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Gigabyte Launches RTX 4090 Gaming Box That Plugs Into Your Laptop
Gigabyte has launched a new external graphics box for laptops featuring a liquid-cooled RTX 4090 graphics card. The box is designed to turn thin and light laptops into powerful gaming machines for users who use their laptops on the go and as their gaming battle station. The box features Thunderbolt 3 /4 connectivity for hooking up the GPU to your laptop, as well as additional USB ports and video-out connections.
At the heart of Gigabyte's Aorus Gaming Box is a factory-overclocked liquid-cooled GeForce RTX 4090 graphics card, that features an Aorus Waterforce 240mm AIO cooling solution cooling the GPU, memory, and power delivery system. The cooling solution sports a large copper base plate for cooling the graphics card components, highly durable FEP tubing, and two 120mm "silent fans" connected to the radiator.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
As a result, the card should have exceptionally good temperatures offering high clock speeds, good overclocking potential, and longevity due to reduced temps. Gigabyte doesn't specify which RTX 4090 model is used in this box, but we suspect it could be a modified Aorus RTX 4090 Xtreme Waterforce for obvious reasons.
The box itself measures 189 x 302 x 172mm and comes in a mature aesthetic paint job, doused in a matte black finish accented by a single Aorus RGB logo on the front of the chassis. For ventilation the box features ventilated top, left, and right side panels that allow air to either escape or exhaust out in and out of the chassis.
Powering the entire box is an 850W power supply, with a 90% efficiency rating, featuring four 8-pin PCIe power plugs. Gigabyte does not suggest that the graphics card is user replaceable, but we suspect it might be, given the fact Gigabyte is going with four 8-pins instead of a native 16-pin power plug on the PSU.
(Image credit: Gigabyte)
The Gigabyte 4090 box also comes with a decent amount of rear and front I/O, sporting three Displayport 1.4a connections, a single HDMI 2.1a connector, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, an ethernet port, and a Thunderbolt 3 port (that is also forward compatible with Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4 ports). Plus there's an additional USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port in the front. The rear Thunderbolt 3 port features support for up to 100W of power delivery, allowing users to charge their laptop while using the graphics card and its additional connectivity simultaneously.
Gigabyte has not disclosed an MSRP or launch date for its new Aorus RTX 4090 Gaming Box. However, the Gigabyte announcement does say the product has launched, so we should see it here very shortly.
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What I would really like to see is something very similar "External" box with GPU but instead of connecting to Monitor/Display screens (laptops etc..), it comes with a connector/cable that connects it directly onto the Motherboard's PCI-E slot not compromising any speed/performance bottlenecks.
That way, we can have a LOT less WATTs requirement for PSU as well as a lot less heat inside the PC Case and not to mention a heck LOT of more room since GPU sizes keep increasing only.
You would be better off buying an Alienware M16/M18 which can be configured with a 13th gen Intel CPU's and a 4090 16GB. Alienware makes crappy desktops but their laptops are pretty decent with excellent cooling.
So, I'd carry my laptop around in one hand, with this box on its own cart being pulled along behind me with the other... Sure, but for the price and weight, why not just drop in a CPU and call it a day? This is kind of silly.
So, I'd carry my laptop around in one hand, with this box on its own cart being pulled along behind me with the other... Sure, but for the price and weight, why not just drop in a CPU and call it a day? This is kind of silly.
The premise makes sense. How often does one click heads in a Starbucks? It's supposed to be the best of both worlds. A portable thin & light laptop, that you plug into this for gaming at home.
It's not a new idea though. I didn't see this implementation was able to hit the 80Gbps one-way interconnect speed cap of TB4 or USB4. The interconnect speed on TB3 eGPU's were bottlenecking, all cards took a hit due to latency, then bandwidth limited for more powerful GPU's (RTX 2070 was about the max performance over TB3, if I remember correctly).
I kinda thought eGPU's were dead with the 3000 series. It'd be cool if they overcame the bandwidth issues, and interested in benchmarks for this. This is a neat idea, but in practice it's been cheaper and better performance to just have a dedicated desktop at home and a separate laptop for working on the go.
