Tuesday, May 28th 2019
ASRock RX570TM-ITX TBT is a Thunderbolt External GPU with Copious Amounts of Downstream I/O
ASRock showed off the TM-ITX TBT external graphics box platform with a model powered by a Radeon RX 570 GPU. Roughly the size of an SFF mini PC (hence the name thin-mini ITX), the TM-ITX TBT plugs into a 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 connector, and in addition to graphics, puts out a constellation of downstream connectivity that includes a 1 GbE wired Ethernet, four USB 3.1 type-A ports, USB 2.0, and a drive bay with SATA 6 Gbps connectivity. Display outputs include two HDMI 2.0, and LVDS (for all-in-one desktops). The RX 570 comes in 4 GB or 8 GB options.
18 Comments on ASRock RX570TM-ITX TBT is a Thunderbolt External GPU with Copious Amounts of Downstream I/O
I wonder what the price will be. The Lenovo I got from Lenovo's US store at ~$220 on sale (it's back to $300 now).
At ~$250 with <$200 sales, this would probably be a nice buy.
Should the rest be given away for free?
Small correction:
"1 GbE wired Ethernet" The capital "E" already stands for "Ethernet". :)
It's pretty much squarely aimed at MacBook users, who have only TB3 for expansion options and mostly are stuck with an Iris iGPU or lower. I agree it's not optimal, but beggars can't be choosers, even if said beggars paid over $1000 to be one.
Besides, even for an eGPU, this simplifies its design and manufacturing - just swap in a different GPU on the same board, keep the I/O, done. Easy future upgrades (likely not for end users, but for OEMs/system integrators).
Why it took so long and why it don't use an upgradable GPU like any other?
Still, there's plenty of room to adapt this to fit a normal GPU - just add a PCIe slot instead of the GPU, and ideally angled so the GPU is parallel to the board. Done. You'd need a very weird case, though.
AMD is too busy pushing their APU idea to care (and Intel has done it much better than AMD - using one of AMD's own GPUs, too!). Intel is likely to not be interested in pushing something that really only benefits Nvidia.
So without Nvidia pushing, MXM is dead. I don't even believe the MXM organization's website is active anymore. In which universe is a RX570 still worth $200? Even the RX590 has dipped to $160 as of late.
IMO, the dock should have a ceiling of $250, though I am aware Mac users are basically stuck with AMD cards (they are about the only market where eGPUs actually make sense - I'm saying this as a Windows eGPU user with a TB3 GPU dock and a Thinkpad X1 Carbon 6th gen). As a result, this does mean the vendors can fleece Mac users (they are used to it, anyways). For the rest of the market, my postulated $250 is a generous MSRP. I was thinking of ~$250 MSRP with two hundred street price, just like my Lenovo TB3 GPU dock was "$400", but really sold for around $270 and dipped lower than that.