What are you about here? “Just a simple metal plate”, what exactly are you expecting? That is exactly the definition of a motherboard or a dock.
The TGX dock from Lenovo is that inside a box.
I never said TB5 is best than Oculink in performance but is better than a TB4 and reduce the gap to Oculink. Good luck with your imaginary eGPU dock and your Framework 13 with limited TB4 port.
Just use the OCuP4V2 dock, it has the proper mount to secure the GPU and the PSU. No enclosure, your cat either need to leave it alone or you will need to be creative.
If you are into eGPU, and is firm about the 13/14 size don’t get the Framework. This “Pro” version is disappointing, not coming with USB 4.2 or TB5, Dell released last year a Dell Pro 14 with 2 TB5, they will probably release more this year and Lenovo will announce their Thinkpad 2026 lineup tomorrow: https://mactivity.lenovo.com.cn/smb/thinkxp-c.html?pmf_group=in-push&pmf_medium=sc&pmf_source=Z00028090T004
Would like to see a clear purple version of this controller
There is one caveat that worth mentioning, one can try (and probably achieve) disable many the privacy invasive treats in Ubuntu getting to the 0 or 1% that other distros provide out of the box where with Windows there isn’t much workaround.
Honestly, Ubuntu is not even close bad to how many framed here in terms of privacy and can be more secure than Mint that still pushes Cinnamon X11 to users.
Once you get Snap out and telemetry disabled Ubuntu is in the game.