Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
If I were to buy a TB3 dock it would have to be one with faster than 1 GbE networking. So far the only one available (let me know if you find any other!) is the $299 OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock, which they got by buying Akitio and rebranding their Thunder3 Pro Dock. This has 10 GbE over a standard RJ45 connector, but because that runs hot it needs a fan for cooling. I hope that the companies mentioned in the article will soon release more docks with 5 or 10 GbE, or at least 2.5 GbE considering that the extra cost for an Intel i225-V or Realtek RTL8125 is about $3. With AMD B550/X570 and Intel Z490 boards 2.5 Gbps is becoming commonplace. Currently I have a small USB3 dock (the ~$60 i-Tec Nano Dock LAN PD) that covers most of my needs, except that networking is only 1 GbE. I am contemplating the $200 QNAP QNA-T310G1S 10 GbE over SFP+. (I personally prefer SFP+ because it is both more power efficient and cheaper, especially MikroTik switches, but there are also tons of cheap used PCIe NICs to connect stationary PCs.)
May I suggest the Philips 346B1C monitor, an ultra wide 5K screen that connects over 1 USB-C cable for image / power / data and has a built in USB-C hub that includes an ethernet port and 4 USB ports. It also comes with built-in speakers and a line-out for external speakers. It works brilliantly with my 2020 MacBook Air.
If I were to buy a TB3 dock it would have to be one with faster than 1 GbE networking. So far the only one available (let me know if you find any other!) is the $299 OWC Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock, which they got by buying Akitio and rebranding their Thunder3 Pro Dock. This has 10 GbE over a standard RJ45 connector, but because that runs hot it needs a fan for cooling. I hope that the companies mentioned in the article will soon release more docks with 5 or 10 GbE, or at least 2.5 GbE considering that the extra cost for an Intel i225-V or Realtek RTL8125 is about $3. With AMD B550/X570 and Intel Z490 boards 2.5 Gbps is becoming commonplace. Currently I have a small USB3 dock (the ~$60 i-Tec Nano Dock LAN PD) that covers most of my needs, except that networking is only 1 GbE. I am contemplating the $200 QNAP QNA-T310G1S 10 GbE over SFP+. (I personally prefer SFP+ because it is both more power efficient and cheaper, especially MikroTik switches, but there are also tons of cheap used PCIe NICs to connect stationary PCs.)
If you already have a dock just get a 10GbE adapter?
Well, it’s nice to see you guys reading the site. It would have been nice if you sent emails to people who bought the model though. I bought it recently, and there’s just no way to know that new software is out. Now, to fix the problem with the Softraid eject download...
SoftRaid is ok when flexibility is required but I've always preferred a hardware RAID since they can rebuild without a computer. OWC's line of hardware RAIDs was weak until the acquisition of Akito resolved that issue.
Ironically, software raids are faster than hardware raids. Long ago, it used to be the other way around. Softraid is very good. I’m not worrying about rebuilding without a computer.
@MW: That's one really poorly formatted and hard to read table.
The entries for each dock aren't centered under the column headings, making several of the entries appear to be split between columns. And the table itself is tall enough that the column headings scroll off-screen, making it even harder to parse once you get past halfway — and I'm using a generous 27" 5K monitor.
Worse, the table seems to be inaccurate. For instance the article shows a photo of a dock by Plugable that clearly has two identical video-out ports (DP in this case). That's not even reflected in the table.
I'll point out that this is a valuable feature that almost nobody offers. Most docks make you use the second TB3 port for one video out, and either an HDMI, DP or mini-DP port for the other. We have a whole bunch of MBP workstations with TB3 docks and double external monitors, and this means I have to keep an annoying variety of different cables on hand, since both the docks and the monitors vary in their video-in ports.
@MW: That's one really poorly formatted and hard to read table.
The entries for each dock aren't centered under the column headings, making several of the entries appear to be split between columns. And the table itself is tall enough that the column headings scroll off-screen, making it even harder to parse once you get past halfway — and I'm using a generous 27" 5K monitor.
Worse, the table seems to be inaccurate. For instance the article shows a photo of a dock by Plugable that clearly has two identical video-out ports (DP in this case). That's not even reflected in the table.
I'll point out that this is a valuable feature that almost nobody offers. Most docks make you use the second TB3 port for one video out, and either an HDMI, DP or mini-DP port for the other. We have a whole bunch of MBP workstations with TB3 docks and double external monitors, and this means I have to keep an annoying variety of different cables on hand, since both the docks and the monitors vary in their video-in ports.
