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The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

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Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#91

Post by bionade24 »

dijit wrote: post #11

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…

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#92

Post by bnt »

andjd wrote: post #55
cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #42

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? [1] https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

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.

Really? For me only 1 of them connects to the Mac, the other one doesn’t recognize the Mac.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#93

Post by [deleted] »

lgierth wrote: post #84
jrrrr wrote: post #48

Looks like that board is the sole option for Thunderbolt && AMD && ITX. Bummer that there are no options with passively-cooled B550 chipsets. I do something similar to the post's two-cable configuration: - Mac to Caldigit TB dock to two displays. - PC to one of the displays - Keyboard and mouse to a USB switch, which connects to the PC and the TB dock It's kind of a pain to manually flip both the USB switch and the m…

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.

[deleted]

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#95

Post by bionade24 »

bionade24 wrote: post #91
dijit wrote: post #11

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…

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#96

Post by bombcar »

yboris wrote: post #80

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.

Modern cables (if you buy high quality ones) support incredible lengths - this is relatively easy to do in many situations.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#97

Post by selectodude »

supermatt wrote: post #40
geertj wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm having good luck with the CalDigit TS3

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

I have my 2016 15" hooked up to a 4K monitor via Displayport without any issues. Been using this dock + display for a couple years now.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#98

Post by ec109685 »

least wrote: post #44
cbm-vic-20 wrote: post #42

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? [1] https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

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.

Doesn’t that leave his MacBook without power and thus it would lose its charge?

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#99

Post by ehnto »

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#100

Post by ehnto »

yboris wrote: post #80

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.

I did this with a cupboard once upon a time, the only downside was opening the cupboard to turn it on.
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