Why Asus’ world-first Thunderbolt 5 eGPU is on my gamer wishlist

Asus just completely sold me on mobile GPUs by unveiling the world’s first eGPU and dock with Thunderbolt 5 connectivity at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Spoiler alert: it comes with powerful ports.

Asus ROG XG mobile (2025)which looks a bit like a mini PC, can harness the power of Nvidia’s avant-garde RTX 5090 chip through a single cable connection. But he can do much more. The compact dock, weighing less than 2.2 pounds, also delivers up to 150W of peak power, supports dual monitors via HDMI 2.1 and USB DisplayPort 2.1, and has an SD card reader for entertainment—all while providing a 5Gbps Ethernet connection.

The fact that it can do all this without self-destructing comes down to one thing: Thunderbolt 5 connectivity. The next-generation Thunderbolt 5 I/O interface, unveiled in late 2024, ups the data transfer ante. It’s for this reason that the 2025 ROG XG Mobile delivers 80Gbps bidirectional data transfer speeds, allowing you to squeeze every ray-traced pixel performance out of the eGPU chip.

Simply put, this means you can plug a laptop into this baby and turn it into the baddest slot machine this side of Texas. Reports from Asus claim that it can deliver a whopping 64Gbps speeds to Nvidia cards, which beats USB4 and matches OCuLink – and that’s with the added versatility you don’t get with a Thunderbolt 4 eGPU.

In terms of versatility, the 2025 ROG XG Mobile is head and shoulders above the 2024 version, which only supported the Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU. And unlike that dock, this one works with standard ports rather than a few proprietary Asus ports. ROG XG Mobile 2025 also features an advanced cooling system with a new copper vapor chamber and thicker capillary structures compared to previous models.

Are you already sold like me? If so, you’ll still want to keep a few things in mind… If you’re going to spend the $2,199.99 asking price for the RTX 5090 model, or even the $1,199.99 for the lower-end RTX 5070 Ti model, you’ll need a laptop with a Thunderbolt 5 port to unlock its full potential. (And there are very few of them these days.) Of course, you’ll still be able to use it with laptops that only have Thunderbolt 4 and USB4 ports—you just won’t get the full bang for your buck!

Also, it’s worth knowing a little secret about the Thunderbolt 5 ecosystem: it has some quirks we hope they don’t rear their ugly head, especially since the 2025 ROG XG Mobile is very powerful and well-designed hardware.

I’m an optimist. If Asus has created such a beast, then I damn well want it to work.