GL502VM (7th Gen Edition) and eGPU Question

[Jellyfish]

Hello, first time here in the forum.

I bought a GL502VM (7th Gen CPU) a few months back, saw the advertising for Thunderbolt 3 support and was moved to purchase it. Recently I have been thinking about purchasing an eGPU dock to connect a GTX 1080TI, however while browsing through the ROG forums I came upon discussions that the GL502VM may not support full Thunderbolt 3 speeds at 40Gbps, some claimed that the chip only supported up to 20Gbps. Before I spend a large amount of money on the XG Station 2 I need confirmation of whether the GL502VM is capable of completely running at full bandwidth.

Thanks for any help!

[Bran187]

Jellyfish wrote:
Hello, first time here in the forum.

I bought a GL502VM (7th Gen CPU) a few months back, saw the advertising for Thunderbolt 3 support and was moved to purchase it. Recently I have been thinking about purchasing an eGPU dock to connect a GTX 1080TI, however while browsing through the ROG forums I came upon discussions that the GL502VM may not support full Thunderbolt 3 speeds at 40Gbps, some claimed that the chip only supported up to 20Gbps. Before I spend a large amount of money on the XG Station 2 I need confirmation of whether the GL502VM is capable of completely running at full bandwidth.

Thanks for any help!

It depends on what TB controller is actually in your laptop. There is a thread somewhere on here where they go over how to figure out which one is in your laptop, and which one is the x2 20 Gbps and which one is the x4 40Gbps controller.

Sorry I don't remember which thread it was, or what the model numbers for each controller were off the top of my head. I'm sure with a little digging you can find it, or someone else will chime in.

[Bill]

Hello Jellyfish
Thank you for your inquiry
I'll consult our team about this matter, and I'll get back to you once I got more info
Thank you

[StarJack]

Bill@ASUS wrote:
Hello Jellyfish
Thank you for your inquiry
I'll consult our team about this matter, and I'll get back to you once I got more info
Thank you

Bill, I too, just purchased a 7th Gen GL702VMK on April 10th of this year. I was also sold on the 40GBps Thunderbolt3 controller but have read that they have crippled JHL6240 TB3 controllers only capable of 20GBps. I know the OP is referencing the GL502VMK but I was hoping you could include myself in the response but with regards to the GL702VMK. Thanks in advance.

StarJack

[Jellyfish]

Bill@ASUS wrote:
Hello Jellyfish
Thank you for your inquiry
I'll consult our team about this matter, and I'll get back to you once I got more info
Thank you

Hi Bill, thanks for the reply.

I will be waiting for your confirmation, note my exact laptop model is
https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ROG-GL502VM-7th-Gen-Intel-Core/

I have rang up the ASUS stores here but they do not have the service to let us customers to try out whether the XG Station 2 will fully work with my laptop or not, your confirmation is all I have before I spend this money.

[BoutTime01]

Jellyfish wrote:
Hi Bill, thanks for the reply.

I will be waiting for your confirmation, note my exact laptop model is
https://www.asus.com/Laptops/ROG-GL502VM-7th-Gen-Intel-Core/

I have rang up the ASUS stores here but they do not have the service to let us customers to try out whether the XG Station 2 will fully work with my laptop or not, your confirmation is all I have before I spend this money.

Check out the Aorus Gaming Box. It includes a GTX 1070 and roughly the same price as the XG Station 2 which you need to still buy a GPU for.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

[Jellyfish]

BoutTime01 wrote:
Check out the Aorus Gaming Box. It includes a GTX 1070 and roughly the same price as the XG Station 2 which you need to still buy a GPU for.

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Thanks for bringing up the option, however the goal of this thread is to verify that the GL502VM has full support for Thunderbolt 3 and will work flawlessly with eGPU boxes (preferably XG Station 2), am still awaiting a confirmation reply from Bill. As far as we can assume the laptop may not be compatible with the Aorus Gaming Box, and I do not want that to happen.

[Jellyfish]

Still awaiting confirmation!

If anyone has experience with these combinations of eGPU docks please also let me know.
Thanks to everyone who provided help.

[marceloh]

Hello,

I have the same question: will the GL502VMK USB Type-C Port, with Thunderbolt, support an external dock for GPUs?

And, if anyone have purchase one of these, what kind of exeperience do you have?

Performance and heat are two of my main concerns:
- As performance is important when you are spending so much money (laptop + dock + GPU); and
- With only the external GPU turned on, the GPU inside the laptop (GTX 1060) will be idle, and thus the GPU will not throttle.

[Jellyfish]

So I decided to take the dive to buy the XG Station 2 and a GTX 1080 TI after confirming with a representative from Asus Taiwan.

First, some photos 🙂




The items arrived, and I had a very frustrating morning trying to set this device up to work with my GL502VM.

These are the problems I encountered:
1. My OS is Windows 10, Windows 10 will automatically search for new driver updates when I plug the XG Station 2 in. This caused a bootup loop which I was unable to solve, until I had to go into recovery mode to revert to a previous restore setting.
----> Solution? When I plug the XG Station 2 into my laptop I disabled all internet connection.

Here's a few steps to how I got it working:
1. DOWNLOAD and INSTALL the latest Thunderbolt 3 firmware from the XG Station 2 support page.
2. DOWNLOAD and INSTALL the Nvidia Driver provided on the XG Station 2 support page.
3. DOWNLOAD and INSTALL the ROG XG Station Hot Plug tool from the XG Station 2 support page.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Download these drivers using a second computer, and make sure your laptop is never connected to the internet, this will cause Windows10 to automatically update the driver. Install these programs while your laptop remains offline.
4. A few restarts, and everything should be in working order. It is now safe to connect to the internet.


Screenshots and benchmarks for your reference:













And guess what? The GL502VM does fully support Thunderbolt 3 with 40Gbps :). the benchmark score was higher than another score with a GTX 1080 TI.





As I am typing this post I am happily using my laptop with the XG Station 2, thank you ASUS for creating such a wonderful piece of engineering work.