Topic: Laptop/Desktop expansion mining w/ desktop cards with an external PCIe enclosure - page 2. (Read 9452 times)

Easy. Athlon II 160U socket AM3 processor draws 20 watts at load. I have seen systems that draw 75 watts total (minus PCI-e cards) that were NOT using the 160U.

Very interesting project. Waiting for somebody clever enough to work this all out and tell us how it is done exactly.

Most laptops take about 90W-120W for the whole system.

Say the card takes 200W + 120W = 320W for a system mining with one 5870 or 6950 etc.

I'd like to see you doing that with a normal desktop !

Oooh this is kind of juicy. I wish they were a little cheaper though.

Here's an idea to bounce around.  DynapowerUSA makes these TurboBox external PCIe enclosures, and one of their models, the NA211A, has a self-contained 220W power supply and a double-sized slot space for potentially a graphics card. These enclosures have the option of interfacing with a laptop over ExpressCard34 (!), or a desktop with a provided expansion card. At that wattage, might you theoretically drop a 6970 into this, or maybe a 6950 if you wanted to be safe? I really wonder if one of these would work to just plug into a laptop and mine with, or expand a desktop that is already at capacity or doesn't have a powerful enough power supply to add any more cards.

Here's the product page: http://www.dynapowerusa.com/dyna/ASP/CP_i_NA211A.asp

The problem seems to be their price point, though: http://www.mypccase.com/pcexbox.html

If these were a few hundred bucks cheaper they'd arguably be worth it, for the convenience of being able to use it with an older system you already own, and for the fact that it's self-contained. It might even save you power costs long term versus a full-blown rig if you could run it connected to a more power-conserving laptop over ExpressCard.


For more powerful options, they also make these (but they are prohibitively expensive, as per the same price listing above):
http://www.dynapowerusa.com/dyna/ASP/CP_i_NA250A.asp


On a similar note, it also looks like it might be possible to build yourself one of these from parts for much cheaper than any of the above by purchasing from the following people (they have the peripheral cards, the host cards, and enclosures, and you would need to add a power supply and I guess some sort of fan):

http://www.arstech.com/item-XPRS-PCI-Express-x16-peripheral-card-xprs_px_x16.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-XPRS-Host-card-ExpressCard-Notebook-xprs_host_ec.html
http://www.arstech.com/item-Enclosure-for-3-ISA-PCI-cards-isax3b1.html