ASUS has announced the ROG XG Station 3, an external graphics card dock featuring Thunderbolt 5 with up to 80Gbps of bidirectional bandwidth. It supports graphics cards from NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 Series, RTX PRO 6000 Series, AMD Radeon RX 9000 Series, and Intel Arc Series.
ROG XG Station 3
The ROG XG Station 3 uses an open-frame design that leaves the installed graphics card fully exposed, both as a visual centerpiece and to allow unrestricted airflow to the card’s fans. This helps the GPU maintain higher boost clocks during intensive gaming or rendering sessions compared to enclosed eGPU enclosures.
The dock includes a GC-HPWR (HPCE) slot for ASUS’s BTF 2.5-based graphics cards, such as the TUF Gaming GeForce RTX 5080 BTF OC Edition and the ROG Astral GeForce RTX 5090 BTF Edition. These BTF cards draw power directly through the slot without requiring a visible PCIe power cable, keeping the setup visually clean; of course, standard graphics cards are also fully supported, though the power cable will remain visible in those cases.
Aesthetically, the XG Station 3 features polished metallic surfaces and full Aura Sync support, allowing its RGB lighting to be synchronized with other compatible ASUS peripherals and components.
On the connectivity side, the primary Thunderbolt 5 upstream port offers up to 140W of USB Power Delivery alongside its 80Gbps data transfer (or up to 120Gbps in Bandwidth Boost mode). This single-cable connection handles data, display output, and laptop charging simultaneously.
A secondary Thunderbolt 5 downstream port supports daisy-chaining of USB-C monitors for up to three 4K displays and delivers up to 36W of USB Power Delivery for mobile devices or peripherals. Two USB 10Gbps Type-C ports are positioned at the front of the dock for quick access to gaming gear and external storage.
The ROG XG Station 3 does not include a power supply unit – users are required to install their own standard SFX or SFX-L PSUs. The dock is compatible with any laptop that has a Thunderbolt 5 or Thunderbolt 4 port, and supports graphics cards measuring up to 360mm long, 139mm wide, and 93mm tall.
The ROG XG Station 3 will be available in Malaysia from early December 2026 at a recommended retail price of RM1,539.
Pokdepinion: Great specs, but RM1,539 before you even buy a GPU or PSU is quite the commitment.
