720p/60 or 1080p/30 normal settings, Genshin Impact 30fps 0.6x render res FSR2 scaling to 1080p with mostly low (not lowest) settings but with bloom on and environment details at medium, Star Rail was almost playable at native 1080p but something like 720p-900p is preferred. I've also tried Watch Dogs (2014) on it and it ran fine but I don't remember what resolution and settings I used because that was few years ago. Minecraft runs fine at 1080p and so does most 2D games. AAA games from 2013 and before should run fine at at least 720p.
JOIN MY DISCORD discord.gg/2Wj8WanUzn
Umm 400$ modded laptop u get screen+keyboard, basic knowledge 😅, and desktop require more power
I can't wait for the day when the Framework laptop is cheap!
I know, I'm counting the days too
same here, bud!
You cannot have both.
@@manitoba-op4jx Not when the motherboard itself is 90% the price of a whole decent laptop whenever there is an deal (e.g. black friday)
Same
I commented on the t480 video suggesting a complete upgrade of it and received a reply of "Unfortunately, I really can't justify spending that much money on a laptop for a video to FULLY upgrade it... but I do currently have a GTX 1650 hooked up to it", this was 2 months ago, this absolute legend basically spoiled this video to me 2 months early and I didn't even think about it until this came out, dude's amazing, wish ya the best aChair leg
Lmao it took time but I got there
Theres 2 problem why the performance sucks (excluding the pathethic cooling on T480 that doesn't have dGPU model heatsink on). First one is the thunderbolt 3 port on T480 is running at PCIe x2 gen 3 speed instead of standard x4 speed per Thunderbolt 3 spec. Second one is because youre using internal display for gaming, which further worsen the already limited PCIe tunneling bandwidth on T480 since the display output from the external GPU need to travel back via PCIe bus, and tunnel it down to integrated graphic on the CPU, instead of just outputting it via the HDMI/DisplayPort on the GTX 1650.
I wanted to go for an external display, but that would increase the budget even more, and make this an even worse deal. Didn't seem like the performance was that much better but I could be mis remembering
@@aChairLeg in this situation on T480? its definetly helps, and hey, also you can make a new intresting video about making DIY screen from a laptop that have busted motherboard, etc
@@aChairLeg Since every frame counts in this case, I for one would love to see how much of a difference it makes to use an external display
At that point, the "value" of a laptop vs. an SFF build + USB C monitor + el cheapo keyboard/mouse might be a losing proposition?
Not sure would this help, but i think you could buy a dummy hdmi/dvi plug and then just clone the displays in windows
Dude i've been thinking for a while now ago about pairing my T480 with an egpu!!
Egpus are soo underrated imo.
I've seen many egpu adaptors on Amazon for less than 50$ whith good reviews. And if you used a 1660 or a 1660ti you'd easily see a 30% increase in performance.
Anyway great video!
How does it handle on battery?
it's been a while since i've uesd it. will let you know when i use it. but as far as i remember, it goes pretty strong even with >450 cycles on the secondary battery @@wizard_pirate_9085
@@wizard_pirate_9085 You wouldn't run an egpu on a battery
@@wizard_pirate_9085 The GPU would be powered externally so it probably won't have much of an effect on the battery life.
Btw few years back i was really invested for the upgradable laptop with the external GPU. It sounded so cool to be able to revive old laptop and make it gaming. But after seeing your video i think this is more of a gimmick more then a real thing that's why i saw almost no one doing something similar. Also if you use external GPU without a monitor you loose a lot of performance (the part i hate the most btw because you loose the entire reason why you doing that 😅).
It can be a good solution on other laptops, but the t480 isn't ideal for an egpu it seems sadly. Adding an external monitor adds even more wires, mess, cost and bulk sadly
i got a laptop that doenst have a screen and i daily drive it, and the GPU sucks (it's a 920mx) and if i had the money i'd love to do it since it seems like a fun project
if you cant use the internal screen at all it might be a cool thing to try out
What do you mean by "without a monitor you lose a lot of performance"? Does a monitor benefits performance or just image quality?
