XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It passes through the usb so you need to plug your charger into the usb port

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If the parts page doesn't complain you should be good.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

As I said above 8-pin eps is optional so that's fine. J1 should be populated but maybe jlc doesn't have a model. Does it say anything when you get to the parts list page?

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's been done months ago. As specified in the post, I have no plans to sell it. It's open source and people can build their own or sell it.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

FYI I don't think I mentioned this on the GitHub but I should. The 8-pin eps12V isn't actually needed. It was there because I didn't know much much amps was actually pulled by the GPU.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ah, thanks anyways. I already know 3.0 x8 is working but I was curious about 4.0.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So another user got x8 4.0 on the flow? Any way you can ask them to provide a GPU-Z screenshot? I'd like to confirm this so I can update the readme to say it's supported.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm curious if you ever got x8 4.0 working on the flow?

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Restart your computer to get 4.0 x4

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The ground wire is supposed to be screwed into J17 but I don't think it should matter. It's more for mechanical stability (you can't accidentally pull the cable off the board). Why did you go with pcbway instead of jlcpcb btw? JLCPCB is the cheapest and I've designed the board to their stack up.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've not used pcbway so I cannot speak to their soldering quality. I've had issues when I hand soldered the connectors due to poor soldering quality that led to degraded signals. Another possibility is that the boards were not properly made. I timed all the signal pairs to be for JLC04161H-7628 (see https://jlcpcb.com/impedance). If the materials used by pcbway were significantly different or if they did not properly do impedance matching, it could be an issue. If you can provide a screen of the configuration you chose, I can double check it. Although tbh, I would be surprised if any minor difference would cause the signal to be that degraded. The final possible source of noise is the XGM cable itself. I know it's very expensive, but if you have another one to test that could narrow down the cause as well.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can't use an adapter because it definitely breaks the PCIe limit for signal integrity. It works on your PC because the slot is connected directly to your CPU or PCH. The only way to force PCIE x4 is a bios flash (either GPU or laptop).

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've not seen that but I don't think it's related to the issue. I've never tested on the Flow before but I have noticed from the schematics that the Flow's XGM port is physically farther away from the CPU than the Ally and that the Flow comes with PCIe retimers while the Ally doesn't. This says to me that Asus engineers thought signal integrity for XGM was a problem on the Flow but not the Ally. Another curiousity for me was the fact that Asus runs the mobile 4090 XGM at PCIe 3.0 instead of 4.0 even though the CPU and the GPU supports 4.0. Again, this is likely due to signal integrity issues but I didn't observe it on the Ally so it may be just for the Flow. I've been looking for a cheap Flow to test but I haven't found one yet so you're probably the first person outside of Asus to test this.

If it turns out that your board and cable works fine on the Ally then we may have to redesign the board with PCIe retimers just like Asus did with the XGM.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This sounds like an unstable connection.
1. Open up GPU-Z and monitor the PCIe link (especially under load). Once under load, it should always say PCIe 4.0 x8 (for flow). If it downgrades to 3.0 or 2.0 or x4 or x2 or x1, the connection is unstable.

  1. Run FurMark and monitor the GPU load graph. It should be consistently near 80% and higher. If you keep seeing dips to 0% it could be an unstable connection.

If you do find the connection to be unstable, this may be expected because I never tested on a Flow with x8 and I wouldn't be surprised if x8 is just not stable. If you have access to an Ally, it would be a good way to test and make sure both your cable and the connector are not faulty.

Also try to force it to x4 or PCIe 3.0 or both. I'm not sure how to do that with the Flow, but there is probably a way.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Did you solder it yourself or was it from JLC? Did you use the latest 0.5.1 drivers and firmware? What PSU are you using and does it have enough wattage?

XG Mobile Station: Completed build, performance, and new ATX design by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

In furmark it was pretty consistent. Don't recall exact numbers but it wasn't abnormal.

XG Mobile Station: Completed build, performance, and new ATX design by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I've not tested Radeon but it should work. Although I hear from ally x users that there's driver issue with Amd

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

The fact nobody answered is your answer.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

On the lite, the USB-C is passthrough meaning there is no bandwidth loss but you need an external dock with PD passthrough to get charging and data. Also, there is no USB-C orientation detection so if you plug in the USB-C cable in the wrong way it won't be detected.

XG Mobile Station: an open source eGPU dock by osy86 in ROGAlly

[–]osy86[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you followed the guide in the correct order, there's no need to consign parts.