GIGABYTE's 2021 AORUS Gaming Box eGPU Packs RTX 3080 Ti, Liquid Cooling

[btarunr]

The 2021 GIGABYTE AORUS Gaming Box external GPU was debuted late last week. It introduces many firsts for a market less addressed this generation, particularly due to the GPU shortage. The lineup debuts with a model based on NVIDIA's flagship GeForce RTX 3080 Ti, and introduces a liquid-cooling. The box uses an all-in-one, closed-loop liquid cooler to tame the RTX 3080 Ti, using a 240 mm x 120 mm radiator and a pair of 120 mm fans located inside the box, while additional fans ventilate the rest of its innards.

For all its might, the card is bound to be bottlenecked by its interface—a single 40 Gbps Thunderbolt 3 connection that gives the GPU the equivalent of a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface. Our RTX 3080 non-Ti PCI Express Scaling article shows that the GPU loses 12% performance on PCI-Express 1.1 x16 (comparable bandwidth to PCIe 3.0 x4). Other features of the AORUS Gaming Box include a USB 3.0 hub, and addressable RGB lighting that you can control using the RGB Fusion software. The company didn't reveal pricing or availability, but one can expect a roughly $300-400 markup over whatever the running rate of an RTX 3080 Ti these days, is. GIGABYTE is expected to carve out more Gaming Box products based on the same chassis, but using different GPUs.



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[eidairaman1]

Let me guess proprietary?

 

[Emerald_x86]

A thunderbolt 3 controller does not provide the bandwidth of an x4 3.0 link (32Gbps) to an eGPU. It only allocates 22Gb to the PCI Express traffic.

 

[nguyen]

Okay why would anyone buy this instead of a mini-ITX PC? this looks about the same size as CoolerMaster NR200 case.

 

[kayjay010101]

Okay why would anyone buy this instead of a mini-ITX PC? this looks about the same size as CoolerMaster NR200 case.

Ultralight laptop with TB3 + this = extreme portability while still being able to game when at home. All on one computer
And for the price of a GPU + $300-400 that's quite a bit cheaper than going with another secondary full system.

 

[Mussels]

Okay why would anyone buy this instead of a mini-ITX PC? this looks about the same size as CoolerMaster NR200 case.

plug it into your macbook pro so it can actually do some rendering work

 

[Chomiq]

Last week at GB HQ - "Prices are going down, quick let's make something that we can charge people extra for!"

 

[nguyen]

Ultralight laptop with TB3 + this = extreme portability while still being able to game when at home. All on one computer
And for the price of a GPU + $300-400 that's quite a bit cheaper than going with another secondary full system.

yeah except that can I build a mini-ITX PC with 11700F + 3070/3070Ti for the same price and it would outperform this eGPU hooked to the most expensive Ultrabook due to the higher TDP CPU.

The one eGPU that make sense to me is the Asus Flow X13 where you can carry the eGPU along with the laptop in your backback

 

[kayjay010101]

yeah except that can I build a mini-ITX PC with 11700F + 3070/3070Ti for the same price and it would outperform this eGPU hooked to the most expensive Ultrabook due to the higher TDP CPU.

The one eGPU that make sense to me is the Asus Flow X13 where you can carry the eGPU along with the laptop in your backback

But you can't use that ITX machine as a laptop.

 

[OCQuadNick]

But you can't use that ITX machine as a laptop.

Yeah, you would use the laptop as a laptop except with out any of the hassle of messing with cables/docks. Not only that you would now have multiple computers..

 

[kayjay010101]

Yeah, you would use the laptop as a laptop except with out any of the hassle of messing with cables/docks.

I can't for the life of me understand what point you're trying to make here. Apologies, I might be a bit of a dumbass as evident by my comment history.
Could you perhaps rephrase it for me?

Not only that you would now have multiple computers..

A positive for some, a negative for others. I don't think that's either a good or bad thing necessarily, so I didn't bother pointing it out. Most people I would assume want to have everything on one machine, but I know other people will curse me out for that and say "keep work and personal stuff separate!!".

 

[OCQuadNick]

I can't for the life of me understand what point you're trying to make here. Apologies, I might be a bit of a dumbass as evident by my comment history.
Could you perhaps rephrase it for me?

Sorry, that's my bad. I have had a bad experience with a TB3 external GPU dock needing specific cables and also having to reseat the TB cable to get it to work and even when it did work I notice massive dips from using the same card in my rig. I have since moved to an ITX gaming computer and haven't looked back. So maybe my experience doesn't apply to all.

I just don't see the utility in buying a expensive proprietary box just to be able to turn your laptop into a gaming machine when a SFF build takes the same foot print. I also think the whole liquid cooling system is such a waste when it probably wont even preform as good as a regular air cooled desktop 3080 due to the bandwidth bottleneck. I agree with an earlier comment about the ASUS E-GPU that has a 3080 in it being much more interesting (Portable and it has pcie Gen3 8x) and I would have considered it if I didn't already build my ITX pc.