Can you use this to boost your laptop's mining power?

[TiagoTiago]

http://www.techradar.com/news/computing-components/graphics-cards/how-to-make-an-external-laptop-graphics-adaptor-915616

Laptop graphics have always been something of a joke performance wise. Nvidia and AMD do try, but cramming all those millions of transistors into a low-power, compact package just leads to massive expense and an inability to upgrade.

Wouldn't it be perfect if you could simply use a standard external graphics card to power your laptop's 3D graphics?

The good news is that you can. The suitably technical-sounding PE4H is just that; a passive PCI-e x16 to x1 adaptor, which enables you to plug an external graphics card into a laptop's ExpressCard slot. Currently we're only aware of it being available from the Taiwanese firm www.hwtools.net for around $100 including shipping.

[grue]

why use this when you can get a good board for that price?

[deslok]

You could but you can also get a motherboard + cpu combo in almost the same price range with less headaches. (amd brazos boards are around a hundred all this card would  save you is a cheap hdd and some ram)

[Jack of Diamonds]

You could take advantage of this by buying tons of crappy old laptops with EC slots for 10-20 bucks each, then your only cost is the graphics cards.

The problem is, that adapter costs $100. So you might just as well build a low end system and stick 1 GPU in it.

[deslok]

Where are you getting ec laptops for 20 dollars?

[Jack of Diamonds]

http://www.synchrotech.com/product-usb/usb20_to_usb20_expresscards_host_adapter.html

Works with any laptop as long as it has a single USB port.

I've seen old laptops with USB 2.0 ports as low as 15 dollars used. 256mb RAM, pentium processors etc.

[deslok]

Ok not quite an ec laptop for 20. I have to wonder if you'll hit bandwidth constraints at that point

[jme621]

that little power supply switch thing on the makers website looks interesting though

[melmo]

I don't think that will work with a video card.  From the warnings in the product description, it sounds like it just passes the USB 2.0 lines from the expresscard interface.

http://www.synchrotech.com/product-usb/usb20_to_usb20_expresscards_host_adapter.html

Works with any laptop as long as it has a single USB port.

I've seen old laptops with USB 2.0 ports as low as 15 dollars used. 256mb RAM, pentium processors etc.

[Pipesnake]

http://www.netstor.com.tw/_03/products_turbobox.htm

Going to try one of these myself.

[deslok]

that certainly looks interesting but you could build an entire system for less than what that costs.

[Pipesnake]

Yep didn't realize they were so ridiculously expensive.

Seems pointless to create something nobody will buy because your price-point is so absurd.

[DrHaribo]

Too bad the adapter is expensive, or this could have been a great idea. A cheap laptop with a weak CPU would suffice, and I would think that in general a laptop uses less electricity than a desktop.