GPD Reveals Panther Lake Mini PC Featuring MCIO 8i eGPU Support

GPD, best known for its lineup of powerful Windows gaming handhelds, is making a foray into Mini PCs this year. Specifically, GPD has announced the GPD Box, an Intel Panther Lake-powered mini PC, and the GPD G2, a new eGPU docking solution. Both new GPD products will leverage the Mini Cool Edge IO (MCIO) connectivity standard, which supports 8 PCIe 5.0 lanes and is supposedly superior to OCuLink. GPD is so confident in the new standard that it claims a discrete NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090 only sees a 2% performance drop when connected to the G2.


Other features of the GPD Box include support for dual USB 4 v2.0 ports for 160 Gigabits of bidrectional bandwidth and dual Ethernet ports. The system also has dual USB Type-C ports up front alongside two Type-A ports and a 3.5mm headphone jack. On the back is two more USB Type-A ports, the MCIO port, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort.


The docking station includes a 100W PD fast charge output via a USB Type-C port, dual USB 4 v2.0 Type-A ports, and built-in M.2 storage with as yet undisclosed specs. There's also another Ethernet jack on the dock. It looks thick enough to support a triple-slot GPU, and judging by the claims made when using an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4090, that does seem likely.

While GPD is known more for its handhelds, the GPD Box looks to be an interesting entrant into the small form factor PC market. Final pricing or release date information beyond 2026 is not yet available from the Weibo announcement, but hopefully the Box will be aggressively priced. With news that Panther Lake handhelds may also be on the way, we'd be interested to see if a prospective GPD Win 5 or other handheld is also on the horizon.