Although it may seem strange to us, having an external graphics card is not a practice that has, by any means, fallen into disuse, since in the end it is one of the solutions we can have to incorporate greater power to a device such as a laptop. It may seem to us, from the beginning, that it is a useless practice, and certainly in terms of performance it is worse, but thanks to the OCuLinka dock for GPU external can offer higher performance, like this one created in China.
Getting a PC component to install outside of the computer itself can generally seem crazy, since from the beginning we know that the connections we have externally can be quite slow compared to connecting the part itself to the board. base. But obviously there are times in which even if we wanted to, we could not do this, either due to the fact of using a laptop, a miniPC or another type of device in which we cannot connect an internal graphics card, and this is where the External GPUs.
What makes this dock special
There are several models of docks for GPU external that can catch our attention, either because of what they occupy, because of the futuristic (or retro) design they may have, and even because they are extremely minimalist, as may be the case with the dock created by Metaphyuni In collaboration with Gzosmeta. This dock offers an extremely small design, which allows it to be transported easily, although we cannot say the same about the graphics that we can install on it, taking into account their size.
According to the creators, this dock to connect a GPU external comes with the main reason of taking advantage of the power that the new Lenovo ThinkPad laptops are capable of, which come equipped with the new TGX connector, which is really OCuLink but with another name. From the company that created the dock itself, they indicate that the new Lenovo connector is perfectly compatible with OCuLinkso it shouldn’t be a problem (knowing that they are practically the same).
This standard allows reaching a bandwidth of 64GB/s, something much higher than what we can find with USB4/Thunderbolt, which the maximum they are capable of offering in their current version is 40GB/s, so OCuLink It has become the preference for many people. On the other hand, this dock also includes an 80+ Platinum power supply, with a power of 550W and a peculiar design based on the CRPS standard, used in servers, which allows you to change and replace the PSU at any time.
Supports all high-end graphics
One of the advantages that we can find in addition to its size, the power supply with great energy efficiency and the connector that offers higher speeds, is found in the support it has for most NVIDIA GPUs. Although in part this has more to do with the connector that the laptop that we want to use incorporates, this dock is designed mainly for the highest ranges of NVIDIA graphics, it supports the 30 series in its vast majority, along with the low range of the 40 series with some limitations.
Where it really stands out is in the 4070, 4080 and 4090 graphics from the company that created the RTX, since it supports all of these video cards in practically the vast majority of laptops currently on sale in the Chinese market.