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The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

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Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#111

Post by eulers_secret »

bionade24 wrote: post #95
bionade24 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#112

Post by geerlingguy »

benfrain wrote: post #73
geerlingguy wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Which ones did you try that were no good or not suitable?

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#113

Post by OakNinja »

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…

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#114

Post by pizza234 »

eulers_secret wrote: post #111
bionade24 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

"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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#115

Post by NwtnsMthd »

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 can second this!

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).

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#116

Post by komali2 »

tutfbhuf wrote: post #36
gehwartzen wrote: post #21

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. https://www.amazon.com/Magne…

Is it possible to buy an PCIe to TB3 adapter cable and connect any modern graphics card to a laptop or mini atx board that has TB3?

As other people mentioned, egpu container.

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#117

Post by least »

ec109685 wrote: post #98
least wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It would lose its charge over time, yes. Just like any other laptop that's left unplugged.

If he's taking the laptop with him then that's not really an issue and if he wants to use it docked he'd just plug it back into the dock, though.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#118

Post by kawsper »

ehnto wrote: post #100
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.

You could enable wake-on-lan on it!

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#119

Post by velox_io »

mastax wrote: post #86
rashkov wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 su…

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 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...

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#120

Post by bartvk »

geerlingguy wrote: post #23
treve wrote: post #2

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.

I second this. The Caldigit TB3+ is rock solid for me. I don't start my work day in clamshell mode, though.
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