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coolerkid

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Feb 26, 2015
281
311
I lost my thunderbolt cable for my ASD. Can I purchase a 3rd party cable off Amazon or do I really need to use Apple's ridiculously overpriced one?

For example: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C4JNTTNY

I know a 3rd party cable will work. Just wondering if there's any benefit to Apple's?
 

PaulD-UK

macrumors 6502a
Oct 23, 2009
872
471
Where cheaper cables may fail (especially long ones) is the bandwidth supplied to the USB-C ports on the monitor.
Some will do the video well, but only manage USB 2 speed to the data ports.
 

fwmireault

macrumors 68020
Jul 4, 2019
2,288
9,704
Montréal, Canada
Find any certified Thunderbolt 3 or Thunderbolt 4 cable, it doesn't have to be the Apple one. But as stated previously, do not buy any USB-C cable, it has to support Thunderbolt
 

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,938
4,241
A USB-C charging cable is limited to USB 2.0 speed (480 Mb/s) and won't work with a display, but a USB-C data cable (10 Gbps) can support Thunderbolt at 20 Gbps. That is sufficient for Apple Studio Display or Apple Pro Display XDR if your GPU supports DSC (15.4 Gbps for 6K60 and 11.2 Gbps for 5K60). Verify the connection speed in the Thunderbolt tab of System Information.app. Max USB transmit speed (10 Gbps for the USB ports of the Apple Studio Display and 5 Gbps for the USB ports of the Apple Pro Display XDR) will be slightly reduced but USB receive speed should be mostly unchanged.
 
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