An External Video Card for your Laptop - ASUS GX2 - CES 2016

The ASUS GX2 is presented as a portable yet powerful external graphics solution designed for laptops, showcased at CES 2016. The device is described as a modular enclosure that can house a desktop graphics card, enabling a significant uplift in gaming and graphics performance without sacrificing portability. In the demonstration, the host highlights that the enclosure supports a range of GPU lengths and blower configurations, which suggests a flexible and adaptable design. The GX2 is powered by two external 220 watt bricks connected through a custom internal PCB, and it uses a USB 3.1 Type-C port with Thunderbolt 3 to deliver a PCI Express 4X3.0 link to the installed GPU, which the host notes is more than sufficient for contemporary graphics tasks. A GeForce GTX 980 Ti is shown inside, indicating that the box can accommodate high-end desktop GPUs and that Asus has navigated space constraints to fit tall and long cards. The build quality is praised, with remarks about the hinge and general construction, while the current status of compatibility with other notebooks remains somewhat unclear and not fully disclosed. The host discusses potential future compatibility, emphasizing that a user should be able to leverage the enclosure even if their notebook lacks native PCIe slots, though it is indicated that some aspects of the ecosystem may still be locked to Asus notebooks. The demonstration also raises questions about how the system would behave if the external GPU is unplugged mid-use, acknowledging that hot-plug functionality is part of the intended feature set but not fully proven in the shown build. In summary, the GX2 is framed as a high-end, versatile external GPU enclosure that aims to blend portability, performance, and expandability at a CES 2016 showcase, with caveats about final product readiness and cross-notebook compatibility.

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