Moto Book 60 + eGPU | A capable portable gaming setup | My thoughts

[theagilecoder]

1. Intro
Motorola has launched its first Ultrabook in the indian market. The base variant sports Core 5 210H and 16 gb of ram and starts at Rs 61k. I just happened to notice that even in its tiny frame it has upgradeable ram and m.2 nvme ssd slots.

​

Source :

Moreover, the vacant slot seems to be of the PCIe 4.0 variety. Should be atleast 4 lanes I suspect.

​

Source: https://www.motorola.in/laptop-moto-book-60-core5/p?skuId=509​

Now, this enables us to put a simple nvme to oculink dongle like this to enable us to connect an external GPU to it.

​

right angle nvme to oculink adapter.​

These are generally available with any oculink "kit" and in India this is an example : https://www.amazon.in/gp/product/B0BZZ2MXT7?th=1

​

Oculink Kit - It says PCI 3.0 but its actually PCI 4.0​

In fact, I've been using it since last year in my eGPU setup that is here: https://imgur.com/a/minipc-egpu-setups-rZ0tbfw
All that is needed to added here is any GPU and a PSU and its ready to go. This is how it would look:

​

2. Will it bottleneck though ?
Now the question is how strong is this 2024 Raptor Lake cpu in the Motorola Book 60 - Core 5 210H. It comes with 8 cores but 4 of it are performance cores and the other 4 being efficiency cores. It clocks to 4.8 GHz - quite impressive for a thin ultrabook.
Lets compare this to the CPU in my MiniPC - Ryzen 7 7840HS which has full 8 performance cores and its actually a laptop CPU - Most miniPCs actually use laptop CPUs only in their miniPCs, you know for limited heat dissipation capabilities in the Minipc. I have been using this with a RX 6800 (16GB) e-GPU for AAA 1440p gaming without any bottleneck.
As you can see here, https://imgur.com/a/minipc-egpu-setups-rZ0tbfw, in Star Wars Jedi survivor 1440p Very high details, I'm getting full utilization of the GPU. Its the same in other gpu-dependent games too that I play.
Also, in the 3dMark benchmarks, I am scoring the same scores as average builds using RX 6800 => thus no cpu bottlenecking.

​

​

Now the question is where does Core 5 210H stand against Ryzen 7 7840HS. It does have less performance cores but most gpu dependent games don't really need that many CPU cores.
Lets look at Cinebench R23 scores first:

​

Moto book 60 => Source:

​

Ryzen 7 7840HS => Source: https://www.notebookcheck.net/R7-7840HS-vs-Core-5-210H_14948_18679.247596.0.html​

Wow, Core 5 210H has a little stronger single core performance. Although the Ryzen 7 has a much higher multi core score as it has full 8 performance cores, having stronger single core performance is good for gaming.
Lets look at Geekbench too:

​

Moto book 60 => Source:

​

Ryzen 7 7840HS => https://www.notebookcheck.net/R7-7840HS-vs-Core-5-210H_14948_18679.247596.0.html​

Here, the single core perf of Intel is neck to neck with Ryzen.
Based on this, I feel there shouldn't be a CPU bottlenecking on the Moto Book 60, especiallly on 1440p where CPU demands are lesser than in 1080p gaming.
3. Conclusion:
I think the Core 5 variant of the Motobook 60 should be very much capable of 1440p AAA gaming when pared with a mid-range GPU such as RX 6800 in my case. As for system memory, upgrading 16gb to 32 gb should also be easy and cheap considering a vacant ram slot in the Ultra book.
This can be a great use case for a thin and light Ultrabook for when you are on the move and serious 1440p gaming at home at a budget lower than most gaming desktops:

Components	price
MotoBook 60	61k
Oculink Kit (laptop adapter + board + cable)	11k
PSU	3-4k
GPU with >12 gb vram	20-25k ( used ) (higher if new)
Total	**~ 100k**
Not included in price	Monitor, keyb, mouse etc

Ofcourse, this is not for everyone and not aiming to replace desktops. Only for a small segment who want a portable Ultrabook based setup but still want to game and still want to upgrade the most importatnt component in a gaming system - the GPU, something which is not possible in gaming laptops. Different strokes for different folks !
The only con is dremel-ing a little hole for the nvme-to-oculink adapter !! something I can live with.

​

Source:

https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/13xdfp6/i_modified_a_laptop_to_have_an_oculink_pcie_gen

 

[AINDRASIS_GUPTA]

I wouldn't even touch Motorola with a ten-foot pole, and at 60K it's basically throwing away your money for nothing. They can't even provide proper service support for their phones and this is a laptop we are talking about.

For context, Samsung has been making laptops for more than a decade now, and they still make shitty hardware. So, it's futile to expect anything good from a cash-strapped company as Moto, especially a first-gen product.

However though, the so-called tech-aka-paid Indian YTers will hype this up to oblivion.

 

[theagilecoder]

I wouldn't even touch Motorola with a ten-foot pole, and at 60K it's basically throwing away your money for nothing. They can't even provide proper service support for their phones and this is a laptop we are talking about.

For context, Samsung has been making laptops for more than a decade now, and they still make shitty hardware. So, it's futile to expect anything good from a cash-strapped company as Moto, especially a first-gen product.

However though, the so-called tech-aka-paid Indian YTers will hype this up to oblivion.

Agree with the support part. Ultrabooks with twin ram and ssd slots are so rare (maybe non existent) so I kind of got excited to see this.

 

[kaniamutan14]

Isn't using external gpu is huge bottleneck and causes issue game to game, then why do it

 

[theagilecoder]

Isn't using external gpu is huge bottleneck and causes issue game to game, then why do it

Using oculink, there is no bottleneck.

