Lenovo's first eGPU - the Legion BoostStation - launches in May

Lenovo has announced its first ever EGPU, the Legion BoostStation, and it supports both AMD Radeon and Nvidia GeForce graphics.

Unveiled at CES 2020, the BoostStation is Lenovo's first step into the eGPU market, and it's done so at the same time as unveiling a new gaming laptop, the Legion Y740S.

Back to the BoostStation for now, it's an aluminium-based chassis with a transparent side panel. It weighs just under 9.07kg and has enough room to easily house any graphics card up to 300mm long. It also has functionality for 1 2.5" or 3.5" SATA drive, along with 2 M.2 PCIe SSDs. 

It connects via Thunderbolt-3 so you'll require a laptop that offers such connectivity. In exchange, you get a pair of USB 3.1 ports, 1 USB 2.0 connector, HDMI display output, along with an ethernet port. It has a 500W power supply to keep everything ticking along nicely but there's always the option to swap out the PSU for another standard ATX power supply if you need more. It's designed in a way that means over 300W can be devoted to the graphics card though, so you shouldn't really need to do this. 

Lenovo also reckons it's a completely tool-free solution which certainly sounds promising. 

The Legion BoostStation will be sold on its own for $250, and we'd expect a similar price of about £250 given how these things go. Lenovo is also planning to sell it bundled with the following graphics cards: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2070 Super 8 GB, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 Super 8 GB and NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1660 Ti graphics card. No prices for these bundles have been announced just yet.

Alongside the announcement also came news that Lenovo is launching its 'thinnest and lightest' gaming laptop in the form of the not so catchily named, Legion Y740S. It's effectively meant to be paired with the BoostStation as it's touted as a gaming laptop yet doesn't have its own graphics card. It weighs just under 2kg, measures 0.58" thick and has a choice of 1080p or 4K displays. There's also a 10th gen Intel Core i9 processor, up to 32GB of RAM, up to 1TB of SSD storage, and a battery capacity of 60Wh.

The thinking is you use the laptop on the move then get home and plug it into the BoostStation to get your gaming fix. The laptop will be priced starting at $1,100 when it launches in May 2020. The BoostStation will be released at the same time.