Did you know, the physical layer signaling specification of USB 3.0 is the same as PCI Express Gen2 x1 lane. Therefore USB3.0 cable can be used to transfer PCIe signal
Hi, thanks so much for this - I have a M93p that I was using for retro games emulation and I decided to see if I could add a GPU using your instructions - and I could! It works an absolute treat. I've connected it to a GT 710 video card and I can now play older games like "Left for Dead" on it really well. I'll be hosting a lan party in a couple of weeks and intend to use it then instead of trying to find room to put another tower PC in my office! Brilliant stuff, many thanks.
Fun fact: PCI express does support and implement hot-plug capability so in theory there is no need to power everything down. I believe those cards on support one lane (x1) of bandwidth/support so any card you use in it would have to work at 1x minimum.
LTT did a video about hot plug (YigN2mkQMPc) and have done it myself on consumer boards sometimes. The biggest problem I found is that if the board does not say it supports hot plug it sometimes disables the slot during boot if there is noting in it, so if you hot plug somting in it, it wont work because the slot was disabled and the OS cant see the new card until you reboot.
@@MyPlayHouse The hot plug feature is not specifically required to be supported by a given card, nor a given port. An interesting historical example was ExpressCard back in the day. ExpressCard 2.0 implemented a single PCIe 2.0 lane (x1), which was mostly useful for testing things, or a somewhat crappy eGPU. I had tested an Intel converged NIC in an ExpressCard to PCIe x16 adapter for curiosity, and it actually showed up in the Windows eject hardware list, because it supported hot plug. At the time, the GPUs I had tested didn't support hot plug, thus didn't show up in the list.
I have a couple of those m93p machines, they are fantastic once you upgrade them a little, or a lot like mine. Have a couple of quadro p620 cards and an AMD wx3100 so might have a project of my own coming up, thanks for the inspiration 👍
Yes,, it is a D6000 DAS but I know what you mean. But I was hoping for it to be a Tiny datacenter storage server,, and the D6000,,, want fit through the upning,, and the whole thing would overheat in minutes :-)
This is brilliant! Thanks for bringing this to attention. I've been looking to find a board lower consumption, yet capable hardware for my pfsense router and firewall, and this fits the bill. Better yet, I have a spare m900(and a m710q) board, an old Cisco router for a chassis, and a new power supply. Definitely, will explore this idea. Thanks again!
Dang, what a fun vid! Picked up a Thinkcentre tiny m92p for $20 US. I'm gonna be making some upgrades to flesh it out into a small form factor retro emulation machine. There are ton of fun vids/ mods here on youtube with this little machine, and though I probably won't be doing this to mine the experiment was entertaining nonetheless! 😄
You Should not use the Sata to PCIE adapter They a re Known to burn down your house. You can Pull Over a PCIE slot 75W not 25W. 6 Pin is 75W And 8 Pin ist 150W. The Signal over the USB Kabel to the Riser has nothing to do With USB (Im Saying this because you wondered why this Cable needs to be USB 3.0 Its just a Cable that already is Mass Produced.). And you dont need to wonder if your PC Can give it 12V The Riser is Only Taking the PCIE signals from the PC no Power. So Even you Plug the Riser into a Normal Mainboard from Which PCIE slot you would normally get 3.3V And 12V nothing will got to the Riser. The Riser Gets its 12V From the 6 PIN and in the PCB its Generating 3.3V. Hope it Helps ;)
There is 12v on this board you can use, from the original SATA power supply. if you use a SATA power splitter cable and a very short SATA signal/data extension cable you can keep the original HD and power another drive quite happily. Just use another extension as long as you want for your flying 12v lead. Personally I'd replace the original mechanical HD with a SSD to keep the power down, but it works fine. You can even use an M.2 in there with a little converter board. If you wanted raid or more drives you can put a little SSD in the mini pcie slot. Or if you wanted several drives... use a Mini PCIe to SATA III 1 or 2 or 4 Port Adapter Card in the mini pcie slot. For the 2 or 4 port ones you need to dump the big drive cady though. Power from the board might be a problem for lots of big mechanical disks but SSD's use almost nothing. I love these little Lenovo machines, the size makes them challenging but a lot of fun for the money.
Only 3.5" HD´s uses 12v,, and as the Lenovo Tiny only has room for a 2.5",,, there might not be 12v in the connection ?? Why would there be 12V if nothing uses is.... and the card /a PCI-e card can use up to 25W's,,, that is a lot to ask from a tiny PC with a 65W power supply :-/
@@MyPlayHouse i managed to build this same egpu with a Lenovo Thinkcentre m910q and an rx580. It is amazing what this pc can do now. Very fun and efficient upgrade. Gaming at midrange for less than $300 CAD
You probably should not rest that pci express slot on a metal surface with out having something on the bottem to insulate.Besides that great video I'm glad you where able to make it work
this was ok and something the slightly less geeky are not aware of - you can use nvme slot to power hd or gpu - good one, i think the trends are going to go much more to mini pc with advent of zen4 - lots of power in a small box but it doesn't use much power - zen4 minis will make good low cost cluster nodes for easy scale - i really think 100gbe is trend for smb sector - they need it and will future proof them for 10 years - they can easily upgrade to 200 using bond0 or bridge - more cheap 100g switches should be out soon - you should consider going to 100g yourself - could make good content - thanks for the video!
