Something I highly recommend avoiding (though it may look tempting) is the TB16 thunderbolt dock from dell.
There is something really screwy with the USB controller in that device, the ETH is on the USB hub and corrupts Ethernet frames, under Linux you can force disable hardware offloaded CRC checksumming as a workaround, but still the USB devices that are directly connected can just stop functioning.
It also has the annoying quirk that it enumerates the display ports differently each time, which means your operating system has almost no chance of redrawing your desktop when you plug it back in.
Looks good on the spec sheet though, and will probably be flooding the used market as companies try to offload them. I tried 5 different ones from different batches, they all had the same characteristics.
Didn’t try the WD19 yet, but I hope that’s better.
I can echo this - our company runs off dell machines and our laptops came with these docks.
Despite (in happier times) having to leave my desk frequently for meetings, with my laptop, I'd rather faff about with plugging and unplugging multiple cables than have to deal with the frustration of peripherals randomly losing connection while you're in the middle of working.
I support a LOT of Thunderbolt docks for clients in my IT work and have also had experience with a lot of them personally.
My feedback is, almost all of these docks really suck. Spend the money and get a CalDigit. You won't regret it. It's the only one I've found that reliably performs the way a dock should.
I have a CalDigit and a KVM switch to support a desktop and laptop. The setup works just fine with one DP out from the CalDigit, one DP out from the KVM, and an MST hub driving two 1440p monitors. Cabling looks like below. I'm ignoring power and several peripherals.
The only cable I deal with on a regular basis is the thunderbolt from the CalDigit dock to the laptop. When coming or going, that's the only cable I need to care about. I can switch all input and output at the press of a button on the KVM.
I haven't measured latency, but there's nothing noticeable in my day to day experience, which includes gaming as well.
The desktop only goes through the KVM and the MST hub. The laptop additionally goes through a dock. I don't consider the devices to have the same purpose at all.
The dock serves several purposes for me:
1. Single cable to manage when taking or bringing the laptop (just one Thunderbolt carries all signals and power).
2. USB hub, as my laptop only has two USB ports.
3. Wired ethernet for the laptop.
4. Cable management - everything else plugging into the dock (audio, DP, ethernet, several other peripherals I use for day job).
The KVM is a switch and serves a different, specific purpose:
5. As it says in the name, switch inputs and outputs across multiple machines.
And the MST hub serves yet another purpose.
6. Allow one DP out to carry signal for multiple monitors.
There are KVMs that can act as an MST hub, but I wouldn't expect any latency difference there. It's still performing the action of presenting two displays to a single DP output. There are also monitors that support MST. Those monitors were much more expensive than mine when I was purchasing. The MST hub was a cheaper option for me than either getting a new monitor or getting a KVM that included such functionality.
Whether MST goes through an embedded hub in a KVM, or through an external hub, or through an embedded hub in a monitor, I'm not sure I see where any configuration would win on latency. They all need to do the same thing.
The thunderbolt dock also serves a different purpose than the KVM.
My laptop has decent connectivity - onboard ethernet, 2xUSB-A, 1xUSB-C/Thunderbolt, power. I would need a USB hub. So I could definitely plug in all of the cables every time I bring my laptop to my desk. I prefer not to. The Thunderbolt dock allows me to tuck away all of those extra cables and just run one to my laptop. Additionally it lets me keep the charging brick packed in my laptop bag. If I didn't have a dock, I'd have bought another charging brick.
My desktop has more connectivity than I can use, but it doesn't have Thunderbolt. It doesn't need thunderbolt. And I don't want to spend money or space for a PCIe Thunderbolt card that I do not need. And I didn't have any need for Thunderbolt or a KVM when I built my desktop.
There may be a thunderbolt KVM, but I didn't come across them. But I'd need to buy other hardware for my desktop. Or I'd have to find a KVM that can switch between a thunderbolt input and a DisplayPort/USB/Audio input. Such a device, if it exists would likely be quite expensive.
I don't know of any KVMs that also provide ethernet, nor do I want to switch ethernet among my computers in the manner that a KVM switches. So I'd still need to run multiple cables to my laptop whenever it comes to the desk.
So, our setups may be different, but I need all of the functionality I described above. I haven't found any single box that will do it all. I am perfectly happy to build a solution as I've described out of multiple components. And I will continue to get value out of each component, even as my setup changes.
The MST hub is great, because I can run one cable to the back of my monitor from any DP device and have a two-monitor setup. This is sticking around regardless of the rest.
The KVM will have use as long as I have multiple computers.
The dock will be valuable as long as I have a laptop with a thunderbolt port.
A hypothetical dual thunderbolt KVM with MST is more limited than the current setup. Its only potential benefit is some desk space, but even this can be managed just fine. The dock is on its way to mounting behind the desk.
As for system latency, my understanding is that the only additional latency from the KVM should be in USB peripherals, as it does serve as a USB hub. The audio and video signals are passed straight through so far as I know.
The CalDigit only has one dedicated DisplayPort, but you can also plug a USB-C to DisplayPort cable into the outgoing ThunderBolt port - I had dual 4k60 monitors running for a while that way.
DisplayPort daisy chain is specifically unsupported by Mac OS since forever. If you dual-boot an Intel Mac to Windows (via BootCamp) it'll daisy chain just fine, so the hardware supports it, but booted to Mac it'll just ignore the second monitor in the chain.
If you are lucky enough to own a Thunderbolt (note: not displayport) monitor, that can chain to a displayport monitor. But thunderbolt monitors are rare as all get out these days.
