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

theagilecoder

Forerunner
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.
r/IndianGaming - Source : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-ei5C1mDs

Source :
Moreover, the vacant slot seems to be of the PCIe 4.0 variety. Should be atleast 4 lanes I suspect.
r/IndianGaming - 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.
r/IndianGaming - right angle nvme to oculink adapter.

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
r/IndianGaming - Oculink Kit - It says PCI 3.0 but its actually PCI 4.0

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:
r/IndianGaming - The new Motorola Book 60 laptop has a 2nd nvme slot - Can it game in 1440p using eGPU - A weekend analysis

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.
r/IndianGaming - The new Motorola Book 60 laptop has a 2nd nvme slot - Can it game in 1440p using eGPU - A weekend analysis

r/IndianGaming - The new Motorola Book 60 laptop has a 2nd nvme slot - Can it game in 1440p using eGPU - A weekend analysis

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:
r/IndianGaming - Moto book 60 => Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-ei5C1mDs

Moto book 60 => Source:
r/IndianGaming - 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:
r/IndianGaming - Moto book 60 => Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4-ei5C1mDs

Moto book 60 => Source:
r/IndianGaming - 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:
Componentsprice
MotoBook 6061k
Oculink Kit (laptop adapter + board + cable)11k
PSU3-4k
GPU with >12 gb vram20-25k ( used ) (higher if new)
Total**~ 100k**
Not included in priceMonitor, 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.
r/IndianGaming - Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/eGPU/comments/13xdfp6/i_modified_a_laptop_to_have_an_oculink_pcie_gen/

 
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.
 
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.
 
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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