 

[Crazy_Eddy]

Motorola has launched its first Ultrabook in the indian market.

Looks like its a Lenovo rebrand, from the internals.

 

[whizzkid]

The moto book looked exciting and considering its parent company lenovo but also looking at the fact that the servicing will be handled only by motorola i don't have high hopes but only time can tell.

I wouldn't even touch Motorola with a ten-foot pole, and at 60K it's basically throwing away your money for nothing. They can't even provide proper service support for their phones and this is a laptop we are talking about.

For context, Samsung has been making laptops for more than a decade now, and they still make shitty hardware. So, it's futile to expect anything good from a cash-strapped company as Moto, especially a first-gen product.

However though, the so-called tech-aka-paid Indian YTers will hype this up to oblivion.

Samsung just has horrible QC for a lot of their products. Including their high end TV's, phones, etc

 

[kaniamutan14]

Using oculink, there is no bottleneck.

New thing I learned today,
How did you cut perfect hole in bottom and oculink speed does it depend on pcie it connects to?

 

[vivek.krishnan]

Dang. Looks good.

Why would the ASSC not be done by Lenovo?

 

[theagilecoder]

New thing I learned today,
How did you cut perfect hole in bottom and oculink speed does it depend on pcie it connects to?

I haven't cut it yet. The pic is from a reddit thread - he used a dremel tool to cut it cleanly.
Yes PCIe speed is very important. My oculink board is PCIe 4.0 - I get the full 64 Gbps provided by oculink. And the Moto Book 60 's vacant nvme slot is also PCIe 4.0 - that's why I'm so excited to buy it lol.
Last generation laptops in this budget either dont have a vacant nvme slot or it is PCIe 3.0 i.e. you get 32 Gbps, half the bandwidth i.e. same as thunderbolt i.e. low 1% lows in games and choppiness.

Dang. Looks good.

Why would the ASSC not be done by Lenovo?

I think this will become clear once a few pieces are sold. Maybe I should try tweeting to Moto and asking them before buying.

 

[kaniamutan14]

Last generation laptops in this budget either dont have a vacant nvme slot or it is PCIe 3.0 i.e. you get 32 Gbps, half the bandwidth i.e. same as thunderbolt i.e. low 1% lows in games and choppiness.

Correct me if i am wrong

What is the difference between PCIe Gen 3 and PCIe Gen 4? - Kingston Technology

PCIe Gen 4 is the latest and fastest PCIe standard available on motherboards and compatible CPUs. PCIe Gen 4 cards can accommodate the full bandwidth that is possible with NVMe SSDs technology.

www.kingston.com

Pcie 4 has 32 Gbps in 16 lanes mostly SSD has 4 lanes so it has only 8 gbps

 

[theagilecoder]

Correct me if i am wrong

What is the difference between PCIe Gen 3 and PCIe Gen 4? - Kingston Technology

PCIe Gen 4 is the latest and fastest PCIe standard available on motherboards and compatible CPUs. PCIe Gen 4 cards can accommodate the full bandwidth that is possible with NVMe SSDs technology.

www.kingston.com

Pcie 4 has 32 Gbps in 16 lanes mostly SSD has 4 lanes so it has only 8 gbps

You are mixing bytes with bits.
The Kingston site is same as I said 8GB/s = 64Gbps in 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0
Kindly look at the top comment here for explanation:
Link

 

[Mann]

Have been working on something similar. Good luck with this.
AFA the bottleneck is concerned, after doing a lot of research I feel that anything from a RTX 3050 upto a RTX 4060/3060 would be best. I did not look at the AMD side as RT was important to me. Otherwise bottleneck will depending upon the game itself something even higherend GPU's may be do the trick. These CPU'S can do 60~90fps on max settings so unless you have something like 2077 which can even saturate a RTX 5070 without any fake frames BS. Even DOOM Eternal would easily do 120fps with the same CPU.

 

[theagilecoder]

Have been working on something similar. Good luck with this.
AFA the bottleneck is concerned, after doing a lot of research I feel that anything from a RTX 3050 upto a RTX 4060/3060 would be best. I did not look at the AMD side as RT was important to me. Otherwise bottleneck will depending upon the game itself something even higherend GPU's may be do the trick. These CPU'S can do 60~90fps on max settings so unless you have something like 2077 which can even saturate a RTX 5070 without any fake frames BS. Even DOOM Eternal would easily do 120fps with the same CPU.

Actually as long as you have your gpu connected over 64 Gbps-Oculink you can run even flagship cards with 5-10% loss compared to a 232 Gbps proper motherboard desktop connection (ofcourse assuming a decent CPU).
This loss is lower as you go down the GPU hierarchy.
However, things degrade drastically over 32 Gbps thunderbolt. Have a look at these RTX 4090 comparisons :

Source

 

[Mann]

That part I'm pretty well versed. I used a gen 3 first. Then cuda-Z said I need more , so shifted to a gen 5 adopter only to realise it is very finicky. And now waiting for the gen 4 adopter to import.

 

[theagilecoder]

That part I'm pretty well versed. I used a gen 3 first. Then cuda-Z said I need more , so shifted to a gen 5 adopter only to realise it is very finicky. And now wait for for the gen 4 adopter to import.

Hey thats great, I'm happy to share my oculink gpus for research if you happen to be in blr

 

[kaniamutan14]

Please keep us posted with your work especially I like to know more about this

 

[Mann]

Incidentally I decided not to go with Oculink as it carries an overhead on the CPU side. And that was scarce in my case.

 

[theagilecoder]

Please keep us posted with your work especially I like to know more about this

Yes my miniPC + eGPU results are already in my imgur album but miniPC being not available in India, its not ideal.
Ultrabook + eGPU is my end game, if I do happen to get this or some other laptop, will post for sure.