Changing desktop to laptop + power dock.

Mercutio · 6 Jul 2012 at 16:21

Mods: Please can this one stay here? There's not so many look at the laptop section and this is rather multi-section as far as the choice of forum goes.

Assuming you had a laptop that had a nice SSD, decent amount of memory, good processor, and a good mobile GPU etc. This laptop would have the ability to plug into a "power dock" with an external GPU (working at close to full or full speeds) a bigger, faster hard drive, a better screen plus keyboard and mouse of course... how many of you would ditch a desktop for the flexibility of taking most of your "main rig" with you "on the road"?

The processor, ram, hard drive etc (even the internal graphics card) would be upgradable, the parts in the dock would also be upgradable (it would have 3ish fully functional PCIe 3.0 slots). Price wise you'd be looking at around £1100 for laptop+dock then obviously needing the dock loading with whatever extra cards you wanted and a screen to hook it up to (can't use the internal laptop screen with the external GPU). It's not a super cheap gaming machine for sure but to replace something a little more "high-mid range". How many would consider the swap?

With the thunderbolt connector slowly trickling through to mainstream it's getting increasingly possible for a setup like this. I'm curious if many others find the ideal of this rather flexible, modular approach appealing.

T345 · 6 Jul 2012 at 16:23

Since I am extremely poor, and hate laptops, sorry no

But I was thinking the same thing!

Mercutio · 7 Jul 2012 at 09:42

No-one else? Curious if many others would be tempted to ditch their main rig for it. I guess i'm in a minority?

T345 · 7 Jul 2012 at 11:41

Actually, thinking about it, I would love that

Nunzio · 7 Jul 2012 at 11:46

If you could upgrade the laptop's vga in the power dock, then yeah that would be great. Having something mobile enough to carry to friends for an afternoons lan, or have it docked at home for a night (life time) of extreem gaming.. would be nice.

IC3 · 7 Jul 2012 at 12:28

If you cannot change GPU in the laptop you are looking at then i would just stay with desktop.

Mercutio · 7 Jul 2012 at 15:21

Nunzio said:
If you could upgrade the laptop's vga in the power dock, then yeah that would be great. Having something mobile enough to carry to friends for an afternoons lan, or have it docked at home for a night (life time) of extreem gaming.. would be nice.

Exactly this. It's a more or less full power desktop docked. Undock it, now it's a (in current market) top end gaming laptop (GTX660m).
The GPU can be upgraded too.
Also, yup, the dock is basically just a single thunderbolt cable plugged in the side. It goes off to a thunderbolt to PCIe bridge board (they are expensive at the moment but only apples with thunderbolt till now) which you can then plug whatever card(s) you like into. Considering they've managed it with the expresscard slot and this has about 4 times the bandwidth you can happily still do crossfire/sli. Thunderbolt is basically used as an extension of the PCIe bus.

Laptop wise i'm looking at the Asus G55VW when it gets the thunderbolt update next month.

Orcvader · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:02

Would be a good idea, I won't mind doing that. Don't require a massive GPU when I'm on the go with the laptop. Maybe allow the screen to come off as a tablet? 3 in one?

scrlk · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:11

You didn't mention good design. I hate laptops with the power cable and ethernet cable coming out of the side, it's a PITA. Along with this, good build quality (laptops take more of a hammering in their lifetime IMO), KB and touchpad (no crappy buttonless touchpads) is a must.

Mercutio · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:11

3 in 1 would be amusing indeed. You could perhaps take the screen off the docked laptop and use it as a remote desktop for the machine too. Not sure we have the tech to do that in a high powered laptop though (i've seen the tablets that convert to laptops but they aren't all that powerful).

Mercutio · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:12

scrlk said:
You didn't mention good design. I hate laptops with the power cable and ethernet cable coming out of the side, it's a PITA.

I prefer them on the back but it doesn't bother me that much either way.

Orcvader · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:43

Power cable and ethernet could be part of the dock, no? In laptop mode it would be all about portability, so battery + wireless is only needed.

Mercutio · 7 Jul 2012 at 16:52

Orcvader said:
Power cable and ethernet could be part of the dock, no? In laptop mode it would be all about portability, so battery + wireless is only needed.

Well "dock" might be a bit misleading if you are used to business laptops with docking stations. Think more a cable you plug into it when it's on the desk (or a holder it slots into with the cable lined up).

If the idea gets a little traction it would hardly take much to have the laptops power switch work from either the button on the laptop or from a pass through button on the dock. Depending on the laptop and how warranty went it could probably be rigged to work off the one switch anyway (even I could work that much out, would depend what "openings" there were in the laptop eg grills etc and where they were in relation to where the power switch plugged in and if you'd have to void warranty to get to that part of the laptop).

For the moment though this is definitely an "after market" setup i'll be shooting for.