@7:30 hopefully you got the usb3 version of the mini right angle connector ( trying to find it appears to be difficult as not many devices used Mini USB3, most are USB2) since you can see on the card there is more than 5 pins on the mini connector so its not a standard 2.0 port and a 2.0 cable would be missing a few signal pins.
Ahh, cool cool cool. Am looking at doing the GPU via m-PCIe thing myself. I CPU swapped the 4570T (35W) to an i5-4690T(45W) [methinks a cooler upgrade is in the near future] and have all the gubbins to externally add an R5 240 (a. to relieve the iGPU Watt duties. 2. it's what I have at hand. and iii. awaiting a R7 250/R5 430 to pop up locally on Ebay, they're usually ~$25) Basically building a ~100W Indie/Emulator gaming HTPC in a
I have two risers in my micro PC, I could do both at the same time... Currently I have two 1080 TI's in my Dell Optiplex 3050 micro. I just want to know, what is your opinion on that? Maybe I will make a video about it some time. I truly love it in all honesty, it is my goal to make one of the fastest and best micro PC's in the whole world (Yes, it has a 600 watt power supply, not just the normal integrated one haha)
Hi Morten, really cool that you are doing this, i am expirementing myself, just with a laptop i decommed from work, i am using the nvme slot to an external PCIE slot, i will be using a LSI 9200E HBA so i can connect it to two external disk shelfs, and run a super low power node for Chia. my plan is to remove the laptop motherboard and move it into a small case like this.
@@MyPlayHouse im not sure i need to test that, i think the HBA i got is 8x, the m.2 i got is 16x but not sure it can do 16x speed, probably limited to 4x like you are saying
I bought the same riser set, except the plug standard is M2 NVME. After several tries it still doesn't recognize the video card. Finally, both NVME slots on the mainboard were dead.
Nice video! I have been trying a similar project. Question. Were you able to have windows identify your external GPU smoothly? Do you have to adjust BIOS and/or Device Managers?
Hi, I have another question. What if i want to power up a more powerful GPU like a Geforce GTX 1660 super. How will that work? How will i need to connect it?
Interesting. Perhaps there's a PCIe riser to get 2 x8 Slots out of one x16 port. I have an ITX-Fileserver (TrueNAS) with just one x16 slot. It has 2x 1GbE, but if i could use such a riser, i could add a 10GbE-card as well as a HBA (for more drives. This board has 6x Sata. Jetway q77-Board)
@@MyPlayHouse My ITX-Board is a Jetway NF9E-Q77. It's in a Lian-Li Q25 Housing with 5x 3TB WD red and a 120Gb SSD for ZFS-Caching. Has 6x Sata, 1x miniPCIe (x1 for Wifi) and a standard-size PCIe x16 for Graphics, but has also CPU-Graphics. It has 2x Intel 1GbE. The Lian-Li has room for 2 expansion-card-slots. So if i could make 2x x8 out of 1x "x16 PCIe, i can add 10GbE card and a HBA (case has room for 5x 3.5" and 3x 2.5". Plan B is to add a miniPCIe Card with 2x Sata and a standard-size dual- 10GbE card.
They make those egpu connections that work with nvme and Thunderbolt. The mini pci express’ data transfer rate is much slower than the other connection types…if your system has them.
Many Lenovo laptops will stop boot if you put an unapproved card in the Wi-Fi slot. I am surprised the ThinkCentre does not. And there is some 12v power inside. The fan says it needs 12v and there is also a yellow wire on the internal hard drive plug.
You really should look into an M2 to Oculink adapter and use an Oculink cable to connect the video card, that should get you at least an x4 connection which will really improve speed. My motherboard has an Oculink connector on board, so I just started experimenting with it myself. Buy a good cable, the one I got didn't work at anything faster than PCIe 1.0 so I ordered a new cable.
All the metal bits you put tape on are connected together as shielding anyway, so you are fine without the tape External PCIe is always a nice hack for testing cards away from the motherboard
This is interesting and enlightening information. I want to use a small form factor PC for local AI. Local AI likes to have a GPU for the AI to use for processing.
🧐Nice option but, I got a similar step up and the R3G external gpu adapter 70$ works best and connect the hard drive with a external enclose to avoid the connection shafting and a dell 6pin 250watt power supply 15$ for the gpu.
Nice video as usual From the Vi-King of Random… 😁 Have you ever requested electronic window blinds from any of the companies that offer you to review their products? Might make a good I stall/review video.
I think at the point I would have removed the top and bottom plate and slide this into a slightly bigger SFF ATX case and than properly mounted a PSU and GPU in the case and be no different than the height you have it not but it be just cleaner .. Afterall these Lenovo boxes are meant to be mounted sideways on the back of the Lenovo monitor so it be pretty well ok to buy a box or 3D print and acrylic one and it be perfect and cleaner look for the wires imo
@@MyPlayHouse ha! got it to work, i stripped down the mini usb just like you did and the missing part was plugging the 6pin fr the psu to the 8pin of the gtx970. Ur vid was really helpful!
