eGPU Connected Through Wifi Card Mini PCIe?

Question

So I'm trying to upgrade my whole computer setup, and would love to throw an external display into the mix for some gaming, 3D CAD design, and better overall experience. Now my laptop is pretty bad laptop performance wise (Compaq Presario CQ62) for anything more stressful than typing up a word document or streaming a YouTube video.

So, trying to make the setup as good as I can, I figured an eGPU would be a nice way to increase performance (graphics-wise at least). The problem is the CQ62 has no expansion ports for such a device such as a eGPU. Looking into Wifi cards, and finding out they utilize a Mini PCIe port got me thinking... Would it be possible to run an external graphics setup connected through the Wifi card Mini PCIe port? Now Obviously I don't mean while the WiFi card is connected, more like, is the WiFi card port specifically designed for WiFi connection, or can you harness the PCIe connection and use it for something like an eGPU? Just like you can take out a SATA optical drive and replace it with a SATA HDD?

Answer 1

The above answer is only partly true. eGPU setups have been widely used through WiFi card PCIe slots. There is a reduction in performance, but it is only in the range of up to 30%. You do need an external adapter and power supply, but what you are thinking about is completely feasible.

Regarding the price, it would be far from the price of buying a new laptop. A setup using an nvidia GTX770 off of ebay would cost you around 300USD, everything included, which is about a quarter of the price of a laptop which would be capable of similar graphics performance.

I would suggest visiting the Tech Inferno forum, which has a massive section dedicated to eGPUs with guides and detailed descriptions of existing implementations.

Answer 2

Not possible, sorry!

You do have a PCIe port, but:

• A GPU needs to use an externally accessible port to drive a monitor. Your PCIe wifi card has no externally accessible port, and in the fact the whole slot and card is buried deep in the laptop - there is no way for an externally accessible port to exist, even if it's a port on an annoying dongle like breakout cable thing.
• PCIe ports consume different numbers of PCIe lanes to get their bandwidth. So a 1 or 2 lane port use for a wifi card is going to give a fraction of the performance of a more anointed 8 or 16 lane slot used for graphics cards. Even if you could run a graphics board from the slot, it would not perform anywhere near its capacity
• A graphics board will likely draw more power than a slot designed for wifi will provide
• Any eGPU is not going to be designed to fit into a mini PCIe slot... otherwise it would not be an eGPU! It would just be a GPU. Any eGPU you find is not going to have the PCIe connector on it because that is a waste of space and money on an eGPU. This point alone means no eGPU is going to work on your machine!
• The physical space in your PCIe slots is almost certainly not enough to handle even a well designed GPU board.
• No mini PCIe slot for a wifi board will be designed to dissipate the heat of a GPU board.
• Your laptop supports a maximum of 4GB of RAM - and some of that is always disappearing to integrated graphics whether you use the iGPU or not. So your RAM is a huge performance bottleneck
• Your machine is running a Celeron I suspect? That will be a HUGE bottleneck to any graphics work. Truly!
• To answer your specific question about PCIe bandwidth, the slow / crippled PCIe slot would not stop a properly design GPU from outperforming your integrated graphics.

But all of that aside... For the price of an eGPU you could replace the whole laptop, getting a better integrated GPU in the process! This is a 2011 laptop right? But it's a bottom shelf 2011 laptop, and it gives 2009ish levels of performance (although looks rugged / well styled / well designed).

Unless you are trying to hide the fact you are spending money on this laptop (got another half? :) ), then you really will get a lot more performance spending your eGPU money on upgrading to a newer laptop, even if it is a 3 year old machine.