@@edivad7888 Benefits the performance and like you are losing 30-40% on the bare minimum of your GPU power if you are not using external monitor 😔. That's why the concept of upgrade your laptop with external GPU is dead . Also i believe if you have older laptop the CPU have less core counts + low GHz. My processor was i5-8250U i believe and had 4 cores with 1.80 GHz which is quite low to be honest
why do you say it's a gimmick?? you can literally install RTX4080 as egpu to a thinkpad that has tb3/4...
although the performance is not as good as the desktop but you can finally play your latest game on a thinkpad
Not sure if anybody brought this to your attention, but if you ran the egpu to a monitor, and NOT back through the thundbolt to internal monitor, you would get a MASSIVE jump in fps....
This has been the mantra in egpu community XD
I feel your pain at not being able to get the highest end cat. I wanted the all white package but mine ended up with a few orange spots.
That house that you show for like 5 secs and has the name Facade above it looks really cool
I know, looks familiar
You can often eek out a little more performance from these laptop cpus by undervolting them (using e.g throttlestop) . Undervolting can allow them to boost a bit higher since they are severly power limited.
That cat really looks like the best meow for the buck you couldve gotten,especially since how you perform is more important than the looks ;)
aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
The work here is much appreciated! Very interesting to see how semi-customizable budget laptops can be upgraded!
Good to see a video from you again!
The main advantage of ThinkPads and similar business laptops is that they've been designed to last for some time. While gaming laptops, even more expensive ones, seem to be designed to last for 2-3 years until the user buys a newer model.
Thank you for doing this. I was considering something similar for my son (a light laptop for school, with an external GPU for home), but will give that idea a miss now.
Early gang! I've been thinking about getting a t480 with an egpu like rtx 3060 or something. I've read if you connect an egpu to a monitor you can get even more fps.
If you don't need true portable gaming it's a really cool and unique setup, I really dig it
You should find a Thinkpad with an m.2 NVME slot if they exist, and get an pcie adapter to use an eGPU with. I believe it has more bandwidth than Thunderbolt if the m.2 slot is 4-lane
T480 does have M.2 slot if the adapter installed, but its still running on PCIe x2 gen 3 speed. T480S is the more better option since its have full x4 lane.
@@pingtimeT480s is never a good option because of lack of upgradability for so many things. It's T480 or nothing.
@@one_step_sideways the delta in upgradability between the T480 and T480s is really the RAM. Max ram on T480 is 64GB while max RAM on T480s is 40GB. Most users won’t need that much RAM.
@@swrrvr You're missing the point. With soldered 8GB of RAM, the moment the user tries to use more than 16GB RAM - his performance drops further and further, because past the first 16GB the RAM would only work in single-channel mode, since there is no physical space left on the soldered 8GB of RAM. Thus less performance, which is exacerbated by all the background apps there would be running, straining such memory and core-starved system further. The T480 wins by not only having more RAM, but faster RAM (especially when using 2x8R sticks) and a better cooling system (once you upgrade it).
@@one_step_sideways I learned something today, thanks. Is the cooling system not upgradable on the T480s?
So you got the right idea but where you're going wrong is playing on the laptop screen, you're loosing about 20% performance, hook up an external monitor to the EGPU and you will gain a significant boost.
You could have gotten yourself a Lenovo Z40-70 and saved yourself a LOT of trouble. Bought mine for $76, and it handles a solid amount of games on Steam. On Windows 10, I’ve played Injustice, Sleeping Dogs, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and the Batman: Arkham games. The battery still holds a great charge, and to prevent overheating, I bought an affordable USB fan.
I've done something like this. Had an i5 with a 1650 Max Q and set up a fast fan that I sealed to the inlet and basically made a jet engine in the casing of my laptop. Didn't drop temps, but it did reduce throttling a ton, thing just blasted out heat regardless.
Thinkboard works. I try to think, then I get bored.
"old 2018 quadcore" ---> me with ancient 2012 i7 quadcore in my X230 :0
All depends on who you ask how old your hardware is tbh
The i7-8650U isn't that much faster than old 4c/8t laptop i7's because it only has 15W TDP while the old ones were 35-47W. Before 8th gen the 15W ULV CPUs were only 2c/4t
How did you get a quad core into an x230? Do you mean a T430?
@@Pasi123tdp is just heat outputted.
