Asus ROG XG Station 3: External GPU box with Thunderbolt 5
Thanks to the higher throughput of Thunderbolt 5, Asus' dock should no longer slow down modern graphics cards as much as before.
(Image: c't / chh)
- Christian Hirsch
Asus has presented the third generation of the external graphics card dock ROG XG Station at the Computex IT trade fair, which can be used to operate powerful graphics cards on notebooks. With the ROG XG Station 3, Asus is switching from Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 5, which doubles the transfer rate to almost 7.9 GByte/s. In return, Thunderbolt 5 tunnels four PCI Express 4.0 lanes instead of PCIe 3.0. Compared to a desktop PC with 16 PCIe 5.0 lanes, this costs less performance than before, but can still slow down the GPU. Asus promises that a high-end graphics card such as Nvidia's GeForce RTX 4090 in the XG Station 3 with a Thunderbolt 5 notebook will still be faster than the significantly trimmed mobile version of the RTX 4090.
The second major difference is apparent at first glance: The ROG XG Station 3 is no longer a complete graphics card case. The graphics card is plugged in at the top and then stands open. Users with children or pets in particular need to be careful. The external graphics card dock houses a power supply unit that is sufficiently powerful (>600 watts) to supply all current GeForce RTX 5000 and Radeon RX 9000 series cards with power. The XG Station 3 also offers three USB-C ports with 10 Gbit/s to connect peripheral devices.
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Noctua prototype of the GeForce RTX 5080
As a teaser, Asus also showed a prototype of a GeForce RTX 5080 with three 120 mm fans from Noctua. This is supposed to work particularly quietly, but requires a lot of space in the case due to the large cooler. Previous Asus-Noctua models such as the GeForce RTX 4080 had two such fans and were therefore even shorter. Nothing has changed in terms of thickness: the graphics card still occupies four expansion slots. A so-called vapor chamber transports the waste heat from the GPU to the heat pipes and then to the cooling fins. Instead of classic thermal paste, a pad is used that liquefies during operation. The Noctua edition of the GeForce RTX 5080 is set to be released in the third quarter of 2025. Asus has not yet commented on the price, but the Noctua versions are usually among the most expensive manufacturer cards.
(Image:Â c't / chh)
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