ASUS unveils ROG XG Station 3: external GPU enclosure, hidden power connectors, Thunderbolt 5

ASUS had an awesome booth at Computex 2025 this year, with one of (the many) new product unveilings being the new ROG XG Station 3, a new Thunderbolt 5-powered external GPU solution.

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The new ASUS ROG XG Station 3 (with Thunderbolt 5) is an external graphics dock that boosts gaming and performance on your laptop, and it's not just for gamers: content creators, and higher-end AI workloads require much faster GPUs than you can get in a laptop... as long as you've got Thunderbolt 5, you can enjoy up to 80Gbps of bandwidth.

The external GPU solution is compatible with NVIDIA's new GeForce RTX 50 series "Blackwell" GPUs as well as AMD's new fleet of Radeon RX 9000 series "RDNA 4" graphics cards.

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ASUS is known for their fantastic aesthetics, with the ROG XG Station 3 looking great in the flesh... and we've also got the new GC-HPWR power connector, which has a removable adapter design, letting you take advantage of motherboards that sport cable-free power delivery to graphics cards. You can either use regular power cables, or later down the track upgrade to a new motherboard that features the new standard.

The GC-HPWR power connector is capable of delivering up to 1000W of power, but there's nothing on the market that gets close to that -- the new RTX 5090 hits around 600W of so, so you're good for power with up to 1000W on the new ROG XG Station 3. ASUS was using its flagship ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 at Computex, which also looks great.

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You will get some performance loss running a graphics card in the external Thunderbolt 5-powered GPU solution, but ASUS says that it should closely match desktop performance in things like Blender and AI workloads, while in gaming -- with Cyberpunk 2077 and Alan Wake 2 used as examples -- falling short of the mobile GPU solutions like the RTX 5090 Laptop GPU.

But, if you're someone who has just purchased a new laptop with a mid-range APU but wanted some more GPU oomph, and just so happen to have Thunderbolt 5, the new ASUS ROG XG Station 3 could be your next purchase.

ROG XG Station 3 (Thunderbolt™ 5)

• ROG XG Station 3 (Thunderbolt™ 5) external graphics dock boosts gaming & pro performance on your laptop without sacrificing portability.
• Engage in gaming, video editing, 3D rendering, or building AI deep learning applications-all while enjoying the portability of a laptop
• Thunderbolt 5 port allows easy laptop upgrade to deliver up to 80Gbps performance
• Compatible with NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series and up, or AMD Radeon RX9000 series
• Features ASUS Aura Sync