It's only on PCs that it doesn't work properly, because PC makers suck and never bothered to be honest about implementing Thunderbolt 3 properly. They didn't even tell the truth about it. That's why we have this utter silliness called "Thunderbolt 4". All Thunderbolt 4 is, is Thunderbolt 3, but actually implemented properly, with no wiggle room for chintzy PC makers to weasel out.
I have the WD19 and I have to say despite it's being a fucking computer on its own it works astonishingly well under Linux, especially compared to the docking stations I had before. Feels like they really cared about their Linux support. Tested with both my XPS 9310 and my Precision 7530.
If you want to answer they have to because they sell Linux preinstalled: Their Ubuntu is garbage. If you setup Archlinux on your own, some features which haven't worked before will work, for example backlight oder hw acceleration.
Still better than Lenovo telling it's a feature to not setup proprietairy Linux drivers on devices who need them.
I have a 9310, and the stock Ubuntu was OK. The biggest issue is thermald was older and limited the frequency boosting (so lower perf).
I run 20.10 now with thermald master and kernel 5.10.1 (includes patches which enable pc10 sleep states and 400mhz cpu idle speed). Now it boosts and idles appropriately.
What’s “backlight oder hw acceleration” are you referring to refresh rate or something like PSR? I want to know if it’s something I need to check on my 9310...
"oder" is "or" in German, so I think they meant "backlight or hw acceleration".
I own a more recent Dell XPS 13, and the keyboard backlight support is indeed buggy - it needs a configuration patch to prevent it from turning on on logon.
Not sure what's exactly the hw acceleration. If they refer to the Intel integrated GPUs, the configuration is pretty much standard; up to 18.04 the only thing I needed to configure was the VSync (this was the same also for other laptops), but with 20.04, I didn't need anymore.
Recently wasted a morning at the office swapping all variants of Dell thunderbolt and USB-c docks, kept getting weird USB errors. Most frustrating was I couldn't reproduce the error at the helpdesk with same dock. The weirdest thing was usb peripherals were working fine, but somehow Windows kept giving me a non suppressable popup every minute ad infinitum. I don't see the point of docking stations anymore now you can get 49" screens with USB-c connectors. No reason to put a docking station in between or dual screen setups anymore
I have this dock.. I basically just use it for the power and DisplayPort to a 4k60 display... since USB is awful on it I have a USB hub I plug in to the notebook also...
So I guess calling that thing a “dock” is generous
> the ETH is on the USB hub and corrupts Ethernet frame
I have a USB-C Novoo thingy (PD passthrough, HDMI, 3x USB-A, Ethernet) that might do something like that. If I plug Ethernet into my home router it ends up killing all other ethernet links on this router in about two minutes. I unplug it and things come back to life in under a second.
The thing also has a habit to produce EM interference that makes WiFi useless. Would you believe, running a ping and wrapping the device's cord in tin foil back and forth and you can see the packet stop dropping and start again.
I've used the WD19. I haven't experimented with Linux, but it's a pretty screwy device. A firmware update meant that it stopped playing "which device is going to work today" lucky dip, but it is always a festival of that Windows "hey, something interesting happened at a hardware level" noise as it takes 10 seconds and 3-4 redraws of the whole screen to finally figure out where all the displays are.
Yup, we had a good venting session at our Dell rep about this issue last year.
They were very aware of the issues, very apologetic and suggested we try some sorta displaylink garbage in the meantime. We did, and then as soon as the WD19 came out we tested that, and it's been night and day.
They still require custom drivers but 99% of issues disappeared. I had one issue with a laptop that likely had a faulty tb module and was failing back to usb 3.1 but no other complaints from anyone.
Well aside from the lack of usb ports on the thing... the Eport had like 8 usbs, the wd16 had 5 and now we're down to 3 on the wd19, that'd be fine if the laptops didn't keep dropping usb-a's also, most of the 7000 line only has 2 now. I refuse to get a usb dock to plug into the wd19 just for usb, that's insane and I'm not a crazy person.
Tried loads of TB docks (as well as USB3 ones) and gave up. They all have annoying quirks. I finally settled with a Razer Core Chroma, with Ethernet and USB. My MBP16 is finally silent with external displays, and the offloading really helps during video calls.
I had the original Razer core right when it launched. Razer did an excellent job with their eGPU TB3 enclosures. In my case, a firmware update made the USB ports practically unusable, and I eventually got Razer to accept it as a return, but I'm eventually going to go with them and their future iterations of the Core once I get a laptop that supports TB3/4.
Hold on! Is this why ethernet is exhibiting intermittent and impossible to diagnose behavior for me at work, and only for me?! Do you have some more information?
What is typically called ‘ethernet’ is actually a family of interrelated protocols. Correct implementations are costly since they require quality components and fine-tuning between hardware, firmware, and software levels.
Most consumer products just use generic components that some factory negotiators were willing to offload for cheap. The high end products with megabucks contracts are the ones capable of hitting guaranteed reliability targets.
Apple, like for most other components, is the only big consumer brand that consistently uses something better than whatever was cheapest in Shenzhen. Even business oriented brands, like Western Digital, Brother, etc., have been cutting costs in these areas recently for their cheapest lines. Boutique smaller brands like CalDigit, Lacie, etc., who justify their premium pricing with quality, also usually puts effort into doing it correctly.
Also avoid the HP Thunderbolt Dock - was a steaming pile that is!
On 2 identical laptops (fresh builds), 1 of them BSODs, the other works sometimes, but BSODs at random when resuming from sleep or plugging in devices.
They've releases various versions of the firmware, along with various versions of various drivers that need to be installed on the laptop. Only some random variations of these work, and only on some devices, and only some of the time. Total garbage.