With throttlestop you can actually run a constant 25w provided your upgrade the heatsink ( t480 dgpu ) or its a t480s ( stock heatpipe is dual )
you should try to get a t530, slap an extreme edition i7, overclock (yes you can mod a t530 to support overclock) above 4.5ghz, add a gpu on it, and game.
only suggestion would be getting either a model with dedicated gpu (that will be disabled) or upgrading the cooler to a regular one. the models with gpus have a better cooling solution that's needed for overclocking
the bottleneck will be the thermals. Express card only gets you x1 PCIe ~0,5 Gbit/sec, which in my research only gets you about 70% of full capacity for a mid range old card like a 1060 or a 1080, so in theory it will work with an overclocked 4940mx
I have a T480 with an egpu and about all the common upgrades. I really like it and would still recommend in 2024. With the dual channel heatsink and a 1080ti egpu, I can run games like Fallout 4 on Ultra (consistent 60fps) while my temps stay really reasonable. Plus, 5tb of storage and 48gb of ram is really nice. Although, it's not like all these setups were budget friendly.
why u not up ram too 64gb ?
Goddammit I love this channel
And it was the TUF F15 or A15
I'm sure.
(It was... right?)
Interesting video. You mentioned performance was poor'ish perhaps due to the Thunderbolt specifications at around 10.26 on the timeline. My understanding is that the Thunderbolt connection is the next port from where you plugged it in. It looked like you plugged it in the charging port - and if you think about it, it makes sense that you would want your laptop probably to be powered - although I have extra large batteries (physically and capacity wise). The Thunderbolt port will also take the charge if you break the charging port - and I can't remember if these two ports are one single unit soldered to the motherboard. I bought 6 of the T480's to set to a charity. I also upgraded a few of them. Funny thing (bit annoying actually) that the T480 altered over time and so when you go to order spares, you find it's for the T480 - but not for your model. I managed to get my laptop with a Nvidia card in it - but would still like extra performance. Best laptop I have worked on, especially for fault finding and repairs, but I still prefer Desktop for working. Thanks for you research.
just bought a t480 based on your earlier video. it should be much better than my old t440p for my use.
I dont have a T480, but you should have used throttlestop. On my x1 Tablet 3rd gen (8250U) it increases long term cpu clock by 30%, and seeing how the cpu in your benchmarks only runs at 75°C I see potential here. I have no idea if this would have changed anything, but by using the internal display the limited bus was stressed even further. in the case you have an outlet and a GPU, a monitor to hook to the egpu seems realistic to have as well.
Also, if you stiol want to penny pinch and get super jank. Get an amd radeon mi25 and run that in the egpu. You do need to flash the vbios to a wx9100, and need a fan to coop it, but it is a fun project and they arent very expensive. Top end vega.
shame these mi25s seem to have all disappeared at a reasonable price in the last few months. time to wait for mi50 to drop i guess
I see aChair Leg uploaded and I stop all things to watch
The Thinkpad X395 would be a great budget option. The Vega 10 iGPU is reasonably stout backed by 4 cores/8 threads and 16GB RAM. I came across one recently on Marketplace for $400 CAD.
I got a 3070 laptop for £400 a while ago, can't really beat that, been there done that with the egpu setup lol
Steam deck destroy "budget" laptop - price+size+performance is really great
Great Video! Nice to see that it actually works. Love teh T480 :) thanks for your effort and insights
on minecraft, with the gtx 1650(or any newer nvidia card), you can use a mod called nvidium to take a lot of the strain of chunk loading off of the cpu, and on to the gpu, (which is not really needed much for minecraft of all things) for a MUCH smoother experience.
I love your humour man, immediately made me subscribe.
Thank you!
🤝🤩Hey, I have a T480 that could use an eGpu, too! Also, there’s a GTX 760 in my desktop(replacing with a ~cheaply $188. won eBay MSI RTX 3060 soon)that I’ll have to run this experiment with. Thanks for sharing the exact situation I needed to reference from. 👍🏽
I really do have a bit of a soft spot for tinkering with old/budget hardware. (I haven't done much myself. Currently waiting for the delivery of a cheap ssd to pop into a Dell latitude 5500)
What a adventure. Cool video!!
thx for uploading
thx for commenting
If you look into this, i recommend just getting a legion 5. similar specs, same price, without the gpu throttling through the thunderbolt pci. it's also still lenovo.