Hey from Denmark also, i have a m93p, did you find out With graphics cards works and did you test Them for actual use like rendering or gaming or just get Them to show up on win 7
Isn't this kind of mini spike built with the idea of consuming little electricity? Here with this video card and power supply the concept is totally broken…
6-pin is for pci-e, imo sata shouldn't be connected live as they're generally not hot swappable. interesting concept but the video card can out put a lot of data across the port and unfortunately I don't think USB 3 is capable of those speeds, thus casual gaming may be fine but more demanding games will perform worse than if connected directly into the motherboard.
Whoa! HUGE advance for the IT world! ^^) I guess you will repeat that hack some 20 times and stick those machines down in the bunker? Didn't you mention something like that?
@@MyPlayHouse Now that cryptocurrencies finally go down the drain, a bunker equipped with these machines can make your Playhouse-group the world champion at folding at home! Hah! :oD
Have you seen the new mini pc from blackview? I was thinking I could buy it and plug in an external GPU. If it works probably the best portable gaming system I have seen so far.
Hey where do you get this M.2 to mini USB adapter ? :D I have the same Setup but the only thing that i dont have is a m.2 to usb adapter. ( I have the same mini PC)
@@MyPlayHouse The old Tiny pc video where you upgraded the cpu, gave me the idea. After realizing old dell rackmounts were too big/noisy for a flat. :)
Have you tried a newer GPU in this system? You have the external power source, wouldn't it make sense that it would work? I have a Thinkcentre and spare 3070 but have too many projects to get to doing this. I was hoping you tried it already. Great video and I really appreciate you doing this.
I have a lenovo ideapad l340-15irh, i am thinking to install an e-gpu, do u have any advice of gpu to use that i mind use on a future desktop? Ny budged is around 500€ maybe bit more
Yes,, I would suggest you test it out with a very cheap card first,, like i did,, something like a €10 card old and not important :-) And be aware of PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0,, when you later goes shopping...
I also have lenevo mini PC, but i want it for editing purposes and multiple editing software asking me for a graphics card, how can i update my mini pc and what things are required, would you give me a list please.
Could it work for a newer m710q? Since it has a pci express port where an m.2 nvme is mounted, however, it would be a shame to disable it to put a graphic. So I thought I'd do exactly what you did in your contribution video.
Excuse me, what is the hba model in the video you used, I did tests with a (LSI 9211-8i 6G SAS HBA FW:P20 IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID 2* SFF-8087 SATA US) but it does not recognize it
@@MyPlayHouse Would it be possible to take a 12V power supply and solder a female SATA connector to the end of it? I wonder if that would work.... ha ha
The PCI-e board needs power,, and that will supply whatever card you put in there with up to 25watt. If your card can run with just that,, it should work,, if your GPU normally needs extra power 6 or 8 pins,, well you need that as well.
Can this work on lenovo m700 tiny , i opened it up and i see one slot taken up by wifi card , is that the mini pci express slot i can use for the graphics card?
Yes that was the slot I used,, but I did not have anything in that slot,,, so you loses your WiFi :-/ ut it can be gut back in if you change your mind :-)
You bodger he he 😀 Well it seems to work great, now you need to find a good use for it. A plate of metal bolted to that card connector would make it more stable, no wobble 😀
@@MyPlayHouse Hacking a pcb, wrapping tape around a cable, not fitting a propper usb socket on the box. Actually its not so bad, ill take that back lol 😀
@@MyPlayHouse the only reason I ask is because you could of used it for the back of it and the be able to get another cord so there no cord hanging out so it would look better you could also get a step up adjustable power regulator PCB so there no need for a power supply specially if its a step up less pull and I probably use something like the power supply case to put the board and adapter in that why it safe and not exposed great video gave me some creative ideas to add on my laptop 👍👌✌️💯💻🖥️🖱️⌨️
Hello I got a lenovo thinkcentre m715q tiny gen 2 2400ge apu With 32 GB ram kitt. Aslo a ADT-Link r43sg m.2 adapter Dell 220w Passive power supply Gtx 650 ti boost GPU Aaand it's not working 😢 I suspect that my bios is the problem. It's quite limited 😕
No sorry,, I do not have that model. But you should try the Lenovo forum,, there are Lenovo people there that will try and help you out,, even after it is out of warranty.
Excellent ninja hack video, as always! 👍 My idea was to reuse laptop mainbord instead of Raspberry Pi, with similar adapter pluged in for power saving DIY 24/7 NAS, because I have multiple laptop mainboards laying around, but now I know for sure, that this idea will work.. 😉 Big IBM server is too much power hungry and is great for offline backup at home.. 😂
Did you know, the physical layer signaling specification of USB 3.0 is the same as PCI Express Gen2 x1 lane. Therefore USB3.0 cable can be used to transfer PCIe signal
Hi yamamoto65536
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I wondered why a USB v3 cable was supplied by that PCIe connector. I didn't know the signals were the same. Ty!
Really amazing job! I was wondering if it was possible to utilise the small PCIe connector inside small factor PCs. This video proves it!
