Recently I learned that Bee-link came out with a pro version of the EX Dock that I purchased back in Oct’24. I have not yet used it, but now that I see a new dock, I’m curious to know if I should go ahead and replace my EX Dock with the newer version.
I’m a little confused about the interfaces between my GTi14 Ultra 9 185H that I bought with the dock, and the EX Dock I have. Last I checked the EX Dock supported a PCIe x8 slot, but it wasn’t clear what version of PCIe it supported. I had believed my GTi14 had a PCIe 4.0 ×8 interface since the EX Dock supported only PCIe 4.0 ×8. I assumed the interface between the dock and mini-PC was largely a pass-thru, but I think I’m mistaken.
So now comes along a pro dock, and I read it has a PCIe 5.0 ×8 interface. Going back to the website, I do see now that there are no “GTi14” minipc, jst a GTi Ultra, which indicates it has a PCIe 5.0 slot. Is an updated version from the GTi14 Ultra 9?
I am very curious to know if I should upgrade. The reason why I had not used the EX dock yet was because I was holding off on buying a 50-series nVidia GPU. Now that I have a 5070 Ti on the way, I’m a bit worried it would not work with the previous EX dock.
There was a video posted a week and a half ago, where a youtuber tried using a 5090 GPU card (by Palit), but couldn’t get windows to boot with it. This worries me, and I’m wondering if there is some intrinsic incompatibility the previous EX dock has with 50-series cards. 50-series nVidia GPU cards are all newly spec’d PCIe 5.0 cards, though they are obviously backwards compatible with PCIe 4.0 interfaces (since most people have yet to upgrade their systems to ones with motherboards utilizing the newer PCIe 5.0 slots), so I’m going to cross my fingers and chalk up his failure as a driver issue with that particular AIB model.
ps. Also, I noticed in the early reviews of the EX dock back in Sep-Oct’24, all the sample docks sent to reviewers would only support maximum of 2-slot rear bracket, but the EX dock I have seems to have the same form-factor as the pro model, which accommodates 3-slot rear bracketed cards). Makes me wonder if the EX dock I have is actually a pro model…
