Thunderbolt to PCIe adapter
- Thread starter Mercutio
- Start date
Probably cheaper to just replace your existing mobo with one that has thunderbolt.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-405-GI
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-405-GI
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Is there any specific reason you need Thunderbolt support? USB 3.0 is so much easier to get hold of and will be half the speed, but that speed will still be several hundred mb/s.
But I think a new motherboard is definitely the only way to get Thunderbolt support.
But I think a new motherboard is definitely the only way to get Thunderbolt support.
I see.
Something like that is always likely to be expensive as it's never likely to be a mass market item.
What mobo do you have atm, I assume it already has a lot of PCI-e slots that are filled and you can't find one with more that fits in you case?
Something like that is always likely to be expensive as it's never likely to be a mass market item.
What mobo do you have atm, I assume it already has a lot of PCI-e slots that are filled and you can't find one with more that fits in you case?
It's to go with a laptop with thunderbolt 
Planned purchases over the rest of this year.
They are expensive at the moment but that was the case with the expresscard slots (to pcie adapaters for laptop external gpu) then you could grab bare parts for like £80 so I expect similar. Just making sure nothing had gone under my radar that others had spotted
Planned purchases over the rest of this year.
They are expensive at the moment but that was the case with the expresscard slots (to pcie adapaters for laptop external gpu) then you could grab bare parts for like £80 so I expect similar. Just making sure nothing had gone under my radar that others had spotted
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That's basically where I'm going with it. There's already external GPU availability if you choose the right laptop and components etc (achieving up to around 95% of desktop GPU performance. Considering the difference in power between laptop cards and desktop cards that's a HUGE boost for a laptop) but thunderbolt gives 10GB full duplex which, if they get PCIe 3.0 working over it, gives something like 4x PCIe 3.0 externally which is enough to give bandwidth to even 680GTX type cards.
I plan on paying about £1.2k for a GOOD laptop with 250/500GB of SSD space and a bigger mechanical drive to back it up (thus sacrificing optical) it'll have something like a 7970m and a GOOD i7 chip. At home there will be a 3 slot PCIe to thunderbolt "box" with graphics card, soundcard and raid card. A big screen hooked up to the graphics, speakers etc to the soundcard and my current internal raid housed in the same box. I'd also expect there to be high availability of esata/usb/etc to thunderbolt too so of course a keyboard and mouse hooked up too.
When at home I have a full power desktop with the laptop basically acting as the base unit. If I pull the thunderbolt plug I have the same desktop with the same settings/logins/bookmarks/etc minus whatever bulk media is on the raid and with a slightly less powerful graphics card to take on the road.
It's just the thunderbolt side of things that needs to have 6 months development (Haswell has thunderbolt controller as part of it's chipset).
There IS already a company called bplus working on a bridge board (TH05) and vidock who make the current EGPU solution for use via mPCIe and expresscard are working on a box too.
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Looked at these the other day and I have to say if I was doing this i'd want it on something that has onboard graphics for the battery life when away, not a 7970m!
Doesn't having a 7970m kinda defeat the point of having an external GPU setup?
Doesn't having a 7970m kinda defeat the point of having an external GPU setup?
Not really, even a 7970m is probably 7850ish in desktop power (comparrison pulled out of my ass but you get where I'm going with it). Also over time the desktop cards would obviously get better - I'd have less need to look at better laptop cards (which are always insanely priced and usually require mod work on the heatsink to make fit) so I can stretch out how long the laptops useful for before a new one is needed (or an expensive graphics update).
It's rare I use the laptop away from a mains socket but it's moderately frequent that I'm away from home for extended time (gf is Greek so I spend a good bit of time there when we go over to see our friends and her family there). So I'd need something decent onboard too.
Of course for a lot of people the idea of an ultrabook with thunderbolt would be perfect. In uni with it for notes etc with it being nice, low powered and economical with the battery then come home, plug it in and it's the gaming/entertainment box.
I'm actually considering getting hold of a very barebones clevo when they do a chassis with thunderbolt. Take the power switch and wire 2 small metal plates on the same edge as the thunderbolt port to power switch. Build/adapt a small desktop case to have a slot with a thunderbolt plug and 2 contacts for the plates built into it with all the kit I want to run from thunderbolt housed in the same box. I can then drop the laptop in it's slot which connects up the thunderbolt plug to the port and gives me control over the laptops power switch from the switch on the box (using the contacts on the side of the laptop). There's probably some ideas here that will see commercial products tbh.