Review on Enhanced Mini PCI-E to PCI-E Express 1X Extension Cord Adapter with USB Riser Card: Amplify Your Connectivity Options by Hugh Starr

Well it worked. Use it to connect a GTX 960 to my laptop. There were issues getting the graphics card to properly power the laptop's internal display, but when using an external display, the GPU worked well. This is certainly a significant improvement over the laptop's internal graphics, but the bottleneck is still the fact that it's only a PCI-e 2.0 x1 interface. However, it was a proof of concept before spending money on more expensive adapters. Tried with a few different laptops from MSI and Clevo and it worked. I hope to try this with a few other laptops later. The basic idea was to turn an old laptop into a low-mid (usable) gaming machine to leave with my brother so I didn't have to lug around my main unit. I also tried switching to one of the other cables that came with it, but it didn't fit properly. This resulted in the loss of that PCI-e lane until I unplugged the power and battery from the laptop for a while, then it worked again (even the Wi-Fi module I used to put in that slot worked after won't restart for a while until I've turned off all power and given time to figure it out).