I do have it, too and I have to say despite it's being a fucking computer on its own it works astonishingly well under Linux, especially compared to the docking stations I had before. Feels like they really cared about their Linux support. Tested with both my XPS 9310 and my Precision 7530.
The TB16 works alright after updating it to the newest firmware, but still has it's quirks. For example, my mouse lags / cuts out briefly, now and then (I plug it in direct).
The TB19 I use when working from home appears to have little to no issues (none that I can think of right now).
I had tons of problems with my TB16 and one prior Dell dock but the WD19 has been working flawlessly all year. I have used it with my XPS 7550 and 7590 and had no problems. I also have had good experience using it with a MacBook Pro 15.
That's a bummer to hear; I have the WD15 dock through work and it's been excellent; I have a bunch of complaints about the XPS itself (power management, for example), but that dock has been great.
I dunno, TB is basically a mass of high frequency analog madness with long cables thrown into the mix. I, kind of astonished that it works at all, at any price.
I have the WD15 connected to a 2016 MacBook Pro and it is incredibly unreliable. USB devices stop working randomly (mouse+keyboard), ethernet comes and goes as it pleases and the display output works for one month before stops working all together. The only thing that works reliably is power supply.
I was really impressed with the Dell WD19TB dock I was issued from work for COVID. I had never used a dock before, but having all my external displays (I used 2 DP, but I think it could handle 3 at once if using HDMI too), Ethernet, all the USB, and charging all through one port was amazing.
Personally I disagree, I love my WD19TB. It's hooked up to all my peripherals and monitor, and until a proper TB3 KVM comes into existence, I plug it into my laptop or desktop as needed. Nice to be able to swap a single plug and get full speed everything.
I'm referring to the sheer volume of calls I got to replace or update or reset the docks. It was probably in the top three of calls I would get maybe even #1.
The tall thin heatsink at the edge of the motherboard is cooling part of the VRM. The VRM or Voltage Regulator Module is responsible for converting the 12V input down to 1.3V or so for the CPU. Under that heatsink there are 2 of the 8 phases for CPU Vcore and 2 phases for Vsoc. It would be pretty safe to remove that heatsink, even in a passive case because:
- Vsoc draws very little power, especially with no iGPU.
- The VRM is designed to survive providing 200A to a 16 core 3950X, 50A to a 2600 is very easy by comparison. Maybe 6W of heat split among the 8 phases so <2W of heat on these 2 phases.
- The MOSFETs will happily run all day at up to 125C.
- The MOSFETs are smart power stages which communicate their temperature to the controller, and have many built-in protections, so there's extremely little risk of damage. The controller probably shares load amongst the phases based on temperature but I can't find a datasheet to confirm.
Yup, most MOSFETs will have no trouble running at 125C! The power supplies in some of our products occasionally run at 180C, without heat-sinking. But these aren't designed to last as long as a motherboard VRM.
In general cooler is better. At high temps you'll see temperature related aging accelerate (e.g. solder, PCB substrate, electromigration in the parts), but you'd probably be okay. The PC would become obsolete way before the VRM fails. The worst case I can imagine is the MOSFETs and inductors heat up, bringing the local temperature up to a point where the controller IC enters over-temperature shutdown, but it's unlikely.
Personally, if the current heatsink is too big I would just find smaller ones and attach them. I don't really have a good reason, I just like parts running cool :)
Thank you so much for the explanation. How do you know all that? I am interested in learning about motherboard design and wonder if there are books you would recommend about it.
I'm an electrical engineer by trade. The specifics in the post were lifted from the linked video since he already did the hard work of looking up the components and calculating the efficiency curve.
I wish I had a book to recommend about motherboards specifically, I would like to read it!
Thunderbolt 3 really is amazing. Im using a OWC Thunderbolt Dock to connect my MacBook to: an eGPU thats driving a 5K monitor, a 1TB TB3 SSD, and 24/96 USB audio to my stereo. All over one cable.
BTW if your using TB3 as your main connection to your laptop I highly recommend a magnetic TB3 adapter. This has been working great in my setup for over a year and makes docking/undocking a snap.
Yes, that is the primary motivation/intent of The type C connector and USB-C/TB.
It’s still early days so compatibility isn’t super yet, as this discussion shows. Also, being USB, there are many possible subsets and no such thing as a “universal cable”. The silicon is still immature and the analog issues are fiendishly complex.
The cheapo vendors will implement the minimal standard (or less). The higher end devices will be more compliant, but bugs remain (as I said, still early days).
But last year I switched to buying type C devices whenever I had the choice (even electric toothbrush) and so far it’s been fine.
The one thing I would say about he magnetic connection is that it works great when its sitting on your desk but not an ideal solution if you want to have the laptop in your lap; the magnet isn't strong enough for a lot of wiggling around. Not a real issue anyway since most TB3 cables are 1M or less so you're forced to have your laptop on a desk anyway.
Yep! As long as each PC is setup with all the necessary drivers and such its all plug and play. No issues with just ripping the cable out of my MacBook without "undocking" anything. It just reverts to the internal display without issues.
I kind of wish there were manual/dumb TB3 switches for this sort of thing but I have not seen any.
You're not ejecting the external SSD before disconnecting?
I have a TB2 dock which I connect to using Apple's TB3 to TB2 adapter. I keep my Time Machine backup drive connected to the dock (along with 4K monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers). If I don't eject the drive before disconnecting from the dock, macOS complains about disconnecting the drive without ejecting it first.
I ended up buying Jettison (https://stclairsoft.com/Jettison/) to handle auto ejecting on sleep and remounting on wake (in particular, I have a PCIe SSD in my Mac Pro which macOS considers an external drive, rightly so, but still).