It's fine here in the forums. We're working on some fixes for it on the main page and on mobile that are induced by the site redesign.
Well, it’s nice to see you guys reading the site. It would have been nice if you sent emails to people who bought the model though. I bought it recently, and there’s just no way to know that new software is out. Now, to fix the problem with the Softraid eject download...
SoftRaid is ok when flexibility is required but I've always preferred a hardware RAID since they can rebuild without a computer. OWC's line of hardware RAIDs was weak until the acquisition of Akito resolved that issue.
Ironically, software raids are faster than hardware raids. Long ago, it used to be the other way around. Softraid is very good. I’m not worrying about rebuilding without a computer.
I just prefer it to be separate. A hardware RAIDs primary functions won't be affected crowley said:
And the other side too, look at how to A and C are not centred on the same line. Misalignment.
I fail to see how that affects the use of the device. You're going to have real trouble finding a dock with perfect vertical and horizontal alignment. Even the OWC model has a similar relationship between the USB-C and USB-A ports.
Well, it’s nice to see you guys reading the site. It would have been nice if you sent emails to people who bought the model though. I bought it recently, and there’s just no way to know that new software is out. Now, to fix the problem with the Softraid eject download...
SoftRaid is ok when flexibility is required but I've always preferred a hardware RAID since they can rebuild without a computer. OWC's line of hardware RAIDs was weak until the acquisition of Akito resolved that issue.
Ironically, software raids are faster than hardware raids. Long ago, it used to be the other way around. Softraid is very good. I’m not worrying about rebuilding without a computer.
I just prefer it to be separate. A hardware RAIDs primary functions won't be affected crowley said:
And the other side too, look at how to A and C are not centred on the same line. Misalignment.
I fail to see how that affects the use of the device. You're going to have real trouble finding a dock with perfect vertical and horizontal alignment. Even the OWC model has a similar relationship between the USB-C and USB-A ports.
I won’t argue preferences. That’s a personal decision, and the reason both are available is because different people and organizations have different needs.
Has CalDigit resolved the issue with closed-display mode? I prefer to use only my external monitor while working, but when I close my MPB it disconnects. I’ve tried the troubleshooting methods offered in different forums but they don’t seem to work for everyone and definitely not for me. Are there dock recommendations that don’t have this issue?
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
We have a new version of the OWC Dock Ejector software, released on July 24, 2020, which installs also installs the driver required for enabling the high powered ports. This version fixes the problem which sometimes prevented the high power ports from working correctly on macOS 10.15. I am using with my Apple SuperDrive connected to my OWC 14 Port Thunderbolt 3 Dock and it works perfectly. (The Apple SuperDrive only works when connect to a high power port on a dock or directly connected to a Mac).
We pride ourselves in promptly addressing problems users are encountering with our software. I apologize that we did not catch the problem with the high power ports sooner.
We are currently working on the next version, which will support Big Sur, macOS 11.0. I expect it to ship before Apple ships the final release of this new version of macOS.
Tim Standing VP Software Development - Mac Other World Computing, Inc.
It's great that you take pride in "promptly addressing problems," but I emailed your customer support department a week ago, and I've heard nothing other than an automated email that responses are delayed due to COVID-19. But maybe we have different defintions of "promptly."
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Look very carefully before buying one of these things. The specifications can be tricky to understand, and worse, they may not even work on Macs with newer OS versions. I recently bought a TB 3 dock from OWC. But you have to download software for high power delivery. But on Catalina, Apple doesn’t allow that software to install, so no power delivery.
i took some time to decide which dock to buy, and even though I paid $300 (on sale), not every feature works for such an expensive device.
be careful, just seeing a list of features doesn’t tell you that they will work as expected, or at all.
There's a reason that we explicitly recommended the Caldigit TS3+.
The CalDigit had a similar software issue but that meant getting 2W less of power, 85W vs 87W. I assume they ship with the new firmware now.
The CalDigit case is all metal with heat dissipation fins which is important feature when delivering 87W of power, since the unit can get hot when its supplying power to a computer along with several other devices. The unit will sit vertical or horizontal depending on the layout of your work space, which helps to maximize port access and heat dissipation. The power supply is separate from the unit.
