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The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

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Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#141

Post by jeffbee »

wffurr wrote: post #129
jeffbee wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's the deal with these prices? Is it just because the connector is so compact? A 2-meter QSFP+ 40-gigabit copper cable is only about $25. https://www.fs.com/c/40g-qsfp-dac-1117

They are "active" cables and so have microcontrollers in them.

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?

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#142

Post by gehwartzen »

js2 wrote: post #109
gehwartzen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#143

Post by xondono »

iamacyborg wrote: post #39
xondono wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do something similar, but I got a $20 usb3.1 switch on Amazon and taped that to the back of my monitor. When I want to switch, I just change the input on the monitor and press the button behind it. It’s not the 1-click solution that I wanted, but it’s close enough and cheap. Switching USB ports is cheap, switching video signals isn’t.

You can buy cheap Displayport switches that work just like the usb one you have.

That’s the plan once I upgrade. For now I’m still using my 2015 mbp, so it’s displayport from my desktop and HDMI from the laptop.

Finding a cheap switch capable of doing both is not that easy

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#144

Post by FireBeyond »

js2 wrote: post #109
gehwartzen wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#145

Post by FireBeyond »

gehwartzen wrote: post #142
js2 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Check out Jettison.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#147

Post by tutfbhuf »

komali2 wrote: post #116
tutfbhuf wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

Yup, this is what I have heard from others as well, that's why I am specifically looking for an adapter/cable without enclosure.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#148

Post by FireBeyond »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #103
supermatt wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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.

So many issues with Big Sur. :(

Display Stream Compression is completely broken, I've heard reports of it killing speakers...

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#149

Post by mmcnl »

mikepurvis wrote: post #14
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…

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 also have a WD15 and it works very well. Connecting everything with one cable is a very nice feature. It's a USB-C dock though, and not Thunderbolt.

Re: The beautiful Silent ThunderBolt-3 PC

#150

Post by mmcnl »

bluedino wrote: post #17

All the docks seem like they are bad in their own way. Almost every one has a flaw. I can understand why Apple didn't bother making one.

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.
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