Though you will need an expresscard slot, my guess is you don't have one cause I haven't seen one on a laptop in a while.
No. Nobody should do this. Laptops should be for casual games, but should be better for battery life and staying cool. Desktops are for heavy gaming. It's fine if they already have an decent card, but this would just be a stupid setup.
@TooWalrus: @Jams: Alright, thanks! I assumed not, but wanted to check. It's free, so I'll just throw it into my rig.
Wait, I now have two questions.
1) Why the hell wouldn't you just put it into your rig in the first place? I understand portability, but you don't really need to do heavy gaming on the bus or plane, do you? Even if you could, I suspect the 660 would be too loud or too hot for a notebook.
2) Where the hell did you get a free 660? 'Cause I want one.
When you get the card, you'll be surprised at its size. It'll weigh as much as your laptop, be twice as tall, and almost as long. At idle, it'll draw well over 100 watts of power. Your whole laptop doesn't draw that much power. At full power consumption, the 660 will draw 2-4 times as much power as your laptop does. It'll also climb into the 70+ celcius range. With giant fans cooling it.
Trying to set up a proper GPU as an external device is novel, but I wouldn't suggest it. You won't have the spare power supply lying around. It can be finicky. You may not have the required ports.
Either build a cheap desktop or flip that 660. If it's a 660ti, you'd sell it in a heartbeat for $350.
Though you will need an expresscard slot, my guess is you don't have one cause I haven't seen one on a laptop in a while.
No. Nobody should do this. Laptops should be for casual games, but should be better for battery life and staying cool. Desktops are for heavy gaming. It's fine if they already have an decent card, but this would just be a stupid setup.
You are off your head.
Talk that shit to my portable game console that runs everything twice as hard.
@Rowr: I agree. I bought an ASUS gaming laptop about 2 years ago. I can still play newer games at medium settings or slightly above with a buttery smooth framerate. I can hook it up to my 47" tv via an HDMI cable if I'm not feeling lazy, play Skyrim without the horrible load times at my girlfriend's house when she goes to bed, and use my portable game system as a music or movie hub, so my non gamer girlfriend actually likes me to bring it by. And as for the power thing, they make settings turning the fancy crap off so your battery life is not that bad.
As far as sticking a videocard where it does not belong, I think it is a bad idea. The amount of air moved through this laptop to cool it when playing a graphix intensive game could blow dry your hair from 2 feet away. Imagine the tax on your CPU. Would you not also need an external power source? Fire hazard much? I hear leaving an exposed board is a bad thing. Et cetera..............
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