Yeah. This is probably not the best thing to do and I do get the warning about not having disconnected the gpu and ssd properly but Ive never once experienced an actual problem from doing so (hundreds of times). No corrupted data or anything. But the SSD is mainly for photos/videos not time machine backups.
One more question — those magnetic connections, can it connect both ways? What I mean it, cable running away in either direction or is it orientation specific?
I do this between my Thinkpad (work) and XPS (personal) laptops. Takes only a few seconds to unplug the cable from from one, and plug in the other, with all peripherals working. IOW, there's no Apple magic here, standards are pretty cool.
For what it's worth, I didn't find this to be, well, worth it. I got a razer egpu enclosure and while it was certainly very well engineered, it was comically over-engineered. Weighed something crazy even without my gpu in it, I wanna say 10lbs, maybe even 15. Plus, it was huge, as big as an itx case. Then I had to drop 60$ on a long enough thunderbolt Cable to let me have the case under my desk.
Then there was all the issues with plugging in a laptop. Windows on a lenovo x1 carbon worked fine, with plug in/out capabilities. Ubuntu 18.04 on same machine wasn't plug and play, but I got it working after about an hour of fiddling. Never got plug in/out working. Plug in worked, but unplug without shutting down lead to a crash.
All this and the enclosure was like 300$, and I was bottlenecked by my laptop processor anyway. In the end I think it's just simpler to buy that expensive graphics card you're looking at, then build a simple pc around it, and then make use of some kind of network based workflow for data sharing (git server for your code, networked hard drives for video, photo, music editing etc. Much easier, much more flexible, and imo in the end cheaper.
That's basically what all of those eGPU boxes are. You can buy just the enclosure and pop whatever GPU you want in, provided the enclosure has an adequate power supply.
Yes, it is. There's a few egpu enclosure. Take a look at egpu.info
There's a small performance penalty and it's not always perfectly reliable but it works well enough and is very convenient.
I have a HP "cube" G2 dock feeding a 4k60hz monitor, usb peripherals, ethernet and power to my macbook, that I want to be able to plug into my desktop PC. I don't have USB-C on my desktop, does anyone know what kind of PCI-E expansion card to get so this will work?
Offtopic: if you plug in a pair of Apple ear/headphones into the headphone jack on the OWC, can you control the volume via the built in controls on the cable of the headphones, like you can when connected to the Macbook?
Yes you can. Also if you want even more control over multiple audio outputs including individual control by application check out the App SoundSource by RogueAmoeba for Mac.
Same. My workplace provided me with a thunderbolt dock for home, and I use it to connect my work laptop or personal laptop to my multi monitor setup. Its easy to just swap between them.
Right now it's a Radeon Vega 64 in a Sonnet Breakaway Box. My monitor is a HP Z27Q and its being driving over two Diplayport Cables to get 5K resolution.
You're obviously correct for ITX, but I was surprised when I found out that (on larger boards) you can simply get a Thunderbolt PCIe card from Asus, Dell, etc. and it will just work. It appears that in many cases, the infamous THB_C header on mainboards doesn't serve any purpose.
Having used only a MacBook for 4 USB-c/thunderbolt ports for several years, and having moved all of my stuff (even my cordless shaver!) to USB-c / thunderbolt, I was really surprised and annoyed when I built an AMD gaming PC and realized I could only get 1 or 2 USB-c ports and almost no options for thunderbolt. It made me realize why most mice, etc are USB-a still.
Well up until late last year or so, Thunderbolt was an Intel only thing. They then released it to the USB consortium and USB4 is an extension of Thunderbolt. So this motherboard the OP used is probably one of the first ones with USB4 compat.
I expect a lot more AMD mobos to support thunderbolt in the next year. Music producers especially really like the interface for it's low latency and bandwidth, and Ryzen would be an awesome pairing for the resource hungry applications they tend to gravitate towards.
Anandtech article announcing Intel's Maple Ridge - a chipset to enable Thunderbolt 4 on future motherboards regardless of the CPU (i.e. Tiger Lake not required.)
Another way to "silence" a PC is to put it in another room. Mine is across the wall - with just the HDMI and USB cables coming through a small wall hole (PVC pipe to make the edges smooth). I highly recommend it.
But isn’t that an indictment of the whole architecture? 40-gig Ethernet reaches these distances with passive cables.
Is it that the Ethernet people have moved the costs into the port and their ports cost more, while the thunderbolt ports cost less and the cables cost more?
Never seen a consumer motherboard with 40Gb Ethernet. Even 10Gb is rare.
One criticism of Thunderbolt is that it already requires a fairly expensive separate controller on the motherboard except for a few Intel chips with built-in TB controllers.
Sending that much data that fast is going to cost more somehow or another.
Right, just thinking about the end-to-end economics. The TB3 add-in card for my HP workstation costs $200 for 2 ports. HP doesn't market a 40g ethernet card but an Intel model costs $400 at retail, also for 2 ports. Then I need either 2 $25 cables for ethernet or 2 $129 cables for TB3. It's the same price either way. Of course, the two setups don't accomplish the same things; they are comparable only in reach and speed.
For anyone in interested in building a silent PC, I have some simple advice: use a Noctua CPU heatsink and Noctua case fans. They are whisper-quiet, and I spent < $100 for all the fans in my system. They are the most premium-feeling computer product I have ever used; the CPU heatsink was very heavy and solid, and came with all the tools needed for installation including a screwdriver and thermal paste. Highly recommend, 10/10.
Adding to this: BeQuiet cases. You want that internal sound dampening on all sides of the case (so avoid tempered glass) to get rid of any annoying high-pitched coil whine, not just to silence the drone from fans. I have an overclocked 9700K with a BeQuiet case, the stock BeQuiet fans (which are quiet) plus a Noctua heatsink and extra Noctua case fan. After having adjusted the fan curves it runs cool and is inaudble (from less than 1m away) without headphones.
