I wouldn’t want to find out the hard way. I have a BMD decklink 4k mini monitor PCIe card. I used to use it in a PC, but I upgraded to a laptop. To replace with an external input device is too expensive unless I downgrade capability significantly.
PCIe chassis are more expensive than expected but I’ve noticed ones that specifically call themselves ‘eGPU enclosures’. For some reason when they’re marketed to that specific purpose, they cost a lot less, probably because they often don’t come with power supplies (which I actually have spare).
I’m looking at 2 such eGPU enclosures and they are a decent price and I think they should work, but I’m a little scared by them specifically saying “eGPU”. Would I likely have any problems buying one of those for my PCIe device rather than for a graphics card? Or is PCIe, PCIe regardless?
You should be able to turn it on on the enclosure and then plug it into the laptop whenever, similarly you should be able to disconnect it from the laptop whenever and then switch it off
My turning off the laptop is more of a precaution from what weird things I’ve seen cheap no-names do in the past.
I would see if you can find the manual online somewhere and see what it says, it should specify the proper order of doing things or worst case you’d have to test with a cheap PCIe device
Worst case consequence, the PCIe device should be what dies here since the enclosure is likely being powered externally, but most likely it’ll just cause a crash.
Not to say it’s impossible for it to burn out a port, but it would require some serious negligence on the manufacturer