I’ve been experimenting lately with external GPUs on the channel, especially now that Oculink ports are showing up in more mini PCs. One of my ongoing frustrations, though, is that a lot of the budget Oculink gear looks like a science fair project when you set it up—there’s power supplies and cables all over the place.
The other day a company called GTBox reached out and sent over their G-Dock, which aims to clean things up a bit. You can see it in action in my latest video review.
The G-Dock integrates an 800 watt power supply, which not only makes things neater but also more convenient. What’s nice about the G-Dock is that it’s more versatile than most setups I’ve tried. It supports both Oculink and Thunderbolt/USB 4 connections, and the USB/Thunderbolt port also provides power delivery, so it can charge a laptop with up to 100 watts while providing external GPU support all through one connection. You don’t get a traditional enclosure with this—your card mounts on top, exposed—but it does make for a more compact and affordable option.
The unit sells for $249 on GTBox’s site (compensated affiliate link), and they provided a coupon code—LON10—for an extra $10 off. It’s also on Amazon. Just keep in mind, if you’re connecting over USB 4, you’ll need a full 40 Gbps port for it to work. A lot of USB-C ports look the same, but older USB 3.2 ports won’t cut it. Oculink, on the other hand, requires your PC to have an Oculink port or an adapter that adds it. Some mini PCs have them built in now, and I’ve tested some of those here in the past.
For the G-Dock test, I hooked up a 4060 GPU to the dock and connected it to a MinisForum mini PC using the included Oculink cable. It’s important to note that Oculink isn’t hot-swappable, so you need to boot the system with the connection already in place. I also made sure to connect my HDMI cable directly to the GPU rather than the mini PC for best performance—routing through the system’s onboard video usually results in lower performance.
The G-Dock powered up just fine. The GPU’s fan spun up, Windows detected the card, and after installing the latest NVIDIA drivers, I fired up Cyberpunk at 1080p with medium settings which ran great. The mini PC featured in this video has strong CPU performance but weak integrated graphics, so the external GPU really gave it a boost.
Next, I tried it with a laptop over Thunderbolt. Everything worked as expected, though there was a small performance dip compared to the Oculink connection. I also made sure to disable the laptop’s internal display and run everything through the external monitor connected to the GPU, which helps avoid further performance losses.
Overall, the G-Dock felt solid. The fan noise was minimal, and the integrated power made it a lot less cluttered than the other Oculink setups I’ve worked with. Still, I’d like to see companies revisit the more protective enclosures we see in the Thunderbolt world—something that completely houses the card and power supply for better durability and aesthetics. But all in this is one of the better Oculink solutions I’ve used.
Disclosure: GTBox sent the eGPU enclosure to the channel free of charge. I purchased the 4060 GPU with my own funds. No other compensation was received and no one reviewed or approved this post or video before it was uploaded.