I'm not sure I can recommend it. I went from an Antec 900 to a BeQuiet PureBase 500 and although it's a good case for a good price, I'm disappointed in noise and thermals. Turns out, as many reviewers have pointed out and others long realized, you're better off with a more open case with bigger and slower fans than an enclosed one where you have to run your fans at higher rpms to get equivalent thermals. It's actually noisier and has worse thermals than my 13yr old Antec even after configuring for a quieter fan rpm profile. Although the newer DX model seems to have improved a bit in that area of increased airflow which pretty much defeats the noise savings from insulated panels. All in all, it's still quiet enough that it's not distracting, good enough for me.
The author includes a diagram that shows his PC and his laptop plugged in via Thunderbolt 3 to the CalDigit TS3+ dock, and no direct connection to the monitor. Looking at the dock's product page[1], I don't see how this can have two hosts connected; did I miss something in this article?
No, you didn't miss anything. I'm assuming that he just unplugs the cable from one when he wants to use the other. As far as I know there aren't any sort of KVM thunderbolt 3 hubs in existence.
I routinely lose my 2017 Macbook Air around the house (I only use it occasionally) and every time I open the lid I am pleased to see the battery still topped off, even after days away from the charger.
I use that CalDigit dock with my work laptop and personal laptop, and I just swap the cable. Adding a KVM switch just for that use case wouldn't make sense in my opinion.
I don't mind swapping the cable. What bothers me (a bit) is that the ports where I have to unplug and plug the cables are in the back of devices that have many other cables plugged in so I don't want to turn them to face the tb3 port towards my hand or else all the other cables will clutter my desk.
1. a dock that puts the tb3 input on the front would work for me
2. a mechanical female plug / extension cord would work for me (but likely not possible due to noise?)
Good idea actually, I’m using 2 PCs with one monitor over USB-c. The monitor takes more than 10 key presses through a horrific on screen menu to change input sources. I didn’t even think of swapping the cable!
I can’t change the input from a pc, only using buttons on the monitor itself. Using i2c over display port is possible to change input source but I don’t really have the will to spend time on trying it.
Incidentally, I was asked to uninstall autohotkey from my work PC because some corporate spyware detected it as a threat.
I can confirm that either of the thunderbolt ports on the back of that dock can connect to a host machine. With mine, I connect a modern thunderbolt-3 mac and and older mac one with thunderbolt 2. I can leave both cords plugged into the dock all the time and just use the proper cable for the computer I'm using and it just works.
My gaming rig is silent for 95% of operations, and a low hum at full tilt. Massive heatsinks give me the ability to turn off all fans and still stay at safe temps for anything that isn't a taxing game like Red Dead 2. I also 3D printed a new GPU shroud in high temp PLA that allowed me to place some Noctua fans softly mounted on the stock heatsink (which was already massive).
The case itself is a Quiet PC case. Rock solid cases if you want one case to last you forever, even if you don't want the quietness they are just very stout.
I usually overclock my PC once the parts stop being enough but I love the silence so much that I will probably just buy better parts this time around, rather than require over the top potentially loud cooling.
There's something I don't understand: does switching between laptop and pc with that hub require unplugging one usb c cable from the back of the hub and plugging the other one in?
I'm very interested in a similar setup. So far I don't think I've figured out an elegant solution.
My current solution is to have both devices plugged into the monitor, and use a usb hub to share the peripherals, manually moving the cable to the hub between devices.
Now I can plug my laptop into my dock, and just press a button to switch all my usb devices between machines.
It's actually a really nice workflow, nice enough that sometimes I'll leave the desktop up on my second monitor playing music or videos when I'm doing heavy processing on my work laptop, and just occasionally switch my mouse/keyboard between them with a button press.
That was on HN earlier this year. Basically it's software that you run and set up to detect when certain peripherals connect/disconnect and have it switch the input on the monitor automatically. I've been using it and, while not always perfect, it actually works pretty well, especially considering the price.
If you don't always want the monitor to switch inputs (sometimes I just want to quickly switch my keyboard/mouse to my laptop to do something but don't want to switch monitor inputs) you can also just set up shortcuts or scripts (I created an Alfred workflow, for example) and use something like https://github.com/kfix/ddcctl to switch monitor inputs.
I got very excited by his diagram, which seemed to imply that there exists a TB3 dock that's also a KVM. This is a product that needs to exist and I would pay a lot of money for it (as long as it worked well - there seem to be a lot of janky TB3 docks already even without the challenges of KVM).
If I had a slightly less wacky WD19 that had 2 or 4 input ports it would enormously simplify my current and future setups.
I've had good luck with an IOGear DisplayPort KVM. I would also like the two items merged. As it stands, I'm already in the process of making a new desk-top (like the wood on top of the legs, not like another computer), and I plan to give these items their own space on the underside of the desk top, either on shelves or with some other mounting mechanism.
not exactly what you're asking, but i've used a dell monitor that acted as a kvm switch. macbook was connected via usb-c, and dell laptop was connected via HDMI. Though you could also use displayport. Monitor seemlessly switched my magic trackpad/keyboard input between the mac and pc.
I have 2-3 monitors I'd like in this setup. My Dell monitor can do what you describe, but lacks the ports of a real dock (don't think it has outgoing Ethernet).
At the moment I have 2 monitors on the dock (which is my main setup) and a 3rd monitor on a separate machine with KVM (which means 2 keyboards and 2 mice) - this supports 4 computers (2 laptops, 2 desktops) - work+home laptops on the dual-monitor dock and Linux+PC desktops on the KVM. It's not a pretty setup.
