Turn any Thunderbolt-equipped laptop into a gaming powerhouse with this £93 GPU enclosure
Thunderbolt graphics card enclosures are one of the coolest bits of kit you can get, I think. Open up this metal box, put a graphics card inside, and suddenly any PC or laptop you connect to it via Thunderbolt gets a substantial upgrade in gaming prowess. These docks used to cost around £200 or £300, but recently we’ve started to see radically more affordable options – and today we’ve reached a new low-water mark.
The Lenovo Legion BoostStation can handle GPUs up to 300W (think an Nvidia RTX 3070 Ti or AMD RX 6800 XT), and is available for just £93 when you use the code BANK15 to knock 15% off the price at Ebay.
As well as working as graphics card enclosure, the BoostStation also doubles as a Thunderbolt dock, allowing you to connect three USB peripherals as well as wired network. There’s even a SATA slot that allows you to connect a hard drive or SSD – incredible stuff.
I’ve used these enclosures before with my XPS 15 laptop and they’re kind of revolutionary. You go from barely being able to play 3D games to suddenly having a ton of power to spare, especially if you’re playing at higher resolutions where your GPU is the bottleneck and the laptop-grade CPU doesn’t have as much (comparatively) to do.
Have you tried a GPU enclosure before? What do you think of this one for less than £100? I’m curious to hear your thoughts below!