Hi Khaled Ismail
Thank You very much! It is posable! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Hi, thanks so much for this - I have a M93p that I was using for retro games emulation and I decided to see if I could add a GPU using your instructions - and I could! It works an absolute treat. I've connected it to a GT 710 video card and I can now play older games like "Left for Dead" on it really well. I'll be hosting a lan party in a couple of weeks and intend to use it then instead of trying to find room to put another tower PC in my office! Brilliant stuff, many thanks.
I did a later video where I put a raid controller and added 158TB to the tiny Lenovo.
Fun fact: PCI express does support and implement hot-plug capability so in theory there is no need to power everything down. I believe those cards on support one lane (x1) of bandwidth/support so any card you use in it would have to work at 1x minimum.
You probably just inspired the next Ninja-Hack video… ^^)
But,, would you be sure that the PCIe mini supports hot-plug?? I felt saved shutting down. :-)
LTT did a video about hot plug (YigN2mkQMPc) and have done it myself on consumer boards sometimes.
The biggest problem I found is that if the board does not say it supports hot plug it sometimes disables the slot during boot if there is noting in it, so if you hot plug somting in it, it wont work because the slot was disabled and the OS cant see the new card until you reboot.
so meaning you can shoved off 75 watts gpu in it without the help of ext psu?
@@MyPlayHouse The hot plug feature is not specifically required to be supported by a given card, nor a given port.
An interesting historical example was ExpressCard back in the day. ExpressCard 2.0 implemented a single PCIe 2.0 lane (x1), which was mostly useful for testing things, or a somewhat crappy eGPU.
I had tested an Intel converged NIC in an ExpressCard to PCIe x16 adapter for curiosity, and it actually showed up in the Windows eject hardware list, because it supported hot plug. At the time, the GPUs I had tested didn't support hot plug, thus didn't show up in the list.
It did work with the SAS HBA controller! Awesome! I have a small MB with 2 x1 PCI-e slots and I need to put 2 SAS HBA. Thanks!!!!
Glad I could help
I have a couple of those m93p machines, they are fantastic once you upgrade them a little, or a lot like mine. Have a couple of quadro p620 cards and an AMD wx3100 so might have a project of my own coming up, thanks for the inspiration 👍
Very cool! let me know if you figure out anything cool..
It would be hilarious to run the D7000 DAS off that little thing :)
Yes,, it is a D6000 DAS but I know what you mean. But I was hoping for it to be a Tiny datacenter storage server,, and the D6000,,, want fit through the upning,, and the whole thing would overheat in minutes :-)
This is brilliant! Thanks for bringing this to attention. I've been looking to find a board lower consumption, yet capable hardware for my pfsense router and firewall, and this fits the bill. Better yet, I have a spare m900(and a m710q) board, an old Cisco router for a chassis, and a new power supply. Definitely, will explore this idea. Thanks again!
And with an HBA, this board can easily be a jbod controller. Exciting!
You are most welcome 🤗
Dang, what a fun vid! Picked up a Thinkcentre tiny m92p for $20 US. I'm gonna be making some upgrades to flesh it out into a small form factor retro emulation machine. There are ton of fun vids/ mods here on youtube with this little machine, and though I probably won't be doing this to mine the experiment was entertaining nonetheless! 😄
Hi Revery Band
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
You Should not use the Sata to PCIE adapter They a re Known to burn down your house. You can Pull Over a PCIE slot 75W not 25W. 6 Pin is 75W And 8 Pin ist 150W. The Signal over the USB Kabel to the Riser has nothing to do With USB (Im Saying this because you wondered why this Cable needs to be USB 3.0 Its just a Cable that already is Mass Produced.). And you dont need to wonder if your PC Can give it 12V The Riser is Only Taking the PCIE signals from the PC no Power. So Even you Plug the Riser into a Normal Mainboard from Which PCIE slot you would normally get 3.3V And 12V nothing will got to the Riser. The Riser Gets its 12V From the 6 PIN and in the PCB its Generating 3.3V. Hope it Helps ;)
Hi Abbyson
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I have blown an SSD and saw fire using one of those cables because I didn’t know what i plugged it into was powered
"I have a key for shirt circuiting the power supply" ..
God, I burst out cackling ... had a vision of twisting the live wires from the PSU together 🤣😬
I would get in trouble if I showed this on a car :-)
Really shouldn’t use sata for more than 50W of power per entire cable use the 6pin next time for the riser :)
I do not think we came near 50W,, well I am not sure..
There is 12v on this board you can use, from the original SATA power supply. if you use a SATA power splitter cable and a very short SATA signal/data extension cable you can keep the original HD and power another drive quite happily. Just use another extension as long as you want for your flying 12v lead. Personally I'd replace the original mechanical HD with a SSD to keep the power down, but it works fine. You can even use an M.2 in there with a little converter board. If you wanted raid or more drives you can put a little SSD in the mini pcie slot. Or if you wanted several drives... use a Mini PCIe to SATA III 1 or 2 or 4 Port Adapter Card in the mini pcie slot. For the 2 or 4 port ones you need to dump the big drive cady though. Power from the board might be a problem for lots of big mechanical disks but SSD's use almost nothing. I love these little Lenovo machines, the size makes them challenging but a lot of fun for the money.