My LG Ultrawide 5k2k monitor has TB3 and two USB3.0 ports hub on the back. I can change source for the hub from TB3 to USB B input in the back. TB3 goes to my mac. My linux workstation is connected to the displayport and usb b.
To switch between machines, I just change display and usb hub source. I do this from monitor menu right now, but should be scriptable with dpcc , I recently discovered.
A big problem is that Apple doesn't support MST even though it's part of the DisplayPort specification and Apple says they support DisplayPort over USB-C. As a result it's very difficult to create a dock that supports multiple displays on Apple devices. This is also why there hardly are any docks that support multiple displays. I truly don't understand this, it's 100% a software issue because it works when you install Windows on a MacBook.
Same here. After lots of crashes and problems connecting a monitor throught a DP to USB-C cable, I bought the TS3+ and this works much better. So far not a single crash, and everything works fine for me (Mac OS Catalina, MBP 16"). I use Gigabit Ethernet, displayport (4K monitor), some USB3 devices, and somewhere in the neighborhood of a bajillion USB2 devices connected via additional hubs.
if you are in clamshell mode, with display connected through the dock, will the display resume from sleep?
I have tried a number of TB3 docks (pretty much all except the caldigit), and they ALL have the problem (on MBP m1 at least) that the display will not wake when in clamshell mode. Display wakes fine when connected directly as USB-3 monitor.
Appreciate if you can test this and let me know :D
Using the Caldigit TB3 with a 2019 16" MBP in clamshell mode with two 4k LG monitors through the dock, I've found it pretty tedious trying to wake the monitors from sleep. Sometimes it'll take 30-45s of the monitors going in and out of power saving mode before it actually wakes up. This does seem to be the MBP's fault, because I can temporarily fix it by resetting the NVRAM.
Other than that, overall I've had a really positive experience with the TB3.
Before the upgrade to 11, wake was FLAWLESS. Since the upgrade, every 4th or 5th time or so, I find I need to cycle power on the monitor, and then the MBP finds it and comes alive.
Interesting - so it seems a big sur issue? Its my first dive into docks with the m1, and its REALLY frustrating trying to find one that works in clamshell.
Yes, at least with Catalina. I use my MBP in clamshell. And wakeup is reliable and predictable, more so than with a direct DP connection to a monitor, surprisingly.
Fully clamshell. I did find that the thunderbolt cable I used causes/fixes a significant number of issues though. Once I spent a year's rent on the Apple cable (which really does feel more substantial) it's been smooth sailing ever since.
Took me a while to find out that just because my Thinkpad Notebook supports DisplayPort 1.2 and has Thunderbolt, it does not mean I can actually use the specified resolutions with the Thinkpad USB-C Dock Gen 2.
I don't know if you have every used 30Hz with a mouse, but it sucks. Especially when you are used to 120Hz... Now I am looking for a Dock that actually supports 4k60Hz with DisplayPort 1.2.
I've tried several docks and cables with no success until I've found this article: https://www.bigmessowires.com/2019/05/19/explaining-4k-60hz-... The recommended CableMatters dock solved the 4k60Hz issue with USB2.0 pheripherals connected (mouse, kb).
Generally usb-c docks can do 4k@30 but to get 60 you need a (any) thunderbolt dock. The TB port on the laptop can do 60 but you need a TB dock and not a USBC dock otherwise that would be the bottleneck. However if you just need video and not extra USB ports / Ethernet / etc., then a USB-C to DP adapter can do 60fps since it doesn't need to reserve bandwidth for the other stuff.
This is great! I’ve been eyeing the same motherboard to get a similar setup but I do have a GPU. Wouldn’t that break the setup? I could only connect peripherals to the dock and handle the monitors separately. I believe that would end the one cable dream :(
Not sure if the author uses an internal or a discrete gpu, but this build does mention: “ Another weirdness is the 1 foot DP to DP cable required to connect the GPU DP-output to the Mobo DP-input. This is required to get the video stream on the Thunderbolt port.”
Fabien is trying to share the 4K display between the silent PC and the Macbook, but it is not possible through a single USB 3 hub due to bandwidth limitations. The second image suggests that a separate display cable from each device fixes the issue, and the rest of the peripherals can still be shared through the hub.
...I should probably also read through the entire article, it does not end here :)
I found this write up confusing also. At the end when he said, "Apple announced a fanless M1 which would have solved my problems", I was like, Wut? You problem was sharing peripherals between a pc and a laptop, right?
The Thunderbolt in this case is coming from the chipset on the motherboard, not the CPU. He lists the motherboard as an X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 which supports 2nd gen Ryzen, and which has that support built in.
This is incorrect, no AMD chip (CPU or chipset) comes with thunderbolt built in. The x570 Phantom Gaming board uses an Intel Titan Ridge (see the obligatory AnandTech block diagram) controller hanging off of the chipset's PCIe lanes to provide thunderbolt 3. This is functionally equivalent to just buying a thunderbolt add-in card, other than the space requirements.
Ah my bad, you are right, I didn't meant to imply that it was actually provided by the x570 chipset, just through it as a part of the motherboard. I just worded it poorly.
Does this explain the author’s surprise that apple’s fanless MacBooks can handle thunderbolt 3 without getting hot? If they’re doing it on cpu then I suppose that could bring about a lot of cpu i/o efficiency.
The X570 chipset is strange. It's just a Zen 2 IO die backported to GlobalFoundries 14nm. Presumably they were able to remove the unnecessary parts (memory controller) while backporting, but maybe they're reusing excess chips if they chose late in the process to move the IO die to 12nm. I'd guess there's some inefficiency from being a clever hack and not exactly designed for purpose.
