You Shouldn't Do This to Your Cheap Thinkpad

I've been on a hunt to find the best upgradable laptop for as cheap as possible. That search lead me to the Thinkpad T480, the only downside was the horrible gaming performance. So today I'm trying my best to get as much gamer out of this little old cheap business laptop as possible.

Build your own T480 EGPU setup.

Some of the following product links are affiliate links for which I may be compensated.

My Gear

[enderpirate]

I can't wait for the day when the Framework laptop is cheap!

[amadii]

I commented on the t480 video suggesting a complete upgrade of it and received a reply of "Unfortunately, I really can't justify spending that much money on a laptop for a video to FULLY upgrade it... but I do currently have a GTX 1650 hooked up to it", this was 2 months ago, this absolute legend basically spoiled this video to me 2 months early and I didn't even think about it until this came out, dude's amazing, wish ya the best aChair leg

[somerandomguy]

Dude i've been thinking for a while now ago about pairing my T480 with an egpu!!
Egpus are soo underrated imo.
I've seen many egpu adaptors on Amazon for less than 50$ whith good reviews. And if you used a 1660 or a 1660ti you'd easily see a 30% increase in performance.

Anyway great video!

[pingtime]

Theres 2 problem why the performance sucks (excluding the pathethic cooling on T480 that doesn't have dGPU model heatsink on). First one is the thunderbolt 3 port on T480 is running at PCIe x2 gen 3 speed instead of standard x4 speed per Thunderbolt 3 spec. Second one is because youre using internal display for gaming, which further worsen the already limited PCIe tunneling bandwidth on T480 since the display output from the external GPU need to travel back via PCIe bus, and tunnel it down to integrated graphic on the CPU, instead of just outputting it via the HDMI/DisplayPort on the GTX 1650.

[hristomir-zwbg]

Btw few years back i was really invested for the upgradable laptop with the external GPU. It sounded so cool to be able to revive old laptop and make it gaming. But after seeing your video i think this is more of a gimmick more then a real thing that's why i saw almost no one doing something similar. Also if you use external GPU without a monitor you loose a lot of performance (the part i hate the most btw because you loose the entire reason why you doing that 😅).

[aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa]

That cat really looks like the best meow for the buck you couldve gotten, especially since how you perform is more important than the looks ;)

[saurabhkulkarni]

I feel your pain at not being able to get the highest end cat. I wanted the all white package but mine ended up with a few orange spots.

[Facade]

That house that you show for like 5 secs and has the name Facade above it looks really cool

[MrOlek]

Early gang! I've been thinking about getting a t480 with an egpu like rtx 3060 or something. I've read if you connect an egpu to a monitor you can get even more fps.

[urmanascrewed]

The work here is much appreciated! Very interesting to see how semi-customizable budget laptops can be upgraded!

[shadowrunnerk]

Not sure if anybody brought this to your attention, but if you ran the egpu to a monitor, and NOT back through the thundbolt to internal monitor, you would get a MASSIVE jump in fps....

[olnnn]

You can often eek out a little more performance from these laptop cpus by undervolting them (using e.g throttlestop) . Undervolting can allow them to boost a bit higher since they are severly power limited.

[Max_Mustermann]

The main advantage of ThinkPads and similar business laptops is that they've been designed to last for some time. While gaming laptops, even more expensive ones, seem to be designed to last for 2-3 years until the user buys a newer model.

[Diggy]

You could have gotten yourself a Lenovo Z40-70 and saved yourself a LOT of trouble. Bought mine for $76, and it handles a solid amount of games on Steam. On Windows 10, I’ve played Injustice, Sleeping Dogs, Ultra Street Fighter IV, and the Batman: Arkham games. The battery still holds a great charge, and to prevent overheating, I bought an affordable USB fan.

[BillHutchison]

Thank you for doing this. I was considering something similar for my son (a light laptop for school, with an external GPU for home), but will give that idea a miss now.

[jeff__dev]

You should find a Thinkpad with an m.2 NVME slot if they exist, and get an pcie adapter to use an eGPU with. I believe it has more bandwidth than Thunderbolt if the m.2 slot is 4-lane

[robsquared]

Thinkboard works. I try to think, then I get bored.

[nicktheneko]

Try it with M.2 to Oculink and you'll be stunned cause Oculink uses PCI-E while Thunderbolt uses some weird USB to PCI-E conversion which is really wasteful

[AceAku]

So you got the right idea but where you're going wrong is playing on the laptop screen, you're loosing about 20% performance, hook up an external monitor to the EGPU and you will gain a significant boost.

[marioauditore]

Great Video! Nice to see that it actually works. Love teh T480 :) thanks for your effort and insights <3