Thinkpads Forum

I cannot find anywhere in the instructions how deep or thick a graphic card can be when used in the advanced dock
"The ThinkPad Advanced Dock accepts a standard height (111.15 mm (4.376 in.)) and half length PCI Express Cards (167.65 mm (6.6 in.)) only.
Before you install the PCI Express Card, check the dimensions of the card.

there ref card s
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/product ... MIGR-67432
says its
Approximate height: 68.9 mm (2.71 in)
Approximate depth: 20.8 mm (0.82 in)
Approximate width: 167.6 mm (6.60 in
but can it hanld another 4.2mm ?

I am planning on using a second generation GK107-301-A2 Kepler based GT640 with a TDP of 49/50w

I would ideally like to use the club3d 4GB card but its 25mm thick
http://www.club-3d.com/isotope/c/cgnx-g ... e300ca.pdf
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B000LFNKZ6?m ... alocouk-21

The safer option is harder to find
SPARKLE GeForce GT640 1024MB DDR3 OC LP which 19mm
http://is.gd/RLJjxR and I'm not certain if first or second generation as power goes

the safest option is to use a quadro card but they start at £150

but even then I have no idea if the card will run

any help would be most appreciated

kate

PS I am not intially using the PE4H-EC2C http://www.hwtools.net/Buy_It_Now.html even though it offers better graphics utilisation as it also need some big modding to make a portable box for it plus the cost of power supplies etc
more egpu info: http://forum.techinferno.com/diy-e-gpu- ... -0%5D.html

Not to ruin your party... but as far as I remember that space is not really well ventilated.

That GT640 you link to is definitely not a single-slot card.

If you don't have an answer by the weekend, I can take a look in the dock I have the closet. Shoot me a PM then.

thanks for the reply - I was look at the club3D unit and wondering if I could hack the heatsink - shaving it down
I've looked for replacement fans but they are always thinker - more cooling

the sparkle seems to be ok as it says its thickness is 19mm i.e. less than the 20.5 of the X1900,
but I am not certain what TDP it has if its the older first generation product with a TDP of 65 or the newer sub 50 TDP

what intrested me about the Club3D was that it had 4GB memory on board thus their be less need for communication via the slow 1x lane

thanks again for the help

kate

PS one thing occured to me - could the advanced dock be hacked to allow more space or increase air flow? by for example cutting off one side and then expanding it with a filler then reattching it. I know its sounds crazy but it was just a thought

there will of course come a point when simply building a box for an egpu is a better option - i guess I am looking down this option because i don't wnat the hassle of building an egpu case, getting a PSU, modding the W500 so i can use both the MPCI and expresscard interfaces etc

btw the reason for all this is I have a rift and I want to able to use where I am not just at home

In the future android phones might be powerful enough but they would ned to constantly tied to a power source as the battery would pretty much instantly disapear

??? a rift?

Why not buy a desktop PC? It's about as mobile as a W5xx with dock.

i don't lack for desktops

having now recived the dock I have some idea of the issues involved (i got one at a reasonable price)

and I guess i had underestimated the scale of the actual dock

what I had wanted to be able to do was to run off a system portably off battery
and i guess that just isn't possible right now

I think I wasn't thinking through the issues correctly:
a tie to a mains cable is inevitable if I want to use a graphics card

i guess I have two options ether eGPU or look at units designed for in car use

a third option has just occured to me - that of a high powered windows 8 tablet
but that could be very expensive

Even if I used a multicore tablet the power draw would eat the battery - fast
With the inevitable connection back to the mains
and again I am locked into having X graphics capability

but I guess that's the way I should be looking next

thanks

kate

I still don't get what you try to achieve...

You want a gaming machine that runs on battery?

actually i want a development enviroment that runs on battery
but yes just as one can game on a laptop then we should be able to use a Rift

I suspect i have a solution: a Mini-box M300 with a Anker AstroPro2 20Ah battery
(1155 mobo i5-9500T 45W + GT640 50W) albeit it would only give me about an hour or so
otherwise I would need to plug in

so I guess I now know that the advanced dock wasn't suitable