Additionally, the X570 chipset supports a lot of peripherals:
- 16x PCIe 4.0 lanes + 4x lanes to the CPU
- 12 SATA 3 ports (some PHYs are shared with PCIe lanes so you can't have all of both)
- 8 USB 3.0 10Gbps (I'm not going to google the "official" nomenclature, ugh)
- 4 USB 2.0
- Other things like SuperIO and SMBus which don't use much power
Far more peripherals than M1. (Probably, it seems there's still no detailed specs about the thing anywhere).
Then there's the process advantage, 14nm GF to 5nm TSMC is a huge difference for all the logic involved. The advantage is dampened somewhat for IO because a significant portion of the power is used to drive the signals out of the chip, which is not affected by process changes. Apple's PCIe 4.0 PHYs may be more efficient considering X570 is a first generation PCIe 4.0 design.
Also, the power consumption of X570 is not that bad for what it is, 7-10W [0]. AMD must be a stickler about the 15W TDP because the fan seems unnecessary. This article is basically the worst case scenario: small heatsink on a cramped ITX motherboard in a passive case with no airflow. Maybe BCLK overclocking would run the fan? Or a dust clogged no-airflow case in a hot climate running all the peripherals at full bore?
The lack of airflow is probably to limit coil whine.
I think the main fault with X570 is that it doesn't save power at idle (PCIe supports downclocking links to save power, actually hot-swappable), but it appears to run all the lanes at full speed. Going from a Intel 6700K to AMD 3950X double the power draw at idle (50 watts to 90+) and that's with the same components.
On my system the chipset will quickly heat to 57c (when the fan starts) within two minutes regardless of usage. I swear Asus have the cooler upside down (semi-passive heatsink blows air downwards), worse still it ingests warm are from the heatsink. I have been meaning to modify it, right now I have a 140mm fan pointing at it to stop it hitting 1500rpm (where it irritates me).
Chasing silence does have diminishing returns. Manually setting the 3950X to 3.6ghz 0.95 volts does make a massive difference. I could run the PC semi passive (no case fans, just CPU <500rpm) if it wasn't for the damn PCH fan!
AMD also sets the voltage too high for their GPUs, making them actually run slower (the one-click downvolt works well), I think AMD dislikes the planet...
With the exception of Intel's ice lake CPUs (10th gen Core), everyone does thunderbolt on a discrete controller (in the case of this ASRock board it's a Titan Ridge controller). The x570 chipset runs very hot and is actively cooled regardless of the presence of an off-die thunderbolt controller hooked up to some of it's PCI-express lanes.
I have the Plugable TBT3-UDZ dock for my MacBook Pro, and I have to say, I'm pretty happy with it. It supports 2 displays, has a bunch of ports, and has its own power supply (i.e. my power brick can stay in my laptop bag). Construction quality is nice as well. Only "problem" I've had with it is finding the correct adapters, as I'm using it with DVI & VGA displays (it needs "active" adapters for this).
I have finally achieved the "dream" of only having a single cable to connect / disconnect when I want to bring my laptop with me.
I have the same motherboard and the same enclosure. The enclosure is really great, well designed and easy to use. For the heatsink, I actually bent some of the pipes and used the lh6 kit to use two sides of the enclosure for heat dissipation instead of one side only.
The thunderbolt port on that mother board works great. I have an egpu that I'm sharing between my laptop and this computer and it works perfectly on windows. I haven't managed yet to configure VFIO so that it works well on a windows VM in linux though.
On the topic of silent PCs, I've been very happy with the HD-plex.com H1 chassis. It's about $200 and you have to stick under 65W. It's basically a big heatsink. They have bigger ones as well that can handle GPUs, haven't tested those.
Ever since SDDs became available for consumers I wanted a PC without any moving parts or fans. I've had it for over two years now and having a dead silent PC has been just as great as I had imagined.
Have one. It looks very sharp. But, after only two years my rig bit the dust. A particular component must have fried from overheating, but I don't know which yet.
Realistically you should be more in the 35W range with this setup.
And alas, finding a good 35W Ryzen APU is a challenge.
There simply aren't any of a recent generation for sale anywhere.
I just also started looking into Thunderbolt 3 docks after only getting 4k30hz. $400+ CAD is so much though! Im curious if anyone here has recommendations
After trying out 4 of them for the past year, the only TB3 Dock I recommend is the CalDigit TB3. Works great for 4K@60 and has every port I need for my media production needs.
One was a 'dongle-style' one, I forget what brand, that I got off eBay. It worked... sorta, but it would get really hot and the screen would sometimes just go blank and require a full reboot of the computer to get back (unless I unplugged it).
The other one was mostly okay, but didn't have many ports and would also have weird issues when my computer was in clamshell mode — the Elgato Thunderbolt 3 Dock. It was mostly okay, but every week or two there would be a weird issue that I just don't see using the CalDigit model.
It depends on the configuration you're interested in, but there are some _relatively_ inexpensive ones from Monoprice [0]. I've tested this one with dual 4k monitors @ 60Hz, and USB 3. It works reliably, which is the most important aspect for me. No laptop charging and fixed TB cable however.
Note that this working will depend heavily on what usb-3 peripherals you're plugging in, and the exact resolution of your 4k monitors.
a display at 3840x2160@60hz will eat up about 19.8gbps. Two of them together will use 39.6gpbs.
Thunderbolt 3 only supports 40gbps. So if you have peripherals that need anything more than basic mouse/keyboard (in my case, a decent webcam and a usb to ethernet adapter) this setup will fail.
