5A, 50V
Good luck.
USB port just isn't physically ready for this. This is going to end with some spectacular fireworks once you factor in cheap Chinese engineering for cables, ports and chargers.
USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
121–130 of 498 posts
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#122This is pretty good for the people who have such laptops, but I’m just struggling to understand the use case for a laptop. A laptop that consumes that much power can’t possibly have much battery life. At that point, are you getting much portability out of your laptop? Why not just use a desktop?
Because most desktops don't have integral screens and keyboards. Nor do they stay on and compute in an albeit degraded state in transit. Not everyone is just using laptops as a word processor/browser. Sometimes you just need oomph.
i would love if my macbook stayed on and computed when i closed the lid. behavior is pretty inconsistent no matter what settings i check in control panel. sometimes i close the lid and it holds its ssh connections, sometimes it drops them and i don't know why.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#123Uh.... Melting USB-C connectors at 65W are already bad enough. The problem is that there is no way to detect a bad contact, and they tend to be. Few specs of dust, and you have 5 amps going to a single pin. Even if you have split seconds momentary disconnects, you can get welds in contact pads, which will over time degrade the contact. On other note, Intel may be increasing laptop CPU power budgets into 60W-70W terri…
Is it really undetectable? A smarter USB PD controller and maybe some extra sensors should be able to mostly avoid that problem, no?
"smarter" an "should" are key words.
Not everybody buys the best hardware in class. Most hardware is cheap Chinese garbage for which the only qualification is that it isn't bad enough to be brought down from Amazon.com.
Go explain your grandma or girlfriend why the charger they bought damaged their laptop irreparably.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know, the flipside is that Thunderbolt delivers genuinely cutting-edge interconnect capabilities. I can run two 4K60 displays and a dozen peripheral devices, and charge my laptop, all via a single cable off of my $100 Thunderbolt 3 dock. There is no other technology that comes close to this capability at this price point.
At the same time, I have no idea if the cable I have is a thunderbolt or usb-c cable. There is no standard marking.
You might not know in advance which is a problem but it seems pretty trivial issue. Just test it and see if it works, if it doesn't return it and get a different one. Then repeat the process until you get the one you need.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
What's the cooling situation on such a laptop?
Somewhere between "drone" and "fighter jet" in most cases.
if you are paying money for a gaming laptop, you probably aren't tolerating the teensy unidirectional laptop speakers, and have some serious cans on your head for gaming that mask the helicopter on your desk.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#126OK, call up the USB-IF and ask them a question. A simple question. When USB-PD was developed in the ancient year of 2014, was it truly unforeseeable that, you know, laptop GPUs use a lot of power, maybe we should support more than the arbitrary 100W number on this connector?
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#127Apple and Microsoft's Surface had (does the Surface still have?) the perfect connector - the Magsafe. The more we dig into this power over USB-C garbage, the farther away we go from that perfection. The patent expiration cannot come soon enough, I seriously hope all portable device vendors bring it back.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#128Uh.... Melting USB-C connectors at 65W are already bad enough. The problem is that there is no way to detect a bad contact, and they tend to be. Few specs of dust, and you have 5 amps going to a single pin. Even if you have split seconds momentary disconnects, you can get welds in contact pads, which will over time degrade the contact. On other note, Intel may be increasing laptop CPU power budgets into 60W-70W terri…
Is it really undetectable? A smarter USB PD controller and maybe some extra sensors should be able to mostly avoid that problem, no?
Most devices of meaningful value build in USB-C port protection parts specifically for this reason. Here's a popular one from NXP: https://www.nxp.com/products/power-management/load-switches/...
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
USB-C sure turned into a mess, didn't it? So far, I only have two such devices (a cell phone and a set of headphones), and there's no problem charging either. But even there, we already have proprietary extensions (Qualcomm quick charging, for instance), and then there's Thunderbolt, and now this. I'm not enthusiastic about wading into the world of "every port looks identical but isn't" that USB-C has given us. I hav…
I don't know, the flipside is that Thunderbolt delivers genuinely cutting-edge interconnect capabilities. I can run two 4K60 displays and a dozen peripheral devices, and charge my laptop, all via a single cable off of my $100 Thunderbolt 3 dock. There is no other technology that comes close to this capability at this price point.
do those screens need to be 'thunderbolt' as well? or can they just take a usb-c connection (but ... not be thunderbolt?)
I have a 2019 MBP 15". Every 'dock' I've looked at seemed to indicate that "you will see mirrored screens on multiple displays" - which is not what I'd want.
Perhaps all of this is because I'm 'only' using a 2 year old MBP, and this is somehow all Apple's fault?
Would love to know what specific $100 thunderbolt 3 dock you have. It seems to be a confusing mess of half-information whenever I go to shop for stuff.
Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops
#130Apple and Microsoft's Surface had (does the Surface still have?) the perfect connector - the Magsafe. The more we dig into this power over USB-C garbage, the farther away we go from that perfection. The patent expiration cannot come soon enough, I seriously hope all portable device vendors bring it back.
Surface still does have this connector, but can also charge from USB-C at reduced speed!