VOGONS


First post, by 386SX

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Hello,

I was wondering if those GPU notebook modules that in the past were installed into some mini PCI or AGP whatever connections they were based on, might be usable nowdays to install them in a PCI 3,3v mainboard for very limited space reasons where there's not enough room for any vertical or horizontal video card, but there's the PCI bus connector empty for it and somehow thinking to a way to have an analog DVI or VGA output from them.
Cause if I remember correclty there were quite powerful low power versions of old GPU in such format or not? Another possible idea would have been to use a low profile card with a 90° PCI riser card or a PCI flat cable and using the usual cabled VGA connector to fix it to the ATX shield.
Do you think is possible?

Thanks

Reply 1 of 4, by paradigital

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I was under the impression that pre-MXM was a bit of a wild-west in terms of standards and compatibility, so much so that finding an adapter from mobile to desktop would be a per-card-per-vendor affair. In terms of display connectors again, pre LVDS is a bit of a minefield.

MXM (whatever variant) with some form of LVDS should be incredibly simple to create PCIe adapters for though. No idea if such a thing exists as I’ve never had the inclination to look!

Reply 2 of 4, by chiveicrook

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paradigital wrote on 2022-05-08, 15:35:

MXM (whatever variant) with some form of LVDS should be incredibly simple to create PCIe adapters for though. No idea if such a thing exists as I’ve never had the inclination to look!

MXM adapters to PCIe used to be pretty common sight among chinese retailers, they are harder to find now but MXM 3.0 to PCIe are still available for as low as 20USD per piece.
Cheapest adapters do not add any outputs so an integrated gpu (or possibly a 2nd gpu) is needed to actually output the image. This in turn requires at least Win10 to work properly AFAIK.

Reply 3 of 4, by 386SX

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Thanks for the answers. Any possible adapters to PCI standard? I suppose some of those modules had also AGP based GPUs on it. I've seen there were mini PCI cards with video chip like Volari Z9 or similar 2D only server oriented boards even with their own cable to vga connector but not card supporting a bit more features or based on more common GPUs.
I've seen existed PCI to miniPCI adapters that would work I'd say even if not exaclty compact solutions for mini-itx case scenario.
My board might have had a mini PCIe bus but the version had it desoldered by factory for the cheaper version it is. So only a PCI bridged bus exist. The on board gpu is working only in a single o.s. config limiting the discontinued o.s. at 32bit/3GB ram what could be x64/8GB with a different GPU that's why I was wondering some modding to install something that didn't need a full micro atx case which solve the problem but at that point I change the mainboard. The whole point of having this mini-itx config is low power demand and compact size. Actually this computer demand 15W totally with a SSD without a cd/dvd reader and a PicoPSU DC/DC solution. It'd be nice to install some compact adapted still supported notebook GPU to save space and increase features.

Reply 4 of 4, by chiveicrook

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Unfortunately, MXM is based on PCIe and everything before MXM was a total wild-west like paradigital mentioned.
Looks like regular single slot and/or low profile PCI card connected via PCI riser cable (regular pci riser cables start as low as 5EUR) is your best bet, as long as you can mount it somewhere in the case.
There are also weird pcie-pci adapters but compatibility is hard to predict.