Only 3.5" HD´s uses 12v,, and as the Lenovo Tiny only has room for a 2.5",,, there might not be 12v in the connection ?? Why would there be 12V if nothing uses is....
and the card /a PCI-e card can use up to 25W's,,, that is a lot to ask from a tiny PC with a 65W power supply :-/
The PCI Express slot of the motherboard can provide up to 75 watts to the graphics card in a normal PC.
You are right,, my mistake..
I followed your instructions. Works perfect. Thank you 👍
You're welcome! What are you going to run externally?
@@MyPlayHouse I needed add Graphics. I didn't think it was possible until I seen your video. Thank you
very cool, this is going onto my retro build list, awesome work and great video.
Awesome! Thank you!
@@MyPlayHouse i managed to build this same egpu with a Lenovo Thinkcentre m910q and an rx580. It is amazing what this pc can do now. Very fun and efficient upgrade. Gaming at midrange for less than $300 CAD
Great job man! Thanx for this awesome guide!
Glad you enjoyed it!
WoW! What a great project
,take care man.
Thanks, will do!
You probably should not rest that pci express slot on a metal surface with out having something on the bottem to insulate.Besides that great video I'm glad you where able to make it work
Hi @shadowmoon9093
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I just bought one of those m900's for 250eu second hand. Add 64gb of ram, 1tb NVME and its speedy as! works fine for esxi
It does that very nicely!!
this was ok and something the slightly less geeky are not aware of - you can use nvme slot to power hd or gpu - good one, i think the trends are going to go much more to mini pc with advent of zen4 - lots of power in a small box but it doesn't use much power - zen4 minis will make good low cost cluster nodes for easy scale - i really think 100gbe is trend for smb sector - they need it and will future proof them for 10 years - they can easily upgrade to 200 using bond0 or bridge - more cheap 100g switches should be out soon - you should consider going to 100g yourself - could make good content - thanks for the video!
I am on 10G,, but uses 1G the most,, 100G is really power hungry,, if I want to run a switch for that.
Well done , nice work !
Hi @javiergonzalezcalvo1544
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
@7:30 hopefully you got the usb3 version of the mini right angle connector ( trying to find it appears to be difficult as not many devices used Mini USB3, most are USB2) since you can see on the card there is more than 5 pins on the mini connector so its not a standard 2.0 port and a 2.0 cable would be missing a few signal pins.
I do not know,, we will see. if it was USB 2 or 3
Ahh, cool cool cool. Am looking at doing the GPU via m-PCIe thing myself.
I CPU swapped the 4570T (35W) to an i5-4690T(45W) [methinks a cooler upgrade is in the near future] and have all the gubbins to externally add an R5 240 (a. to relieve the iGPU Watt duties. 2. it's what I have at hand. and iii. awaiting a R7 250/R5 430 to pop up locally on Ebay, they're usually ~$25)
Basically building a ~100W Indie/Emulator gaming HTPC in a
Hi @two-eyedroy4883
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
I have some Dell micro systems, one with 32gb ram and a 6 core i5 cpu.. i plan on trying one of these with an RTX4070ti
Best of luck :-)
I have two risers in my micro PC, I could do both at the same time...
Currently I have two 1080 TI's in my Dell Optiplex 3050 micro.
I just want to know, what is your opinion on that? Maybe I will make a video about it some time. I truly love it in all honesty, it is my goal to make one of the fastest and best micro PC's in the whole world (Yes, it has a 600 watt power supply, not just the normal integrated one haha)
I want to do this external card thing so I can add a raid/HBA controller.
For the tiny to be a storage server. 🤗
Hi Morten, really cool that you are doing this, i am expirementing myself, just with a laptop i decommed from work, i am using the nvme slot to an external PCIE slot, i will be using a LSI 9200E HBA so i can connect it to two external disk shelfs, and run a super low power node for Chia. my plan is to remove the laptop motherboard and move it into a small case like this.
Cool,, is it correct that the M.2 NVMe slot is x4 ?
@@MyPlayHouse im not sure i need to test that, i think the HBA i got is 8x, the m.2 i got is 16x but not sure it can do 16x speed, probably limited to 4x like you are saying
Always fun modding kit.
Loved that this worked :-)
that trick with the powersupply helped. thanks!
Glad to hear it!
I bought the same riser set, except the plug standard is M2 NVME. After several tries it still doesn't recognize the video card. Finally, both NVME slots on the mainboard were dead.
That is weird,, did you try them with a M.2 NVMe disk,, see if that shows up.
Nice video! I have been trying a similar project. Question. Were you able to have windows identify your external GPU smoothly? Do you have to adjust BIOS and/or Device Managers?
I didn't,, you saw what I did :-)
Awesome, I will copy your project this one, thank you for share
Hi @AdeKurniawanID
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Hi, i have a question. How did you connect the power supply to the Mini PCIe to PCI express 16X? Because you didn't show it in the video.
