It might look like a toy spaceship from the 1980s, but this retro-styled box could convert your laptop into a serious gaming rig. The new Ayaneo AG01 Graphics Starship not only has a charming design that would be at home in a toybox with E.T. and He-Man, but this external GPU dock contains an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT GPU, and can even expand your laptop’s SSD storage.
This AMD GPU is based on the same RDNA 3 architecture used in some of the best graphics cards, and it contains 32 compute units, giving you 2,048 stream processors to throw at your games. That’s basically the same core spec as the Radeon RX 7600, which is a decent 1080p gaming GPU. If your laptop is struggling along with an integrated Intel GPU, then this Ayaneo spaceship-shaped dock with its ring of RGB lighting could transform your gaming experience.
Like the desktop Radeon RX 7600, the GPU in the Ayaneo AG01 comes with 8GB of GDDR6 memory running at an effective speed of 18Gbps. It also has a game clock of 2,300MHz, which is a little higher than the desktop GPU’s 2,250MHz, although its 120W power limit will mean it can’t boost as high as the desktop Radeon RX 7600 with its 165W total board power.
The Ayaneo AG01 can connect to your system via the USB 4 Type-C port on the back, which the company says is compatible with Thunderbolt 3 and 4. There’s also an OCuLink port on the AG01, which is like a direct PCIe connector for external devices, although it hasn’t really taken off.
Once it’s connected to your machine, the Ayaneo AG01 gives you plenty of display outputs, including two DisplayPort 2.0 connectors, and a pair of HDMI 2.1 outputs. There’s also a USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-A port, and an RJ45 port, which we assume is for connecting a network cable. Ayaneo also says the AG01 can be used to expand your storage, providing an M.2 2280 connector to install an SSD.
The company describes the Graphics Starship as a “multi-function graphics dock,” and says the design is “inspired by the romantic era of space exploration, blending high-end craftsmanship with powerful cooling for stable high-power output.”
The company has created several eye-catching devices with 1980s styling recently, including the aptly named Ayaneo Retro Mini PC, which took design cues from Nintendo’s original NES console and featured a Ryzen 7 CPU and 32GB of RAM. Meanwhile, the Ayaneo Graphics Starship AG01 will come in red and gray color options, with a metal body, and the option to personalize your nameplate.
As someone who grew up in the 80s, I’m absolutely here for PCs and components that look like this – it’s great to see design going beyond the usual gamer styling, and I have a soft spot for the font design as well. For more insight into Ayaneo’s design philosophy, make sure you check out our Arthur Zhang interview, where we chat to the company CEO about its mini PC designs, as well as its handheld strategy.