Reddit mentions of Mini PCI-E to PCI-E Express 1X Extension Cord Adapter Card with USB Riser Card

He's making it sound a lot more complicated than it really is.

The PCI-E slot on a laptop is an Mini-PCIE form factor which is normally used for the wireless card in a laptop. He took out his wireless card and put a Mini-PCIe to PCI-E 1x adapter such as this here and hooked it up to the video card. You then need an extra PSU on the side to power the video card which you hook up the molex to the 4 pin included with the adapter. Some PSUs will include these on the accessories cable as they were originally used to power floppy disk drives, the form factor is the same. After you have the PCI-E adapter and the video card hooked up to power, you simply use a PSU Jumper to power on the video card, power on the laptop, install drivers for the video card, and hook it up to a display. Then, you have to use ethernet for internet, but that's about it.

Voila, you now have an external GPU for your laptop. It will only run at 1x PCIE Speed, but it should still perform better than anything you have onboard unless you have one of those crazy laptops with a $400+ card stuffed into it on a custom PCB.

Okay, so, I put some more thought into this, and you might be able to get away with it.

What you'd need to do is get a motherboard with a socketed in mPCIe wireless card (of which there aren't many, the only AM4 ones I could find were this Gigabyte one or possibly this ASRock one). Then, remove the wireless card, and replace it with a mPCIe->PCI-E 1x riser (something like this or this). Then use that to connect the Intel WiGig adapter. (mPCIe offers both a 1x PCI-E connection and a USB 2.0 connection, to explain the USB ports on both risers)

Although it would be a lot easier to just get an mATX board.

Look into this mini-pcie to PCIE-1X adapter.

Some cards (such as intel i340 NICs) require the 12V power to be connected, which can complicate things a little, but others only require 3.3v. One thing to watch out for: some companies have a whitelist for what cards can be installed in the mini-pcie slot, you may need to have the bios modified before you can use one of these. Lenovo in particular loves to do this, as does HP.

They do work, although they don't change the fact most consumer motherboards are limited to 4 GPUs (due to the BIOS lacking 4G decoding). Also, some people have had trouble getting these to work in a x16 slot, so you may want to use a M.2 adapter if your ITX board has a M.2 connector.

EDIT: You can use this on the AM1I's mini PCIe slot, just break the mini card to make it half height and use the x1 slot (not the USB port).

If your laptop in question has a thunderbolt 3 port, there is a very good chance you could get it to work with an external pci enclosure.

If not your probably screwed.

Some people have also thought about using the Mini PCI-e slot on laptops and convert it to normal PCI-E 2 1X with something like this
https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Express-Extension-Adapter-Riser/dp/B01FVPITN8

That is still up in the air if it will work or not. Even if it does work you would still have to do some modding on the laptop as most laptop are not built to have a cable sticking out of them from the mpci slot is built onto the motherboard. Not really a viable solution in my opinion.

So the Vive Wireless requires a PCIe 1x, but my motherboard doesn't have one. It does however have a mini PCIe slot. Anyone think one of the miniPCIe to PCIe adapters would impact functionality of the wireless unit?

My motherboard: ASRock X99E-ITX/AC

Adapter: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01FVPITN8/?coliid=I1K641BVK9YXMM

Not without this it won't!

With some serious effort (including laptop disassembly) you might be able to swap out the wifi card (if it's mini pcie) for a USB 3 card and run thin cables to bring the ports out through the dvd drive slot...

https://www.startech.com/m/Cards-Adapters/USB-3.0/Cards/2-Port-Mini-PCI-Express-USB-3-Adapter-Card-with-Bracket-Kit~MPEXUSB3S22B
^ It isn't cheap and it's more targeted at SFF PCs, but this is the basic idea.

An even slightly more bizarre solution would be to use a regular pcie usb 3 card with something like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Express-Extension-Adapter-Riser/dp/B01FVPITN8

> Alienware X51 r1

I mean if you want to get a little "hacky" you can try something like this

https://www.amazon.com/Mini-Express-Extension-Adapter-Riser/dp/B01FVPITN8

It didn't look like an m.2 exactly (I figured maybe proprietary), but upon further inspection the spec sheet shows it is a half mini PCI-E slot. It is different from m.2, but still a PCI slot all the same. This adapter might just be able to do what you need it to do as, as far as I can tell, the Vive Wireless Adapter only needs a 1x slot. Seems worth a punt.

Edit: I'm no expert on this, I was not previously aware of the half mini PCI-E. I can't quite tell, but it almost looks like it might be a 1x slot all by itself? If it is, then all you'd need is a 1x extension and you might be able to plug the card in directly. Perhaps he could take the wifi card out and see if that's a standard 1x or if it does require the adapter. Uncharted territory here.