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USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

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Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#241

Post by Nextgrid »

zardo wrote: post #154
baybal2 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, unless you put a sense resistor on every power pin, and add circuitry to individually measure current per pin.

If the alternative is starting house fires that sounds pretty reasonable.

The problem isn't whether reputable manufacturers will do it, it's whether the bottom of the barrel cheap cables from eBay/Amazon will do it.

The advantage of USB2 is that it's very hard to screw up. The design is so simple that even the cheapest cable is usualy "okay" because making an "okay" USB2 cable is so simple.

In contrast, making a USB-C cable is much more difficult, which means unscrupulous manufacturers flood the market with bad cables that fail with disastrous side-effects.

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#242

Post by darrenf »

I genuinely don’t understand how I’ve managed to be so lucky. That is, I absolutely do not disbelieve the many tales of woe I hear on HN (like the many in this thread) - but I’ve literally never put any thought into what cable I plug in to what device, and had no trouble that I can recall. It really had lived up to its hype for me so far.

My USB-C devices are: a wireless charger, two MacBooks (one intel, one m1), a Pixelbook, Nintendo Switch, Oculus Quest and Quest 2, iPad Pro, and the charging case of some earphones… I think that’s everything. Oh, and my partner’s phone and headphones too.

Anyway - I’ve cables and chargers dotted around the house, plus some A-C ones for use with power bricks - and never had any grief powering/charging any device from any of them. What am I doing right? I’m definitely not only plugging Apple devices into Apple cables and so on.

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#243

Post by dangerlibrary »

dragontamer wrote: post #219
alerighi wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not using the proper cable could lead also to fires, for example. We are talking about a significant amount of current. If you don't use a cable rated for that current, the cable or the connector will overheat, and possibly start a fire. And it's not a remote possibility. It happened to me with a fast charging phone power supply and the phone, and the cable was the one provided by the manufacturer! The type-C connect…

> We are talking about a significant amount of current. Are we? I'm not sure how they deliver more power in this specification. But traditionally, the additional power (from 5W to 20W to 100W) was through additional *voltage*, not current. > And it's not something trivial that power supplies and phones can detect, there is not a way to determinate the voltage drop in the cable built into the standard (basically all t…

> Voltage can't go up arbitrarily, but voltage can safely be increased to ~48V or so in most applications. After 48V, humans start to get shocked / hurt, so that's probably the reasonable limit.

Car batteries in ICE cars are nominally 12v. Grab both terminals and tell me it doesn't hurt.

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#244

Post by Nextgrid »

h8hawk wrote: post #212
smoldesu wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the record, the M1's GPU performance doesn't even start to compete with the 2021 laptop market, much less the 2014 one. GPUs have always been the biggest power draw in these laptops, and it's honestly no surprise that Apple can cut their power consumption down to 10w when their GPU is as pathetic as it is.

Which kind of laptops are you speaking for? M1 GPu performance Blow any integrated gpu and all middle class separate GPUs (mx250, etc).

Gaming laptops I assume.

M1 GPU beats most other integrated GPUs, but that doesn't magically make the demand for more performance go away, and that demand is likely to increase as there become more and more non-gaming applications for GPUs (machine learning, video editing, etc).

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#245

Post by Tsiklon »

croon wrote: post #9
jeffrallen wrote: post #7

Plus, if you thread the cable through your hot dog, it will be warm in time for lunch. Meanwhile, Apple's M1 chip is showing us that 240 watt laptops are the problem, not the solution...

Having one USB-C dock powering your laptop (maybe with a hungry GPU), as well as a couple of monitors with everything through just usb-c cables is my hope, and this is one step closer.

This is my reality today; My personal set up at home is completely centred around a Caldigit TS3+, to which I have connected ethernet to my local network switch, a keyboard, mouse, headphone amplifier + two monitors.

Feeding the Caldigit dock I have a thunderbolt cable going to my laptop (a 2019 Macbook Pro) and i have a second thunderbolt cable run from my desktop (A HP Z4 with a thunderbolt card) which i can swap in at a moment's notice if I need more horsepower or want to play games etc.

Thunderbolt for both computers enables a single cable setup. It really is super convenient

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#246

Post by 8note »

mamurphy wrote: post #201
jquery wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn’t Europe ban this?

jquery was downvoted but I recall articles like this ( https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/17/21070848/eu-apple-europea... ) with the EU trying to ban any "non-standard" connector. Maybe non-standard connectors are actually a feature, not a bug, because everything having the same connector but not the same functionality will lead to confusion as described above.

I don't think it was ever true that the connectors on the two devices determine whether they're compatible.

You can find all sorts of different connectors on a cable to connect two devices together, but you still only knew that devices are/are not compatible by trying to plug them in

At least with the current setup, you are unlikely to burn out the devices by trying a cable.

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#247

Post by CyberDildonics »

cletus wrote: post #11

I look forward to USB 4.1a Type C.2 Phase iii.b Gen 3E and the 482646282 different cable capability combinations that all plug in and have no distinction of those capabilities whatsoever. I also look forward to all the necessary and helpful posts telling me how the identical ports on my laptop are in fact diffferent despite their identical appearance. But at least everything uses the same plug, so that’s nice.

Don't forget super speed, super speed+ and super speed+ 2x2

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#248

Post by westurner »

What are the costs to add a USB PD module to an electronic device? https://hackaday.com/2021/04/21/easy-usb‑c-power-for-all-you...

- [ ] Create an industry standard interface for charging and using [power tool,] battery packs; and adapters

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#249

Post by sanjiwatsuki »

smoldesu wrote: post #192
jeffrallen wrote: post #7

Plus, if you thread the cable through your hot dog, it will be warm in time for lunch. Meanwhile, Apple's M1 chip is showing us that 240 watt laptops are the problem, not the solution...

For the record, the M1's GPU performance doesn't even start to compete with the 2021 laptop market, much less the 2014 one. GPUs have always been the biggest power draw in these laptops, and it's honestly no surprise that Apple can cut their power consumption down to 10w when their GPU is as pathetic as it is.

I don't think this is accurate. [0] and [1] have 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited Graphics benchmark tested on both the M1 and the 4800U in the Lenovo Yoga Slim-7-14ARE and the M1's GPU stomps the Vega 8 R4000. It outscores even the Ryzen 5000 series iGPU.

I've seen no evidence that the M1's GPU is anything but best in class for integrated graphics.

[0] https://www.notebookcheck.net/Apple-M1-GPU-GPU-Benchmarks-an... [1] https://www.notebookcheck.net/AMD-Radeon-RX-Vega-8-Ryzen-400...

Re: USB-C is about to go from 100W to 240W, enough to power beefier laptops

#250

Post by sjruckle »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #243
dragontamer wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are talking about a significant amount of current. Are we? I'm not sure how they deliver more power in this specification. But traditionally, the additional power (from 5W to 20W to 100W) was through additional *voltage*, not current. > And it's not something trivial that power supplies and phones can detect, there is not a way to determinate the voltage drop in the cable built into the standard (basically all t…

> Voltage can't go up arbitrarily, but voltage can safely be increased to ~48V or so in most applications. After 48V, humans start to get shocked / hurt, so that's probably the reasonable limit. Car batteries in ICE cars are nominally 12v. Grab both terminals and tell me it doesn't hurt.

I've done this. It doesn't hurt. In fact I didn't feel anything besides the battery terminals.
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