E-gpu, blow new life into an old laptop
Where it started
A few years ago I came in possession of a Dell e6420, a 2011 model. I needed a laptop mostly for coding and data analysis — the machine wasn’t bad but the original specs were not up to scratch. After a bit of googling it turned out that somebody managed to upgrade the RAM up to 16GB (twice the amount officially supported). That sounded like a good start, but I also figured out it was possible to upgrade from the original i5 dual core CPU to an i7 quad core. Those processors can be found reasonably cheap on Ebay and the 6420 is incredibly easy to take apart. An SSD drive completed the set up, and served me well for a couple of years.
A Dell e6420, old, discontinued, still working...
In fact — I was so happy with the machine that I bought a second one to build a NAS — which is at the moment running two Minecraft servers and a Plex server. The motherboard is full of nice features, restart when power is back, start automatically at a certain time, wake on LAN, etc. But that’s another story.
Minecraft
Time moved on, my job changed, I had no need for that laptop any more until my kids had enough of a WiiU and started playing Minecraft (Java version). Minecraft is an amazing game. It can be played on very old machines and still retain pretty much all the features. Graphics are not the main point there. Maybe. Unless you want to use shaders.
For whoever does not know what shader are in Minecraft, they turn the game from this
into this
Pretty impressive, huh? Obviously an old laptop won’t crack it. Even a relatively new Macbook pro could not make it. I needed a proper graphics card for that — meaning a whole new desktop while I had a decent laptop sitting there doing nothing. My reuse instinct kicked in and I started looking into external GPUs. There are e-gpu enclosures with integrated power supply but they are pricey and they are not guaranteed to work anyway. The DIY option — on the other hand — is apparently a headache to get to work. Quicksand? Let’s jump!
Connectivity
A laptop does not have a full size PCI express slot. So where to plug in a GPU? Well, we need an adapter. Something like this:
a PCI riser card — you can buy one on AliExpress here
Apparently there are different options for connecting to a laptop:
- USB3 and everything that came after (including thunderbolt). No luck for me.
- Unplugging an internal Wifi card and getting access to a Mini PCI connector. Possible, but would have to either leave the laptop open or cut a hole at the back of it for the cable. Nah.
- Express card slot — this looked very handy. Fastest connectivity I can get from the Dell, can plug in/out at will. Looking good.
Power
The raiser card offered two options, either a barrel connector or an adapter for a full desktop PSU. The latter can be a good option if you have one hanging around, and of course if your GPU has a serious power drag. I didn’t have a spare PSU and I did not want to buy a high power GPU, so I went for a 120W (the max power specified in the manual) “brick” (19£ on Amazon):
The Laptop, the GPU and the cookie box
Ordered an NVidia 1050Ti, and once I got all the components I went for a quick smoke test. Plugged in the special cable into the express card slot, connected power to the GPU, connected the GPU to a 27 inches 2K res monitor via display port, crossed my fingers and booted Ubuntu 20. Spoiler — it worked, but more on that later.
One of the problems of the DIY option is that even if it worked I was left with a bunch of components sitting on a desk.
Not good, considering that the fan blades of the GPU are rather sharp, and the GPU is quiet as a mouse. So I cut some holes in a cookie box and tied the cables. Here is the result:
What about bios, setup, drivers, etc.? The answer is… Nothing!
Seriously, I expected spending a good few evenings on forums to make it work. The old Dell had an Nvidia internal GPU so it was already running the Nvidia drivers. To my delight it didn’t flinch, it picked up the new card straight away. All I had to do was tell the Nvidia Xserver to disable the laptop screen and use the 1050 on the external monitor. Three clicks. Reboot. Job done. Interestingly enough it could see both the cards at the same time, which could make an interesting setup for machine learning training. This story is about Minecraft shaders anyway.
This is the result.
Admittedly, I could not run the Kuda shaders at the max level of detail but the 1050Ti is a budget card and I cannot really ask a 9 years old laptop much more. Once the laptop will reach the end of the road I will put the GPU into a desktop, use the power supply for LED lights and sell the adapter.
All the best, stay safe, keep hacking! :-)
