This new eGPU dock helps any graphics card

Exterior GPUs are tremendous freakin’ cool, a minimum of to me. Plugging an ultraportable laptop computer into USB-C after which getting the outstanding cosmic energy of a gaming desktop is my pure, platonic supreme of private computing. Asus has been on the entrance of this very small market, and its latest design for full-power desktop GPUs has bought me drooling.

The ROG XG Station 3 breaks from earlier designs that had a totally encased GPU, as an alternative opting to easily allow you to plug a card right into a PCIe slot on a sturdy base and let it breathe free within the open air. Which may trigger some noise points, but it surely eliminates any dimension restrictions, as frame-style designs from smaller distributors have found. Tucked into that massive beefy slab is a 330-watt energy provide, although you’ll be able to improve it with any SFX-compatible unit.

For those who’re questioning the place the ability rail is, the promo photographs are utilizing an Asus BTF card with a customized energy supply answer that may plug into the motherboard/dock. The XG Station 3 can even use a regular 12V 2×6 connector for wider compatibility with non-Asus BTF playing cards. So between the PCIe slot and the pliability choices, it ought to work with any card available on the market proper now, although you may have to swap out the ability provide in order for you an RTX 5090 or related.

What about connecting to your laptop computer? The dock makes use of Thunderbolt 5, the latest, quickest normal that’s… really actually laborious to search out on any current gaming or productiveness laptop computer. Nicely, that’s a bummer. However the truth that Asus is making this product, even for an admittedly tiny area of interest of energy customers, would appear to point that the aptitude might be coming a minimum of in the identical basic timeline, someday later this yr or in early 2026. Name it “future-proofing,” should you can abdomen the time period.

With 80Gbps of throughput, it needs to be greater than quick sufficient to make the most of essentially the most highly effective playing cards, even at a decrease stage than a standard desktop with the identical {hardware}. Photographs posted to Twitter/X (through VideoCardz) present a minimum of three USB-C ports on the rear and two on the entrance, which needs to be sufficient to deal with any exterior {hardware} you want on prime of screens, albeit with some adapters or further docks. In fact, you’ll additionally want sufficient juice within the energy provide to energy each the GPU and your laptop computer without delay in order for you a one-cable answer.

We don’t know the ROG XG Station 3’s worth, launch date, or availability. It wasn’t included within the US-focused press releases for Computex. The earlier model was introduced approach again in 2016, so I wouldn’t even hazard a guess.