Dell 452-BBQN Graphics Amplifier with System Bus Extender for Alienware 13/15/17 Black

Great product. Transformed gaming on my alienware alpha r2 from 1080 to 4k. Some notes: - Easy to install. Literally plug and play. Just make sure you buy a card that fits. The one I got (Gigabyte G1 GTX 1080) reaches almost the limit of what card can fit in it. Most other custom 1080s will not make a perfect fit. - The fan inside is quite loud, but fortunately seems to be replaceable. On the plus side, this should be helping with air flow in the unit.

Does what it should with almost no bottleneck. But the cable connector is fragile(there’s nothing fixing it in place, preventing it from bending). Mine broke after 2 about years, thats why i ve bought another one. Cant buy cable separately. Also takes a bit longer too boot the laptop when the thing is connected-looks like it starts loading, then detects the Amp and reloads again.

Great device, I’ve used a 1660 amour oc card in it and it’s great! Turned all game settings up and getting more FPS. The fan is a little noisy and be prepared for it not to be detected by nvidia software( well it wasn’t for me) It’s no problem just find your card manufacturer on the web and download driver software from there.

In principle this graphics amp seems like a great idea. It can offer desktop performance for your gaming whilst allowing you to benefit from the portability of a laptop for your main rig. I added this on to an AW 17R5 laptop (Core i7-8750H running 16Gb RAM with GTX1060 6Gb internal GPU) and initially all was well. Performance figures on FPS with a 2060Super card were up by nearly 50%, and other than the appalling noise the 2060Super GPU card was making Forza 4 Horizon / Forza 7 / Project Cars were all running beautifully with much better lighting effects, especially visible in mixed weather conditions. So where did it all fall down? If you plan to constantly connect and disconnect the laptop to this to use it as a mobile device, be prepared for a world of pain. My laptop wouldn't log in past the Win10 PIN entry screen, the keyboard wouldn't register keystrokes, the mouse wouldn't operate. I ended up doing a factory restore via safe boot in the end just to get my machine back. Incredibly frustrating, hours of unnecessary effort, and when you are paying nearly £200 for the AGA then another £400 for the GPU card it's frankly unforgivable. I think if you were in a position where you were happy just consigning your laptop to being desk bound and permanently connected to the AGA then it might be fine, but there are clearly a number of issues with the graphics drivers between NVIDIA and DELL which are responsible for this, and whilst it's an ingenious solution (when it works), it's clearly been developed with a lack of investment time from the software side of things which basically blights it's genius. After saying all this I am keeping the AGA for a time when the laptop becomes a stuck on a desk, but for now it won't be used until the internal GTX1060 6Gb no longer delivers the goods. The box itself it well made, has a nice RGB AW head logo on the box that can be tinkered in Fusion FX, and other than slightly flimsy hinges on the box it seems relatively well made. To say I'm sorely disappointed is an understatement, but as least in years to come it might pay me back when I need a GPU upgrade. One critical thing to keep in mind, any GPU card must be no more than 41mm deep, don't be thinking you can fit a triple slot card, and be mindful of the length of triple fan cards. The Zotac SuperMini 2060Super fitted perfectly if it hadn't had serious choke and vibration issues (it's been returned), so I'll be hunting down an old 1080Ti in the future by ASUS, Evga or Gigabyte

I was a little weary at start as I wanted to use both my internal dGPU and eGPU for my rendering. So, I posted a question here and most people commented its not possible to have parallel computing using both cards at the same time. Thanks for your comments guys. But, I decided to go ahead with the purchase regardless as my 1080Ti was just lying around doing nothing. I am very surprised and ecstatic because 1. It was plug and play, no messing around with drivers, both way around. 2. It looks like my AW m15 is using both cards in parallel, atleast in redshift rendering. I have the results and they are awesome. But, I cannot say for definite. As 1080Ti is suppose to be 45% better than 2080 Maxq and that is what I am seeing. However, when dual card used in redshift the card with lowest bandwidth is the max bandwidth used on both cards, meaning my 1080ti, eventhough it has 11GB, it can only make use of 8GB of it at most. This means, redshift must be using both cards. I can visually see this happening. Hope this helps.

Very noisy fan, had to replace. Otherwise all good

Works perfectly. I put in my own Power supply and fans because the ones present are very loud. Replacing the old hardware is very easy though and was always my intention, so no points deducted for that. My MSI1060 doesn't fit, it's too high. Again i duduct no points for that because this hardware was made for reference design coolers.

The product works as expected and is very easy to set up. However, the amplifiers firmware removes the ability for your pc to sleep and while for some that might not be a big deal it is for others and since this has not been mentioned once in the items description here on Amazon or on other sites I cannot give this product 5 stars.