As early as August, Aoxing launched the AG01 OCuLink eGPU docking station that integrates a 400W PSU. Today, the company officially launched its successor product 500W Aoxing AG02 eGPU The docking station remains on sale/delayed “Black Friday” pricing at $219.99 until the pre-sale window closes on December 30. The company says its new Aoostar AG02 eGPU docking stations will begin shipping “on or around January 15th,” and like the AG01, they are cross-compatible with Lenovo’s TGX eGPU interface by swapping OCuLink connectors.
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So looking at the unit and its dimensions and comparing it to its predecessor, it’s clear that the actual eGPU base itself hasn’t changed much. The exact same design is retained here, including port locations and compact 22.5 x 6 x 11cm physical dimensions, but the PSU now runs at 500W instead of 400W. Previously, PSU configurations allowed GPUs with TDPs up to 250W, capping around the RTX 4070 Super, but now, the new allocation goes up to 350W, setting a new cap for the RTX 4080 Super and other ~320W-class GPUs. taking into account 4080S is currently the third most powerful consumer GPUthis PSU configuration should be suitable for most eGPU use cases. Still, the company recommends cards up to the 4070 Super or RX 7700 XT, noting that the bandwidth limitations of the interface will limit the performance of higher-end cards.
Technically, you able It’s still possible to replace the built-in PSU, but if you’re already planning on doing so, it’s recommended that you start with a cheaper eGPU docking station that also supports user-replaceable PSUs, such as the Aoostar AG01.
This eGPU docking station comes as a ready-to-use kit out of the box. At just $219 including its 500W PSU, it seems like a compelling choice for many mini PC and handheld PC users. OCuLink support enables the fastest possible bandwidth between the eGPU and the host PC, utilizing 4 lanes of PCIe 4.0 bandwidth for an effective speed of 64 GB per second.
High-end GPUs will still be bottlenecked by this bandwidth, but as long as your CPU can keep up, these are usually minor penalties. The USB4 interface that’s also supported is another slower story, but should be considered for compatibility reasons rather than anything else. The importance of using the correct PCIe, OCuLink or eGPU equivalent compared to a standard USB or Thunderbolt connection cannot be overstated— you will You lose a lot of performance using more standard connectorsespecially the older generation.