It is right here : ruclips.net/video/tYDkn5Y8RZc/видео.htmlsi=tWIg8v6sLyQgMu2v&t=909
Hi, I have another question. What if i want to power up a more powerful GPU like a Geforce GTX 1660 super. How will that work? How will i need to connect it?
Nice work giving life to an ancient machine.
Thank You,, they are not that bad with a better CPU :-)
@@MyPlayHousewhat’s the best cpu u can get for this tiny beast without over heating problems !!!
Interesting. Perhaps there's a PCIe riser to get 2 x8 Slots out of one x16 port. I have an ITX-Fileserver (TrueNAS) with just one x16 slot. It has 2x 1GbE, but if i could use such a riser, i could add a 10GbE-card as well as a HBA (for more drives. This board has 6x Sata. Jetway q77-Board)
I think from an M.2 NVME slot you get an PCIe x4,,, but I do not think you can split that,, I only get an x1 out in this video.
@@MyPlayHouse My ITX-Board is a Jetway NF9E-Q77. It's in a Lian-Li Q25 Housing with 5x 3TB WD red and a 120Gb SSD for ZFS-Caching. Has 6x Sata, 1x miniPCIe (x1 for Wifi) and a standard-size PCIe x16 for Graphics, but has also CPU-Graphics. It has 2x Intel 1GbE. The Lian-Li has room for 2 expansion-card-slots. So if i could make 2x x8 out of 1x "x16 PCIe, i can add 10GbE card and a HBA (case has room for 5x 3.5" and 3x 2.5".
Plan B is to add a miniPCIe Card with 2x Sata and a standard-size dual- 10GbE card.
They make those egpu connections that work with nvme and Thunderbolt. The mini pci express’ data transfer rate is much slower than the other connection types…if your system has them.
I did not benchmark it.. but there was a connection.
Many Lenovo laptops will stop boot if you put an unapproved card in the Wi-Fi slot. I am surprised the ThinkCentre does not.
And there is some 12v power inside. The fan says it needs 12v and there is also a yellow wire on the internal hard drive plug.
I have also heard that,, so I was not expecting this nice a result.
You really should look into an M2 to Oculink adapter and use an Oculink cable to connect the video card, that should get you at least an x4 connection which will really improve speed. My motherboard has an Oculink connector on board, so I just started experimenting with it myself. Buy a good cable, the one I got didn't work at anything faster than PCIe 1.0 so I ordered a new cable.
Hi @PosiCat
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
All the metal bits you put tape on are connected together as shielding anyway, so you are fine without the tape
External PCIe is always a nice hack for testing cards away from the motherboard
I think so as well,, but just to be safe.
Ninja Hacking at it's best, if it don't fit you must make it fit
I was very happy with this one as well,,, I did not expect it to work...
Thanks for the Vid! Gonna try it out with the GT 1030, maybe it works without the extra power supply.
Hi Kowismo
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
This is interesting and enlightening information. I want to use a small form factor PC for local AI. Local AI likes to have a GPU for the AI to use for processing.
Okay,,, do you know how to do AI ?
🧐Nice option but, I got a similar step up and the R3G external gpu adapter 70$ works best and connect the hard drive with a external enclose to avoid the connection shafting and a dell 6pin 250watt power supply 15$ for the gpu.
Hi @carlosgrant4227
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Nice video. Next time you could use 90°USB adapter and avoid wire problem.
I do not thing there is enough spaces for that... in there :-/
Nice video as usual From the Vi-King of Random… 😁
Have you ever requested electronic window blinds from any of the companies that offer you to review their products? Might make a good I stall/review video.
My windows are pretty wide,, have been looking at this,, but never found any, at a prices I was compatible with.
Thank You..
I think at the point I would have removed the top and bottom plate and slide this into a slightly bigger SFF ATX case and than properly mounted a PSU and GPU in the case and be no different than the height you have it not but it be just cleaner ..
Afterall these Lenovo boxes are meant to be mounted sideways on the back of the Lenovo monitor so it be pretty well ok to buy a box or 3D print and acrylic one and it be perfect and cleaner look for the wires imo
:-) Yes,, why not just get a PC that will fit a GPU :-)
So, I'm thinking of a fun project to do with this type of build. I want to take a mini PC and add a GPU power supply and case it. Have you done this?
No :-) latly I have been putting Raid controller and a HBA on it,, the project is a Lenovo Tiny with a Petabyte of storage :-)
Awesome! I’m connecting a gtx 970 to the same set up you have, it detects the card but can’t seem to install the driver, am still at it 😅
Best of luck :-)
@@MyPlayHouse ha! got it to work, i stripped down the mini usb just like you did and the missing part was plugging the 6pin fr the psu to the 8pin of the gtx970. Ur vid was really helpful!
Hey from Denmark also, i have a m93p, did you find out With graphics cards works and did you test Them for actual use like rendering or gaming or just get Them to show up on win 7
No,, my interest was really not the GPU,, but a Storage HBA,, to connect a lot of drives to it.
Isn't this kind of mini spike built with the idea of consuming little electricity?
Here with this video card and power supply the concept is totally broken…
But it could be a very power efficient storage server,, wit a HBA or a Raid controller,, or maybe that extra network port..