Nice vid mate
I have a T480 with an i5-8350u. I really recommend undervolting it, since it massively improve the performance of mine.
Why is that?
@@junkmail5924 One of the main things that affect the performance of the T480 is heat. The CPU will slow itself down to avoid cooking itself to death. Undervolting reduces the amount of power used by the CPU, which in turn reduces the amount of heat generated without affecting performance. If done correctly, you can get a faster and cooler CPU that uses less power too.
@@junkmail5924most of them run overvolted so the tolerances are higher. Precisely volted cpu means tighter tolerance and less yield.
Basically you can be lucky and do a 0,15v undervolt or get a "bad one" and have it max out at 0,05v without crashing
@@junkmail5924 yeah
I couldn't help but mention: u plugged TB3 cable into PD/psu port, did this work?
Either way solid video!
In my experience, eGPU really does need an external monitor to even approach desktop performance, especially on AMD gpus (which is all I have) so I'm kinda impressed that the 1650 did so well on built in display, hats off to nvidia
Edit: ps: u nailed the precise use case for this; having a t480 already & wanting a boost
As u may have noticed, I love the workflow of eGPU/thin portable laptop. Looking forward to more videos bud, keep em coming 👍
he uses the top one just for power and you can see in the video that he plugged another cable from the eGPU to the second port which is the TB3 port
hi, so in the video he says about attaching the eGPU, but shows in the footage a cable being plugged into the PD port. which i actually asked him about on his discord server. was asking a sincere question, as i own a t480 and use it with egpu, and was curious as to whether id missed a trick n hope that i might have 2x TB3 ports. i was in fact correct in my assertion and it was editing/footage related. thanks for the confirmation though @@siontheodorus1501
Love your channel
As a person that played Metro 2033 at average fps of 4 back when it came out on my igpu dual core dell vostro, I dont really have much complaints in games anymore unelss it varies the framerate too much; but this is a great example what thunderbolt GPU works, but darn the cost for the GPU "box" is a bit too much
Damn, really cool video, and yes, used business laptops are amazing deal. I recently got dell latitude 5420 with i5-1145g7 and 32gb of 3200 ram for 300 bucks. The battery life is good, the processor is great, temperatures are surprising good and the best part is that igpu is pretty capable, I'm able to play witcher 3, switch emulators, valorant and cs on it, plus work in after effects, at least in 2d(thanks 32gb of pretty fast ram). I also wanted to buy an igpu, but enclosures were way to big and expensive, vut today I saw your video and it will be wonderful setup for me, really, so soon I'll try it out, and I think with i5 1145g7, which is quite capable, it will be great. Also what i like about my laptop, is that I can buy a motherboard on ebay less than for 200 bucks with i7 1270p(14 core, 20 threads), so when my i5 will not be enough I'll just buy new motherboard and upgrade it substantially. Thanks a lot, great video!
Please share the link to buy the Jack chord, Thanks
just got a thinkpad e480 with an i7-8550U and RX550 for 180usd for light gaming and tinkering lol :)
Did you remember to install the emergency TB firmware patch to prevent the eeprom (?) from corrupting itself?
I believe I did when I originally did the first T480 video
I played fallout new vegas on a gtx 750ti with the express card e-gpu riser with my old x230 years ago, very based
Bought my G14 for £350, there's a lot of crap under £500 but if you know what you're looking for there's some gems.
i have an thinkpad e14 with an i5 CPU and 8 gb ram, minecraft with optifine runs pretty smoothly with around 45-50 fps
your uploads are always a very pleasant surprise. keep it like this and dont puke out a Video every few days like so many others. Also wich gpu do you think would go best with my t480s with the i7 8650u? which by the way i got after watching your t470 and t480 videos. ❤
Thank you! I mean the 1650 is a pretty solid GPU for the T480, even if you can't use the whole thing plus then you could use it for future builds. Other than that, maybe a 1050ti or 750ti?
Try it with the m.2 M key. THe reason why is because it isnt a 2x lane, its a 4x lane. This wont bottleneck the gpu as much
I thought it was going to be something more convoluted...an egpu, yeay! You have a thunderbolt 3 port, yeay!
