Graphics Cards connected to a laptop?

[NoNamer12345]

I was just thinking, is there any way to connect an external GPU to a laptop without thunderbolt 3? I saw some videos on youtube but those videos had GPUs taking power from an external power supply but how does that work if its a GTX 1050ti or an RX 460 or something like that? These GPUs take power from the motherboard so I was just wondering, How does this work? Is there any limitations for that GPU not being used fully? Will the GPU explode if used like that?! Is the laptop CPU enough for that GPU? Will drivers be automatically installed? Sorry if I am asking a lot of questions but I was just curious. This is by no means something I am going to do since I just recently build my "Ultimate Gaming PC" with a GTX 1070 and an i5 6500.

 

[k1114]

Any port that uses pcie can be used for an egpu. For laptops, mpcie is still the most common but is used for the wireless card and sometimes not accessible without taking apart the whole laptop. Expresscard has been phased out for some time. These are limited to x1 so bottleneck the gpu but adapters are also a lot cheaper vs tb adapters (not just tb3 can be used). M.2 can also be used.

Egpus always use an external psu. It connects to the adapter for 75w as these ports don't supply that much power and if the card has additional pcie power cables then it connects to that as well.

Along with the ports not having full x16 bandwidth, the laptop hardware can also be a bottleneck. It depends on what the specs are and what gpu you want to use just like with balancing a desktop build or any pc really. Drivers are installed like any other pc.

 

[Guest]

You need thunderbolt, to get performance. There are solutions that are USB to add a second monitor, but it won't play games. Thunderbolt connects to the pci, and has the required bandwidth that other connectors don't.

All graphic cards take 75 Watts from the motherboard, and the rest from cables. If you don't need extra connectors, (1050ti or RX 460), that's just because it's less than 75 Watts, but thunderbolt doesn't deliver 75 Watts, or if it does, it's probably not a good idea to take it from the laptop. Hence the external power supply.