Question Is an I3 3rd gen laptop worth upgrading with an eGPU?

[HotDog_water]

My aunt got this laptop back in 2013, and she gave it to me as a gift. It's a Sony Vaio E series laptop. It was very slow since it only had 2gb of ram, so I bought 2 sticks of 4gb ram to make it usable. Now that I upgraded the ram, I was wondering if I could upgrade it further by buying an eGPU. I want to a have a gaming system but since I have a limited budget, buying an external GPU is the only option I have. I am planning to buy an exp gdc and a GTX 750 ti.

I just want to know if it is worth upgrading, since an exp gdc is very experimental. Also I am fairly new to this stuff so I don't know much of what I'm doing.

Here is my laptop's current specs:
CPU: Core i3-3110M
Graphics: Intel HD 4000
RAM: 8gb RAM
Storage: 300Gb HDD

 

[Rogue Leader]

Worth it? Not really.....

You're going to spend $61 for the dock, plus say $50 for a PSU, plus I don't know a used 750ti according to ebay is about $50, to be able to just about play 4 year old and older games. That i3 is a low clocked low power dual core CPU. Anything CPU intensive will drag on it. The 750TI is a bit long in the tooth as well.

So let me rephrase... worth it? If the above description fits your expectations, sure. If you want to play current games, or even anything AAA made in the past 5 years, probably not.

If you give us your budget we can set you on the path of something that will game well. If you have some patience and can save up a bit.

 

[DSzymborski]

If this were a laptop with a Thunderbolt 3 connector, the payoff might be worth it. Having to take the laptop half apart, turn it into a Dr. Frankenstein experiment, and using the dodgy mini-PCIE vampiring route, I can't see this as being worth it.

 

[HotDog_water]

Worth it? Not really.....

You're going to spend $61 for the dock, plus say $50 for a PSU, plus I don't know a used 750ti according to ebay is about $50, to be able to just about play 4 year old and older games. That i3 is a low clocked low power dual core CPU. Anything CPU intensive will drag on it. The 750TI is a bit long in the tooth as well.

So let me rephrase... worth it? If the above description fits your expectations, sure. If you want to play current games, or even anything AAA made in the past 5 years, probably not.

If you give us your budget we can set you on the path of something that will game well. If you have some patience and can save up a bit.

Thanks for the reply.
Anyways, I forgot to mention that I already have an old PSU. It's a cheap 700w PSU but it still works, so if I do plan to upgrade, I won't have to buy a new one'.

Also my current budget is only 100$. I could maybe stretch it to 150$, but I'm only a student, and I can't find jobs due to the pandemic. So that's basically the only price point that I can afford.

 

[Rogue Leader]

Thanks for the reply.
Anyways, I forgot to mention that I already have an old PSU. It's a cheap 700w PSU but it still works, so if I do plan to upgrade, I won't have to buy a new one'.

Also my current budget is only 100$. I could maybe stretch it to 150$, but I'm only a student, and I can't find jobs due to the pandemic. So that's basically the only price point that I can afford.

Got it. IMO your plan will be a disappointing way to waste that $100. Better off saving it for when you can afford a budget gaming system.

Also one other thing, that laptop MAY not have a slot that will work with the external dock. Its hard to tell without the exact model number and a teardown.

 

[USAFRet]

eGPU - AKA, "How to turn a poorly performing laptop into a poorly performing desktop".

 

[lga1156_ftw]

Got it. IMO your plan will be a disappointing way to waste that $100. Better off saving it for when you can afford a budget gaming system.

Also one other thing, that laptop MAY not have a slot that will work with the external dock. Its hard to tell without the exact model number and a teardown.

This was the thread i was confused about earlier, i literally wrote into wrong thread. And this guy also had psu. Well if your model has expresscard slot it "might" be worth it, every time i installed eGPU to someones laptop they where really into configuring it, and using alot of time to make it work. Its not just plugin and play like with thunderbolt connection.

Otherwise it loses portability completely, express card you can just remove when you need laptop, with mini pcie (wifi port) its not really practical unless you want to use it as desktop all the time. Also you cant use wifi card then, if you dont have ethernet cable and want to use wifi then you need USB wifi apdater

Also EVERY time anyone wanted this was with i7 or atleast i5 cpu (which was later upgraded to i7. With i3 its basically pointless. You already max out the cpu usage with basically watching 1080p/1440p youtube videos.

EDIT: if cpu is socketed and you want to upgrade to better cpu, dont care about turning this into a hobby, then i can help. Dont expect same performance from the gpu when you use miniPCIE slot, your limited to gen 2.0 x1 speed, same with expresscard slot