I have a P52, which I use mostly for music production... but I also edit video with Davinci Resolve from time to time and the built in 4gb nVidia can barely keep up, mostly because it's constantly running out of V-Ram. So I'm interested in this eGPU solution, because I want to keep it cheap, small and not upgrade the laptop yet. But I will need at least a 6gb or higher graphics card to make any difference... which one would you suggest that works with this adapter?
Got a p51 With an m2200m and a 1535 xeon.
Not the best experience, but the cooling is great. Screen is great (4k) Keyboard is great. I have an MSI gs66 stealth, i7 10750 and rtx 3060 mobile.
I hate that bloody thing, i wont even start, id rather Game on the p51.
Gonna get a P15 g2-3 for my next Laptop in 3 years.
Great video as always
have you tried using an external monitor to mitigate the 2 PCIe lane issue. i'm currious about the performance that would give.
I chose the T580 for 190€ bc of the bigger screen and when it arrives I'll upgrade it with 4K 120Hz for ~100€ (needs nvidia-gpu for this, otherwise QHD 120Hz would be max) - but for entry-level gaming / workstation I'd choose the ThinkPad P50 with an GTX 950M mobile (M1000M), starting from just 190€. So no need for costy clunky egpu setup. should get ~140+ fps in BioShock @1080p low.
My T580 for also 190€ luckily got the MX150 and it gets ~100 fps in Bioshock @1080p low. I will just upgrade the machine with 4K 120 Hz internal display (for office and work) and be happy. Also 14h+ battery life with 105wh battery while being cool&quiet. I'll attempt to change the built-in keboard with a 65% mechnical low profile wireless keybard aswell.
the slimmer and lighter P53s with better stock FHD screen than P50/P51 and MX250 equivalent for ~250€ would be a solid choice aswell.
I run a Dell precision, cost me 360 and works great for some light gaming
model?
Best channel ever.
I love your vids .please upload bit frequently if possible. Can you make vids on psp and also on smartphones. Btw do you still use pixel 4a , how it’s going?
haha I'm trying my best thank you!
man, i love my t430 😂
all u gotta do is upgrade its cpu, ram, and whatnot, and you can hook up a gpu with an adapter
in all seriousness, I am watching this video on a Zenbook 14X oled from this year (I think), that i got refurbished for $1400 cad. thats abput double the price of the setup in the video, but its modern hardware and its... you know... an actual laptop... (and the screen is awesome).
i don't mean to hate on the video, as a reeeeally frugal person myself i totally understand the urge to get used stuff vs buying new, and it was interesting to see what kind of experience I would have gotten, but it just does not seem worth the trouble..
here is my take: when it comes to laptop you either need a type-writer (get a used business laptop), you need something really portable (get a used macbook air) or you need something with actual performance (get a refurb/open box gaming laptop).
haha I agree, but it's nice to see all of your options. I'm doing it so you don't have to
Thanks for the video!
It's really interesting how in your setup, a desktop 1650 runs worse than an 860m in all workloads without exception
I choked at "renderererer" 😂 btw I just got my p51 i7 78**hq. Having problems with stopcode memory management on win 10. I had to use a stick, double boot it and delete the win10 after. Maybe I shlould repaste thermal paste
Still better than Vega 8
I wonder how this would stack up to a steam deck? you can get them used/refurbished really cheap and throw in a portable mouse and keyboard and you are good to go lol i know i know, the screen is tiny so maybe a portable monitor but I am just curious how it would stack up
Low key wanna see how this set up performs on competitive titles 🤔
Buy a cheap used sfx or flex psu unit, they all come in 500 and 600w power now. It maybe a bit bulkier. But some double sideded tape and boom cheap powered egpu enclosed and you can run a 3060 or 4060 easy.
i . . .
You know what , f it , i'd try that
by the way bulldozer fx wasn't bad - but it need fast ddr3 and nb tuning
I got a t470 and I game on it as it is with only 8gb of ram and it's not bad tbh
I've owned a Thinkpad X12 for over a year now and only just discovered some eGPU options in the BIOS. I knew it supposed USB4 and DP but now I'm curious to see how it handles this 3060 I've got lying around.