Very nice experiment!!
Hi Jo Cool
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Hmm the metals are both ground would actually have been better to let them touch as well you can pull 75watts from pci-e
You can pull 25Watt from a X1, X4, X8,, and 75Watt from a X16,, but I do not trust this sobe a real X16... :-/
6-pin is for pci-e, imo sata shouldn't be connected live as they're generally not hot swappable. interesting concept but the video card can out put a lot of data across the port and unfortunately I don't think USB 3 is capable of those speeds, thus casual gaming may be fine but more demanding games will perform worse than if connected directly into the motherboard.
It is not really a USB3,, It is more a widely available standard cable used.
Whoa! HUGE advance for the IT world! ^^) I guess you will repeat that hack some 20 times and stick those machines down in the bunker? Didn't you mention something like that?
Well this gives new possibilities for this tiny PC :-)
@@MyPlayHouse Now that cryptocurrencies finally go down the drain, a bunker equipped with these machines can make your Playhouse-group the world champion at folding at home! Hah! :oD
Hi I wanted to ask if my GPU does not requires any external power . Will it work ??
The little board still needs power,, as that is the only power for the GPU. But a GPU with no extra power need should work.
This idea would be much more clean with an L shaped USB mini and a 3D printed top cover for the computer.
There is models of these tiny PC´s that takes an internal PCI card. but they are more expensive.
The point of a Tiny PC is it cute, small, compactible and less space. You runied it completely bro =))
It is still cute,, and really only one USB cable comming out of it,,, and the card does not need to sit on top of the tiny PC.
Have you seen the new mini pc from blackview? I was thinking I could buy it and plug in an external GPU. If it works probably the best portable gaming system I have seen so far.
No have not seen that.
AUG 2022 and win7 ?? Sir can you try on WIn10 please .....also did you done anything with BIos ... like you video's btw
This PC had this older version of WIN7 64bit in danish installed on purpose,,, :-)
exactly what im looking for
Hi TaTu Studio
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Very cool man!
Yarh,, Not to bad! :-)
See time 2:03: Is there an adapter as a converter so instead of 1 it becomes 2 mini pci-e like the black one there?
Sorry I do not follow :-/
Do you still have to attach a 6pin connector if the GPU runs off the slot and not a external 6pin power like a GT710
I do believe so... the little board needs power as well
Hey where do you get this M.2 to mini USB adapter ? :D I have the same Setup but the only thing that i dont have is a m.2 to usb adapter. ( I have the same mini PC)
There is a link in the description.
I have a thinkcente m70q i use for proxmox. I had heard you can spec them with an extra 2.5gb port or a quatro. Nice to see what you can do.
Hi Tooot Tooot
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
@@MyPlayHouse The old Tiny pc video where you upgraded the cpu, gave me the idea. After realizing old dell rackmounts were too big/noisy for a flat. :)
Have you tried a newer GPU in this system? You have the external power source, wouldn't it make sense that it would work? I have a Thinkcentre and spare 3070 but have too many projects to get to doing this. I was hoping you tried it already. Great video and I really appreciate you doing this.
No this is as far as I have gotten :-)
@@MyPlayHouse Well, thank you for doing this anyway. I'll muster up the courage to do it at some point.
You are Welcome...
External 10gbe would be ok if there are enough pcie lanes (opensense,etc on these mini pcs)
It is only an PCIe x1 but still :-)
@@MyPlayHouse enough for a 2.5gbe
I only have 1 single mini pci-e slot in my HP Desktop mini Can I use this in another place in the computer?
I would not expect so,, But I do not know the HP mini PC´s
Hello, can you tell me whether it works with the PCI card with SATA to use multiple hard drives? and how is the performance? I thank you !
I have been making a project of making a DIY DAS,, putting in a handful of 10TB SAS drives,, it does work.
Do I absolutely need a raid or BHT controller?
Thanks for the interesting video 😃!
Hi Yurii Kadirov
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Bro can i actually able to do this with my dell optiplex 7040 mini cpu?....
Please reply ❤
If it has a internal mini pci connector like this,, I would think it can.
@@MyPlayHouse thank you brother that helped ❤ you got a new subscriber🎉
I have a lenovo ideapad l340-15irh, i am thinking to install an e-gpu, do u have any advice of gpu to use that i mind use on a future desktop? Ny budged is around 500€ maybe bit more
Yes,, I would suggest you test it out with a very cheap card first,, like i did,, something like a €10 card old and not important :-)
And be aware of PCIe 3.0 and PCIe 4.0,, when you later goes shopping...
What’s a graphics card I can use with this exact pc to play Minecraft or Roblox or possibly csgo ?!?
Sorry I do not know,,, I do not play computer much.
I also have lenevo mini PC, but i want it for editing purposes and multiple editing software asking me for a graphics card, how can i update my mini pc and what things are required, would you give me a list please.
There are versions with an internal Graphic card.
Could it work for a newer m710q? Since it has a pci express port where an m.2 nvme is mounted, however, it would be a shame to disable it to put a graphic. So I thought I'd do exactly what you did in your contribution video.
