ASUS has officially announced ROG The only part that remains in the sealed housing is the power compartment.

This approach targets two inherent bottlenecks of previous eGPUs: the sealed box increases the temperature around the card, and the old 40Gbps connection port does not have enough bandwidth for the desktop card to maximize its power.

XG Station 3 switches to Thunderbolt 5 with a maximum bandwidth of 80Gbps two-way, double Thunderbolt 4, so that a thin and light laptop can borrow the power of a desktop card without having to change computers.

Main parameters:

• Connection: Thunderbolt 5, maximum bandwidth 80Gbps two-way; Bandwidth Boost up to 120Gbps one-way for large video traffic
• Charge laptop via Thunderbolt 5 input port: maximum 140W (Power Delivery)
• Thunderbolt 5 output port: maximum 36W PD power supply for mobile devices and peripherals
• Front port: 2 USB-C 10Gbps ports
• Maximum card size: 361 × 139.3 × 93.9 mm
• Power source: not included in the box, install standard SFX or SFX-L power source yourself; ASUS recommends 750W or more, 80 PLUS Gold standard
• Screen: up to 3 4K screens when combining the Thunderbolt 5 output port with the video output port on the card

Open frame design

The problem with a closed case eGPU dock is that heat is trapped around the card, the card size is limited by the case, and expensive hardware is hidden. XG Station 3 completely removes the sealed box in the card part: the card is mounted directly on the dock, the airflow flows straight into the cooling fan without being blocked, and at the same time the user can clearly see his hardware.

According to the company, this open frame architecture helps the card maintain higher boost clocks during heavy gaming or rendering, because heat does not accumulate like in a sealed case.

The remaining sealed part is the power compartment at the bottom. The dock also supports Aura Sync RGB lighting, synchronizing effects with other devices in the ROG ecosystem.

Thunderbolt 5 with 80Gbps

The biggest bottleneck of eGPUs was previously in the connection port: Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 only reached a maximum of 40Gbps. XG Station 3 uses Thunderbolt 5 with a maximum bandwidth of 80Gbps two-way, double the previous generation. With large video traffic, Bandwidth Boost technology also pushes one-way bandwidth up to 120Gbps.

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The dock is backward compatible with Thunderbolt 4, so laptops with only Thunderbolt 4 ports can still be used, but the bandwidth is then only 40Gbps.

Note that the removable monitor needs to support USB-C DisplayPort mode to receive signals from the Thunderbolt 5 output port.

Power and ports: one cable does many things

XG Station 3 combines both charging and data into a single Thunderbolt 5 cable: both transmitting data at 80Gbps and charging the laptop with a maximum capacity of 140W, no longer having to plug in 2 wires like older generation eGPUs.

The second Thunderbolt 5 port serves as an output, both outputting images and providing up to 36W of PD power for mobile devices and peripherals. Two 10Gbps USB-C ports on the front to attach additional controllers, removable hard drives or other accessories.

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Regarding graphics cards, XG Station 3 is compatible with the latest desktop card lines today: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50, RTX PRO 6000, AMD Radeon RX 9000 and Intel Arc.

The most notable point lies in the GC-HPWR slot for ASUS BTF 2.5 standard cards. This slot supplies power directly to the card without the need for a separate power cord, keeping the inside of the dock neat and free of loose wires. Technology pages cited ASUS's announcement as examples of two compatible BTF card models: TUF Gaming RTX 5080 BTF OC Edition and ROG Astral RTX 5090 BTF Edition.

ASUS is targeting three main user groups for this dock: gamers who want to turn their laptops into desktop gaming consoles, creative people who need desktop card power for work, and AI programmers who need more computing power that laptops don't have.

According to:

ASUS