I dont quite understand the big performance gap, is the bottleneck from the cpu, the TH3P4 or the thunderbolt in general ?
yes.
Your showing an Asus Tuf Fx series laptop, I have an Asus Tuf fx505dt. I paid like half of what it's pc counterpart was worth during lockdown back 2020, it has a ryzen 5 3500h and a gtx 1650, came with 256gb ssd and 1tb hdd, and the screen was 120hz paid around 700$ in my country
Can it run most games like 90% yes sure, but it not any some titles? Yes, doom eternal and other extremely demanding games like Rdr2 or Cyberpunk 2077 will absolutely make this laptop struggle, but with FSR they are more than playable
Keep in mind I had a Ps4 pro and a gaming pc (pc didn't have a gpu just a lonely trash 3400g, still use it but was able to get a rtx 2070 with it)
Now, if your a gamer on a tight budget, just go with a console and get the game especially if your on playstation or xbugs. these low end gaming laptops are only good for eSport titles even that they aren't so good as the display is usually 250 nits and small
I still use that laptop as my daily driver added a 16gb ram to the 8gb and made it 24gb, that's the only upgrade I made to it. Is it as good as a ThinkPad? No. Does it get the job done for an ECE student who does light coding and some gaming on it? Yes
Was that an Asus TUF FX505DT I saw? Thats my main computer right now haha
Haha perhaps
Bro the issue is that your CPU isn't good enough, those kaby lake undervolted cpus are not for gaming. My thinkpad has a haswell cpu that's 4 years older and has a higher base clock.
Isn’t there heappppps of performance loss if you play it back on the laptops screen as opposed to using a monitor from the gpus port?? Would be good to see a comparison
Try all the benchmarks with external monitor?
sir i have t480 with same i7 and mx 150 it would be more playable if u tweak tdp cpu with throttlestop on tpl section bcs mine with mx150 can run gta 5 60+ fps it run worses bcs t480 has powerthrottle after few minute during gameplay cpu tdp is 15 watt burst watt is 25 wattage when gaming its powerthrottle to like 7 watt less i manage fix it by throttlestop .
cpu performance isn't that bad. i got better single core on cinebench than a ryzen 1700x one i upgrade the heatsink it should perform even better
What about the Pocket AI RTX A500? I understand it is not dedicated to gamming but kinda curios for the performance in a thinkpad
What wattage was the barrel jack power supply? Was it center positive?
You win the title of Jank Lord.
I don't see exposed wires, we still have a ways to go
i am thinking that a potential bottleneck of this setup is using laptop's screen. you probably want try running the same tests on an eternal screen plugged into the gpu.
i know i am 4 motnhs old - but i am myself thinking about building my own eGPU for my T14 (intel based thank god so tb port) and maybe pair it with like rx 6600
Would the fps be different if you were using an external monitor plugged into the gpu? That way the bandwidth doesn't need to be shared with up stream and downstream stuff?
Where is your video about the T14? What's wrong with it?
bro please play with sodium and lithium its basically neccesary. with iris you can even run shaders
I don't know why it's that slow. I have a gdc thunderbolt egpu and it loses about 20%
I have a T470, do you tbink it would work on a T470?
Cool Video
Jank computers are so much more fun to work with
I hope i can play something in my future thinkpad t440p with geforce 730m inside 🤣
rlly like your video btw
I have a T440p with an i7-4800MQ and GT 730M. It can run some games decently for being a decade old laptop with a low end dGPU, for example GTA V 720p/60 or 1080p/30 normal settings, Genshin Impact 30fps 0.6x render res FSR2 scaling to 1080p with mostly low (not lowest) settings but with bloom on and environment details at medium, Star Rail was almost playable at native 1080p but something like 720p-900p is preferred. I've also tried Watch Dogs (2014) on it and it ran fine but I don't remember what resolution and settings I used because that was few years ago.
Minecraft runs fine at 1080p and so does most 2D games. AAA games from 2013 and before should run fine at at least 720p.
@@Pasi123 that sounds really good, sadly I will be stuck with the i5-4300m bc for various reasons I can't get any i7 quad core for that laptop 😓
"lightning"...
Why is your voice so attractive
Idk ask god