Harnessing performance from external GPUS are not new. They’ve actually been around for about 10 years now. But the question is, are they finally really ready for prime time? Previously, there were external PCI adapters or even some that powered via USB like the ROG’s original XG station, but the best implementation yet are external GPUs that connect via Thunderbolt 3 technology. Theoretically, you can push about 40GB/s but a lot of other factors will either bottleneck full performance or leave it completely useless, based on experience. Today, we take a look at Aorus RTX2070 Gaming box and see if the technology has matured and/or if Aorus has pushed their product to the limits and get as much performance as it should perform at.
Packaging and Contents
The Aorus RTX 2070 Gaming box comes in a black and orange box that’s about as big as Power Supply Unit boxes go. They come with a lot of details about the product and is very informative.
After opening the outer carton, you will be greeted by a big plain box with an Aorus logo on it and not much else. Opening this box reveals a bag that resembles a camera bag.
Inside this bag, you will then be greeted directly by the Gaming box, a thunderbolt 3 connector, a power connector, a manual and a CD for drivers.
Now, let’s take a look at the gaming box itself.
The Aorus RTX 2070 Gaming Box
The Gaming box itself was not big. It measured at only 212x96x162(mm) and weighed just a little bit over 2KG, about the same as a regular laptop. It already has it’s own PSU built in PLUS an NVIDIA RTX2070 GPU with 8GB of DDR6. It’s a full GPU, not a cut down version.
In terms of port selections, we haev 4 USBs and 1 Type C with thunderbolt 3 from the gaming box itself while the GPU had it’s standard RTX2070 output ports that consisted of 3 Display ports and 1 HDMI port. The card itself should be upgradeable to a more powerful version but you will require an SFF GPU or Small Form Factor, so it can fit inside the box. You could probably find an SFF of an RTX2080 if the RTX2070 isn’t enough for you.
Lastly, it’s important to mention that there is no external powerbrick, and all you have to do is hook up the powercable to the PSU and you’re all good to go. Note as well that the Gaming Box won’t start up until you have the Type C plugged into a compatible thunderbolt 3 port.
Testing the Aorus Gaming Box
For this testing, we will be using an MSI GS65 Stealth powered by the latest i7-8750H, 16GB Ram, 512GB NVME SSD and a GTX1060. The most important spec, however, is the thunderbolt 3 capability.
The main purpose is to see how much of the RTX2070’s performanec we could harness via the thunderbolt 3 and see if the performance boost is worth the price. On the other end, we have to use the thunderbolt 3 port of fthe Aorus Gaming box.
After plugging both ends, the Aorus Gaming box immediately started and the MSI GS65 was able to recognize it as an external GPU.
HOWEVER, One of our initial worries were proven correct.
External GPUS, don’t directly work with laptops that already came installed with a discrete GPU without an external monitor. And that’s a bummer.
We tried every way possible to get through this roadblock and, after a few hours, the laptop finally recognized the Aorus Gaming box’s RTX2070 as the power for the display but unfortunately games and benchmark apps weren’t. In the end, we did result with an external monitor hooked up via the output of Aorus Gaming box.
Only after then, were we able to finally run the Aorus gaming box through it’s paces. Now, time for some benchmarks!
Synthetic Benchmarks
We ran the Aorus Gaming Box in 3D Mark to see how it fares versus laptops and their dedicated GPUs and while we already expected a slight decrease in performance versus a gaming laptop with an actual RTX2070 inside, we were surprised to see a bigger delta.
As you can see, the RTX2070 GPU gaming box via Thunderbolt 3 scored only 13090 in Firestrike, which is much lower than the GL704GW with an RTX2070 installed, which had a score of over 16,500. This is roughly a 30% performance delta, one that you would normally find when you compare an RTX2060 to an RTX2070. In fact, the GL704GV with a dedicated RTX2060 scored about 5% higher than the GS65 hooked to the RTX2070 via TB3, scoring 13,800! The RTX2070 Aorus Gaming box did score better in all other tests versus the GL704GV RTX2060, but never came quite close to the GL704GW with RTX2070.
Here are the images of the benchmark results:
Final Verdict
The Aorus RTX2070 Gaming Box does not come cheap. Priced at 20% higher than just a GPU on it’s own, you are purchasing a machine that costs roughly 30-40% of the your Gaming laptop’s cost. Ours is priced at 119,995, at the time of writing, and the EGPU costs 40,000 pesos bumping the total system cost to 160K PHP. Here you are paying for the over-all machine, including cooling, Power supply and the thunderbolt 3 technology.
Also, It may be safe to say that when you purchase an RTX2070 EGPU you need to be prepared to accept lower performance than expected. If you wanted an RTX2070 performance to begin with, you’ll have to be looking at the RTX2080 to get that. Unfortunately, there are no 2080s for the Aorus Gaming box, just yet.
Ofcourse, there are similar systems that you can buy without the RTX2070, leaving you the option to put your card of choice, but they also don’t come cheap. ROG’s XG Station 2 also comes quite expensive at PHP25,000 without a GPU and buying your own RTX2080 will cost you another 50K – just for an RTX2070 performance. There’s also the part where ROG’s XG Station 2 is just too huge for our liking, but only because you are able to fit regular sized cards that comes with up to 3 fans and extra large PCBs.
Back to the Aorus GameBox, we feel that the disability of not being able to use an external GPU without an external monitor is a downer because a good monitor will cost you another PHP20,000 on it’s own. Eventually, after all the investments – you’ll feel like you should have bought a brand NEW RTX2070 gaming laptop altogether (or an RTX2060 for that matter) but that’s just it – We believe that:
The Aorus RTX2070 Gaming box is a long term investment, given it’s numerous potential!
It’s an investment to future proofing, giving you the ability to change cards everytime there’s a new release without having to spend for a new system altogether. The initial investment may be steep – a monitor and a gaming box (sans the gpu) – but the incremental upgrades after that will just be the NEW GPU on it’s own. Besides, you can just put the older card for resale anyway.
One worry though is that you will eventually end up upgrading your gaming laptop since you don’t get the same ability to harness new CPU and board technologies. This begs the final question then – Should you invest in an upgradeable GPU system that should last you for years? Or Do you care about the CPU performance boost that comes yearly and see yourself needing to upgrade by 2-3 years anyway? If you are the latter, then don’t buy the Aorus gaming box because GPUs don”t change within 24 months. That gives you enough time to save on a new system altogether instead.
However, if you are the one that cares about harnessing the latest GPU and play games in the highest settings but can’t afford a new system altogether – the Aorus Gaming box is definitely for you! It allows you to attain the performance of at least 2 generations of new GPUs whilst spending less than 50% of your initial investment in your preferred gaming laptop. Spread over the course of 4-5 years, you’ll still end up spending much less than 2 Gaming laptops in the same period and still be able to enjoy the same games.
Laptops without discrete GPUS but with Thunderbolt 3 connectivity is a different story altogether, though, and we’ll tackle that in a separate blog! But for now, we hope you liked this review and impressions.
For more information, Head on to Aorus Website.