Log DIY 2-PCIe-Slotted eGPU Build

AlexRicky

What's an ITX?
Original poster
New User
Apr 2, 2022
1
5

Sometime late last year, a friend of mine came to me, said that he want to make a eGPU case with a eGPU motherboard suddenly appearing on the market.
The motherboard itself is from Razer, pretty small in size and the key feature of it is that it supports 2PCIe slots the first one is 16x and the second one is 4x.

In the original design, the second slot is used for USB expansion but it’s also definitely a full-functioned PCIe slot, which means it also supports net cards or whatever you want.
This kind of motherboard seems to be unique on the market and also original product of it is pretty large in size and that’s quite not SFF-spirited.
These are some processing pictures:



The main frame of this design is made in 3D printed UV resin, and I was told that the green one has better flexibility than the usual white one, and the black one seems to be even more strong than the green one. According to my test, I found these two materials are both decent for me in mechanical features. In the exterior are made out of laser cut acrylate.
The final build is like this, the exterior is made out of beautiful frosted white acrylate (there's a 2.5G net card in the buttom where the picture cannot show):

And more design details:


I spend about $60 on the frame and exterior whereas the motherboard and PSU cost about $200. Of course I also spend some money on testing and experimenting but that’s not the cost of this design itself.
Maybe this is rather a concept than a build, but I'm not expecting to sell this kit.
Anyways if you are interested or wanna order something like this, please let me know.
 

milesvw

SFF Lingo Aficionado
Dec 20, 2022
132
95
Bummer on needing a full ATX PSU instead of 12v only (depending on the eGPU could have got away using an Xbox PSU or HP 15L PSU. Very interesting, TB is constricted already with x4 bandwidth, so bifurcating at the other end is questionable when talking performance. Not sure what would make sense there, an NVMe drive to store games? A 2.5GBe or better card? Very expensive.
 

Docop

Case Bender
New User
Aug 19, 2021
2
0
The motherboard itself is from Razer, pretty small in size and the key feature of it is that it supports 2PCIe slots the first one is 16x and the second one is 4x.

In the original design, the second slot is used for USB expansion but it’s also definitely a full-functioned PCIe slot, which means it also supports net cards or whatever you want.
Sometime late last year, a friend of mine came to me, said that he want to make a eGPU case with a eGPU motherboard suddenly appearing on the market.
The motherboard itself is from Razer, pretty small in size and the key feature of it is that it supports 2PCIe slots the first one is 16x and the second one is 4x.

In the original design, the second slot is used for USB expansion but it’s also definitely a full-functioned PCIe slot, which means it also supports net cards or whatever you want.


I spend about $60 on the frame and exterior whereas the motherboard and PSU cost about $200. Of course I also spend some money on testing and experimenting but that’s not the cost of this design itself.
Maybe this is rather a concept than a build, but I'm not expecting to sell this kit.
Anyways if you are interested or wanna order something like this, please let me know.
So as having a core2 the board is quite different.. So you confirm you did try out with 2 different card.. like a nic and gfx card and 2 card are working on this pcb ? Also, do you have a link for that board ? thanks
 

SFFMunkee

Buy first, justify later?
Gold Supporter
Jul 7, 2021
938
1,004
Is it definitely a secondary PCIe x4 slot or is that assumed? I've seen a number of designs that use a PCIe x4 to connect back to the host (with a daughterboard) via TB3/TB4/OCuLink

I can't imagine you'd get great performance bifurcating a TB3/TB4 link even further when you've already got limited bandwidth to begin with.