You can do this with an M.2 slot i hear,, you have to get the thing that fits in the M.2slot.
I wanna see other episode ( working ) 🙂 please
I'll see what I can do..
Excuse me, what is the hba model in the video you used, I did tests with a (LSI 9211-8i 6G SAS HBA FW:P20 IT Mode ZFS FreeNAS unRAID 2* SFF-8087 SATA US) but it does not recognize it
it is older than that,, think it´s a LSI 9207-8i,,,,
My new workstation! With h221
Hi leonardo toschi
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Looks like your building an engine with that gpu
Yes,, a little bit :-)
Did you ever find out a better way to power the break out board?
No not really.
@@MyPlayHouse Would it be possible to take a 12V power supply and solder a female SATA connector to the end of it? I wonder if that would work.... ha ha
I kinda wanna try this with my Alienware Alpha R1 ;)
Best of luck!
hey bro nice video i have one question. do i need a power supply to use gt 730?
The PCI-e board needs power,, and that will supply whatever card you put in there with up to 25watt. If your card can run with just that,, it should work,, if your GPU normally needs extra power 6 or 8 pins,, well you need that as well.
please bro..i dont have the pcie slot..just have the m.2 slot..can it just go when i buy the pcie to m.2 adapter
Have a look at Aliexpress
m900 have both pcie 3.0 *4 and sata, maybe you can try that one.
I would like one,, but does not have one yet.
You can use this same method to add a gpu to a laptop. I have 2 broken laptops that I will be turning into full fleged gaming pc's later on.
Hi howard wilson
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Can this work on lenovo m700 tiny , i opened it up and i see one slot taken up by wifi card , is that the mini pci express slot i can use for the graphics card?
Yes that was the slot I used,, but I did not have anything in that slot,,, so you loses your WiFi :-/ ut it can be gut back in if you change your mind :-)
RUclips is messing up, and climes that I have not replied to this,, sorry for the "disturbance in the force" :-/
why not connecting vga or what ever cable to gpu directly. that why it cannot read it.
I did get it working in the end.
You bodger he he 😀
Well it seems to work great, now you need to find a good use for it.
A plate of metal bolted to that card connector would make it more stable, no wobble 😀
Yes this was just a test setup,, dodgy,, why am i a bodger?
@@MyPlayHouse Hacking a pcb, wrapping tape around a cable, not fitting a propper usb socket on the box.
Actually its not so bad, ill take that back lol 😀
Super
Hi SKY NET CYBER SYSTEM 3 TECH
Thank You very much! glad you liked the video :-)
Thank you for watching! :-)
Hear me out hot rod it , cut a hole on the case for a full size heat sink
I do not need it to perform that wildly. :-)
Why not remove the connection on the board and the cable to go directly to the board?
Well,, I have no good excuse :-/ I could have done that.
@@MyPlayHouse the only reason I ask is because you could of used it for the back of it and the be able to get another cord so there no cord hanging out so it would look better you could also get a step up adjustable power regulator PCB so there no need for a power supply specially if its a step up less pull and I probably use something like the power supply case to put the board and adapter in that why it safe and not exposed great video gave me some creative ideas to add on my laptop 👍👌✌️💯💻🖥️🖱️⌨️
RUclips is messing up, and climes that I have not replied to this,, sorry for the "disturbance in the force" :-/
is that me or m93p become popular
I just think there is a lot of them :-)
So can i do gaming with that? becouse i have the same pc
I would think so :-)
Intel QuickSync not suitable?
Depends on what you want to do..
do i need the power supply? to use the external graphic card?
Yes it needs power,, the little PCB needs like 25W,, and the GPU might need a lot more power, if you add one with power connections.
Smile, this is very dangerous 😳 😅 but working
Well I do not think it is dangerous,,, for me..
Cant see the point in an external GPU. if that is required surely a larger PC would be purchased. The whole point of a mini PC is its MINI.....
The GPU was a great demo,, for this video,, I want to use it for a storage HBA,, and have the tiny PC controle a disk array.
Hello
I got a lenovo thinkcentre m715q tiny gen 2
2400ge apu
With 32 GB ram kitt.
Aslo a ADT-Link r43sg m.2 adapter
Dell 220w Passive power supply
Gtx 650 ti boost GPU
Aaand it's not working 😢
I suspect that my bios is the problem.
It's quite limited 😕
That is a shame :-/
@@MyPlayHouse well, yeah...
Got any idea how to fix this problem?
No sorry,, I do not have that model. But you should try the Lenovo forum,, there are Lenovo people there that will try and help you out,, even after it is out of warranty.
@MyPlayHouse yeah, I already tried. Sadly, it was futile. 😞
That is a shame :-(
Angular 90° usb ?
Yes a mini USB that bends 90°
Excellent ninja hack video, as always! 👍
My idea was to reuse laptop mainbord instead of Raspberry Pi, with similar adapter pluged in for power saving DIY 24/7 NAS, because I have multiple laptop mainboards laying around, but now I know for sure, that this idea will work.. 😉 Big IBM server is too much power hungry and is great for offline backup at home.. 😂
Power is crazy expensive at the moment.