Gigabyte is preparing its entry into the external GPU dock market, but it is still early in development and we are unlikely to see a finished version in the near future.
This early version of Gigabyte’s GPU dock is fairly limited power wise compared to the ones from Asus, Powercolor and Razer. Although the GPU dock is roughly the same size as its would-be competitors, both Powercolor and Razer use 500W PSUs, while Gigabyte is using just a 250W power supply. It is even further behind the Asus ROG XG2, which has a beefy 680W PSU.
This means that Gigabyte's GPU dock cannot support GPUs that consume over 175W. Technically, you could attempt to run a GPU that needs more power than that, but to ensure stability at peak power consumption, it is best to stay 25 percent below the PSUs total power output.
Gigabyte is considering switching to a 350W PSU, which would open the dock up to GPUs that consume up to 262.5W on average. That should be plenty of power to run high-end GPUs like Nvidia's GTX 1080. It wouldn't completely resolve the problem, however, as devices connected to the GPU dock can absorb up to 100W over the USB Type-C port, but it is impossible to tell how serious the power issue is without testing the performance and efficiency of the PSU inside.
Similar to the Devil Box and the Razer Core, Gigabyte opted to use Thunderbolt 3 over a USB Type-C port, and it is designed to be compatible with essentially any PC with that supports these technologies.
The current prototype is a little different from the other external GPU docks we have seen in that it stands up instead of laying down on a flat surface (see photos above). This might be the finished case design, but it it also may change. We actually saw two versions of this GPU dock, but one of them was essentially a black rectangular box and certainly wasn’t a finished prototype.
Because the dock is still being developed, Gigabyte didn’t know how much it would cost or when it would be available. We likely won’t see a finished version for several months at the very least.
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