#External gpu enclosure amazon upgrade#

However, the arrival - and recent growing popularity - of Thunderbolt 3 means that there's now an industry-standard interface that can provide sufficient bandwidth to cope with the vast amount of data processed by the latest GPUs. In the past, though, most eGPUs were proprietary devices, typically designed as a dock for use with laptop PCs from a particular manufacturer, such as Asus or Sony. And, of course, gaming is a key market for eGPUs, as 3D games and VR titles require ever-greater levels of graphics horsepower.

#External gpu enclosure amazon upgrade#

The increasing popularity of non-upgradeable all-in-one desktop systems, such as Apple's iMac, also means that there are plenty of creative and professional users who need to upgrade their office computers for the current generation of graphics, video and VR software.

Using an external GPU also means that you can still use your lightweight laptop on the road, and then simply fire up the eGPU to provide desktop levels of performance when you're back in the office. That's increasingly the case with slimline ultraportables that barely have room for a few USB ports, let alone a high-end graphics card and cooling fan. The advantage of an eGPU is that it allows you to boost the graphics performance of a laptop or desktop PC that might not provide a more conventional upgrade path. In fact, the first version of the Asus XG Station was released back in 2007, as a way of enhancing graphics performance on its range of gaming laptops.

External graphics processing units - or eGPUs - have been around for many years.