The only downside when using the unit with a laptop is that both TB3 ports are on the back. So if you want the audio ports and the card slot facing forward the cable has to be wrapped around the back, which really shortens the distance if you want to use the 40Gbps cable with full USB compatibility. The other option is to use a longer 20Gbps cable or the 40Gbps that has marginal USB speeds.
What you want is an active longer cable, not a passive one. The six-foot TB3 active cables have full USB speeds.
Do you have any documentation to support this. I haven't seen this in any AI articles nor can I find reference to it anywhere other than a single active 2m TB cable sold by CalDigit and that's only if its connected to a TB3 dock, which is what I want.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The table does support what I'm saying. USB 3.0 is contained within the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, so the 40Gbps total bandwidth allowed is the key factor when going Thunderbolt 3 host to Thunderbolt 3 peripheral. All this table is saying is if you use an active 40Gbit/sec Thunderbolt 3 cable as a USB type C cable without the Thunderbolt 3 protocol, you'll only get USB 2.0 speeds.
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Other than a few obscure notes here and there it's difficult to find anything in writing when it comes to USB support over a TB3 dock connection using an active cable. Yes the article is old but I cannot find any article that clearly explains this feature, which is why I was confused to begin with. Do all active cables support this feature? Also what has changed about the TB3 standard since it came out and why does Apple to appear to have a Pro cable that does support USB direct to device?
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.
Comments
I hope that the companies mentioned in the article will soon release more docks with 5 or 10 GbE, or at least 2.5 GbE considering that the extra cost for an Intel i225-V or Realtek RTL8125 is about $3. With AMD B550/X570 and Intel Z490 boards 2.5 Gbps is becoming commonplace.
Currently I have a small USB3 dock (the ~$60 i-Tec Nano Dock LAN PD) that covers most of my needs, except that networking is only 1 GbE. I am contemplating the $200 QNAP QNA-T310G1S 10 GbE over SFP+. (I personally prefer SFP+ because it is both more power efficient and cheaper, especially MikroTik switches, but there are also tons of cheap used PCIe NICs to connect stationary PCs.)
The entries for each dock aren't centered under the column headings, making several of the entries appear to be split between columns. And the table itself is tall enough that the column headings scroll off-screen, making it even harder to parse once you get past halfway — and I'm using a generous 27" 5K monitor.
Worse, the table seems to be inaccurate. For instance the article shows a photo of a dock by Plugable that clearly has two identical video-out ports (DP in this case). That's not even reflected in the table.
I'll point out that this is a valuable feature that almost nobody offers. Most docks make you use the second TB3 port for one video out, and either an HDMI, DP or mini-DP port for the other. We have a whole bunch of MBP workstations with TB3 docks and double external monitors, and this means I have to keep an annoying variety of different cables on hand, since both the docks and the monitors vary in their video-in ports.
I just prefer it to be separate. A hardware RAIDs primary functions won't be affected crowley said: I fail to see how that affects the use of the device. You're going to have real trouble finding a dock with perfect vertical and horizontal alignment. Even the OWC model has a similar relationship between the USB-C and USB-A ports.
Your own article doesn't seem to support this cali either.
PSA: Thunderbolt 3 cables longer than 0.5m generally don't support USB 3.1 speeds
https://appleinsider.com/articles/17/08/15/psa-thunderbolt-3-cables-longer-than-05m-generally-dont-support-usb-31-speeds"Here at AppleInsider, we've settled on two brands of long, active, Thunderbolt 3 cables: the 60W Cable Matters 6.6-foot and 100W CalDigit 1 meter and 2 meter cables. They aren't cheap — but SCSI veterans and FireWire users know where we're coming from regarding that. We willingly sacrifice USB 3.1 Type-C compatibility to guarantee that we're getting max bandwidth to our docks and eGPUs."
The article you cite is three years old, and things have changed a bit. That said, we still recommend the CalDigit cable, and you will get 5Gbit or 10Gbit/sec speeds from USB type A or USB type C ports on a downstream Thunderbolt 3 dock.
Maybe it's time for an updated article to clear explain Thunderbolt 3 and again its relationship to Thunderbolt 4, to include the passive and active cables. I understand how all of it works but this one point regarding the active cables is really confusing, since it's not well documented. I still haven't found an article in AI that claims this capability. I'm not even sure that many of the people who sell these cables are clear on this because I don't see it in the product documentation for most active cables.