GPD details new Panther Lake-powered mini PC with speedy MCIO eGPU port

GPD has recently announced two products that come with the MCIO eGPU port, and the Box is one of them. It's a mini PC that's among the first commercially available systems to feature this high-speed interface, and as we have covered recently, its PCIe 5.0 x8 interface can easily beat the typical PCIe 4.0 x4 OCuLink port.

Now, the company has shared more specs of the GPD Box. As the company confirms, the mini PC will be powered by the Intel Panther Lake CPUs. Specifically, there will be two options available: one with the Intel Core Ultra X7 358H and the other with the Core Ultra 7 356H.

Among the two, the Core Ultra X7 358H comes with the capable Intel Arc B390 iGPU, which we found to offer the same level of performance as the Nvidia RTX 4050 Laptop GPU. As for the Core Ultra 7 356H, it has the 4-core Xe3 iGPU, which is comparable to the AMD Radeon 780M.

It's worth noting that only the configuration with the Intel Core Ultra 7 356H features the MCIO port, which makes sense. This configuration has the lower-tier iGPU, and those who might be interested in building an eGPU setup will be less likely to care about the performance of the integrated GPU.

The two configurations can be equipped with up to 64GB of LPDDR5x RAM, and there are two M.2 slots for storage drives. GPD plans to offer them up to 4TB of storage installed.

Design-wise, GPD highlights that the Panther Lake mini PC has a 0.93-liter chassis, and while it's compact, there's a built-in 160W GaN PSU. Other highlights included a dual-fan cooling setup, rich port selection with two USB4 v2 ports (Ugreen Maxidok TB5 dock curr. $389.99 on Amazon), and WiFi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3 for wireless connectivity.

There's no word about the price yet, and GPD has not revealed when the mini PC will be released. However, as it has been fully revealed, the launch is likely around the corner. It's also worth mentioning that the company is releasing the GPD G2 dock with the MCIO port alongside the Box. Check out the pictures attached below to learn more about the system.