External GPU for Laptop

[bryzobond]

Hey guys,

I bought a Dell inspiron 15 last August for College and its a brilliant laptop but it has let me down in terms of graphics processing.

It has 16GB Ram, intel i7 7500U processor, 500GB SSD, but only Intel HD 620 graphics.

So its a great computer for college but as you can see the best it can do in terms of gaming is minecraft and league of legends.

I have a gtx 760 from an old gaming pc and I've heard of external hubs where you can plug in a desktop gpu and use it with a laptop.

My only problem is I presume you need a thunderbolt port or something for those and my laptop only has USB and HDMI ports.

Is there any way I can use that desktop gpu with this laptop? I would be willing to rip my laptop open and modify the casing if there was some way to plug an external graphics card directly to the motherboard.

I would appreciate any help.

Thanks,
Bryan

 

[k1114]

There are multiple different series of the inspiron 15. But look on the bottom for an easy access port and see if the wifi card is there. You can get an adapter to plug into there. It's likely m.2 from the age of the other specs. Of course you will have no wifi and be aware you will also need a psu and external monitor.

 

[DSzymborski]

Honestly, if you don't have Thunderbolt-capable port, it's not actually worth doing. You essentially have to remove your wireless card and use the mini-PCIE slot, which is a way clunkier and poorly-performing solution than a Thunderbolt port is. If you're doing this regularly, your laptop is essentially a slow desktop.

 

[k1114]

Mpcie has been replaced by m.2 for wifi for a couple years and offers the same pcie x4 as tb.

 

[DSzymborski]

Mpcie has been replaced by m.2 for wifi for a couple years and offers the same pcie x4 as tb.

Good point. My dumb brain read an older CPU and thus, an older platform.