I'm no video expert, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought you can do 3840x2160@60Hz video with 24bit/pixel with under 14.4Gbps, which is the HDMI 2.0 limit [0].
According to this [1], that signal would require 12.54Gbps, so with a link budget of 34.56Gbps - 2*12.65Gbps, you'd have about 9.48Gbps left over for USB and ethernet (which is on the PCI bus for this particular hub). I suppose these numbers include coding overhead for the physical link, but I can't say for sure. If you wanted more than 60Hz or more than 24bit/pixel, you'd definitely run out of bandwidth with two monitors and USB/ethernet.
If you don't already have the 4k monitors, just get one with a thunderbolt input/output. A slightly more expensive dell monitor with good thunderbolt/usb-c support basically replaced my $300 dock, and it only cost about $100 more than the cheaper 4K monitors. Mine takes thunderbolt input, provides one usb-c port, and 4 usb-3 ports. Daisy chaining is supported, but note that you can't run 2 4k@60hz monitors with peripherals on a single cable - see details below.
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Your setup needs will also depend on whether you plan to run two monitors with 4k@60hz.
I was trying to run a setup that would give me two secondary displays plus peripherals on a single thunderbolt cable, but the unfortunate reality is that it's just not fast enough.
Thunderbolt gets you ~40gb/s. A 4k@60hz monitor needs ~19gb/s, and a usb-3 hub will need another 10gb/s.
Two monitors + a hub means you need ~50gb/s and the connection just doesn't support that.
In windows things will almost always gracefully degrade (one monitor will drop to 4k@30hz). In linux... it's a bit of a grab bag depending on the order the devices are detected - Sometimes one monitor will fail to be discovered at all, sometimes usb devices will never be powered up, in some cases you'll see one (or sometimes both) monitors come up but no longer offer the correct resolutions.
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Once I realized I was hitting the throughput limits on the cable, I caved and moved to a setup that used two thunderbolt cables plugged into the laptop.
I'm fortunate that my work and personal machines both have two thunderbolt ports (mac work work, xps 13 for personal) and they can both be charged from the same cable.
4k@60 is ~16 Gbps per 4k@60 display over DP; USB3 is happy with 5 Gbps; 10 Gbps is USB3.1.
There were TB2 docks (i.e. 20 gbps total) that were able to handle one 4k@60 display, 1 gbps ethernet and usb3. I'm using such one (Kanex TB2 Express) with 2015 mbp.
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On PC side, thunderbolt is handled by firmware, operating system has on say on it, it just sees devices pop on pcie bus (on Apple side, it is by Apple-supplied drivers). So the handling should be same for Windows and Linux. One of the few things it can do is configure security policies for TB3+.
A lot of the usbc hubs only support 4k30, or have weird power delivery limitations/incompatibilities. I didn’t want to gamble $300+ on a hub that might not work.
My solution was to use an LG thunderbolt monitor (which has a usb3 output), and hang a cheap self powered usb3 hub off that for all the lower bandwidth peripherals.
This has worked well between Mac and pc so far, just one cable that does 4k60, 100W power delivery and handles all the other peripherals in the background.
One gotcha: Apparently some monitors deep sleep options mean the monitor powers down the hub and laptop won’t wake up from keyboard/mouse events!
Hopefully via usb4 thunderbolt can be commoditized and we can get cheaper universal hubs rather than a $300+ dock, but at the moment you need to spend a huge amount to do anything with multiple thunderbolt connections.
I've looked at the Dell WD19TB, after using the previous gen Dell one from work. But I don't know about 4k support, since I only use 2560x1440 screens, which seems to work fine.
EDIT: Ah.. I saw now it was well above 400 CAD from Dell Canada
I just plug both computers into the monitor, and switch the keyboard with a $5 USB switch. (Actually, I stopped using multiple computers a few years ago, but that's what I did back then.)
As someone with a similar setup: yes, it can wobble a little; no, it’s not a big deal and the reviewers who make it into such a big issue are just inventing things to complain about.
I have a similar setup, using an Amazon Basics monitor arm. There's a slight jutter in the monitor when the movement stops and starts, but the monitor always ends up in the same place at the end of the move, and the connections to the desk and the monitor are solid enough that I don't worry about it.
It is just HTML with CSS. I wrote a php generator that pics up src.php in each folders, adds header and a footer, and write back index.html. Nothing more.
The diagram shows he is only plugging in peripherals like keyboard, mouse, webcam. For things like that, USB2 should be fine, and you save a lot of headache. If you have a high performance usb3 storage device connected, you probably don't want it to switch with your KVM anyway.
I'm curious about that keyboard setup. To the author- if you see this, can you share some of its details- I've been wanting to put together something similar.
The ErgoDox EZ[1] is very cool. The split is nice on the shoulders and upper back. My favorite part is that they are fully programmable and easy to customize with the online configuration tool. You can see my setup for some of the crazy stuff you can do[2].
Sennheiser momentums. They sound great, and the fit is good if you have a tiny head and tiny ears. Otherwise you'll be swapping out the pads or not wearing them for more than a few hours.
There is something really screwy with the USB controller in that device, the ETH is on the USB hub and corrupts Ethernet frames, under Linux you can force disable hardware offloaded CRC checksumming as a workaround, but still the USB devices that are directly connected can just stop functioning.
It also has the annoying quirk that it enumerates the display ports differently each time, which means your operating system has almost no chance of redrawing your desktop when you plug it back in.
Looks good on the spec sheet though, and will probably be flooding the used market as companies try to offload them. I tried 5 different ones from different batches, they all had the same characteristics.
Didn’t try the WD19 yet, but I hope that’s better.