No thunderbolt port on motherboard

[tagliafierroalessandro]

Hello, I was planning on buying an external GPU for my laptop when I realized that I don't have a Thunderbolt 3 port (actually I don't have Thunderbolt at all). I realized that all ports on a laptop are connected directly to the motherboard so I firstly thought about upgrading my motherboard with a new one (that does support Thunderbolt) but unfortunately my manufacturer does not provide an alternative motherboard for my laptop (Asus N752VX) which supports Thunderbolt.

Since my goal is just to have a Thunderbolt port could please someone tell me if there's any way (I mean ANY even buying new pieces) to get a port that you don't have on a laptop.
This is mostly curiosity now, I know there are ways to connect the eGPU to the motherboard itself by taking out the wifi card and by using the mini PCIe connector. That's not a very good choice as you can see.

So my final question is this:
Is there any way (and I mean anything that you can really come up with) to get the Thunderbolt-3 port or are there any eGPUs that use other ports like USB-c 3.1? Thanks in advance

 

[Barty1884]

Your upgrade options are extremely limited on laptops - especially on ports etc.

Thunderbolt needs a PCIe interface.... I believe a minimum of x4? Laptops don't tend to have available PCIe slots, nor a way to cover anything.
Using the mPCI of a Wifi card is an option, but not great for a number of reasons - least of all, bandwidth. The requirements of an eGPU are much greater than a Wifi card.

There's not enough bandwidth via USB - IIRC, TB3s bandwith is 3-4x USB-C 10Gb/s


I believe your N752VX is a Skylake i7 with a GTX950M? I would anticipate you could sell that for some decent money and +the cost of an eGPU/enclosure, could pick up a modern laptop, with modern graphics AND TB3 for future expansion?

 

[tagliafierroalessandro]

Thanks for the answer. When I bought my laptop about a year ago I wasn't well aware of what I was gonna do with it. The gtx 950M is great for gaming, although it's sort of useless when talking about 3d rendering or video editing. I didn't think about selling this laptop and, since it costed about 1200€ (i guess almost 1350$) I could sell it for something like 800$ i guess, plus the money for an egpu I could definitely buy a desktop too.
However, that's not my plan for the time being.

Are you saying that if I find a usable PCIe port I could get a TB3 port? If that's the case then how? Because I was wondering if I could remove the GTX 950M and use that PCIe port to connect an egpu or a TB3 port. Could I do it? Otherwise I should really think about selling the laptop...

 

[Barty1884]

IF you had a PCIe slot, You could add TB3., yes..... but you wont.

GPUs in laptops are typically soldered (like the 950M), there's no removing it to free up a PCIe slot like you would in a desktop.

 

[USAFRet]

could please someone tell me if there's any way (I mean ANY even buying new pieces)

Yes.
Sell the laptop, and buy/build a desktop. Install any GPU you want.

Laptops are not a good platform to start customizing with.
Especially as regards an eGPU, and REALLY if there is not the needed ports to start with.

 

[tagliafierroalessandro]

IF you had a PCIe slot, You could add TB3., yes..... but you wont.

GPUs in laptops are typically soldered (like the 950M), there's no removing it to free up a PCIe slot like you would in a desktop.

Thanks, I'll check with a computer expert in my town and see what would be the best solution, so, just for curiosity, if I had a PCIe slot how could I add TB3?

 

[tagliafierroalessandro]

could please someone tell me if there's any way (I mean ANY even buying new pieces)

Yes.
Sell the laptop, and buy/build a desktop. Install any GPU you want.

Laptops are not a good platform to start customizing with.
Especially as regards an eGPU, and REALLY if there is not the needed ports to start with.

That's not really my plan right now, I've done some Maths and it turns out that, since I got an I7 and I was willing to buy an external 1080, a desktop with these specs would cost much more than the price I'd sell this laptop at.

 

[Barty1884]

If you had an available PCIe slot, PCIe to TB3 adapters/AIC's exist. But you don't/won't have an available slot.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what your plan is currently, or the budget proposition.
What you want to do, cannot be done.

You could go the route of using the mPCI slot to connect an external GPU, but it's not an elegant solution, would remove your wireless connectivity & will severely bottleneck due to the restricted bandwidth available.

 

[tagliafierroalessandro]

If you had an available PCIe slot, PCIe to TB3 adapters/AIC's exist. But you don't/won't have an available slot.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter what your plan is currently, or the budget proposition.
What you want to do, cannot be done.

You could go the route of using the mPCI slot to connect an external GPU, but it's not an elegant solution, would remove your wireless connectivity & will severely bottleneck due to the restricted bandwidth available.

Actually, I think I found a better way, my laptop seems to have a free m.2 slot, I think I'll go with an m.2-to-PCIe adapter and see if it works. thanks for your time, if you want I'm having a similar discussion here on the same topic.
https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/8k58xl/m2_egpu_on_laptop/

 

[Barty1884]

If the m.2 is wired for PCIe and not just SATA (given the age, it should be PCIe too), then that should work just fine.

You're going to limited to x4 at best, which will likely limit performance some.... but should still be an improvement.