$400 and still only 2 Thunderbolt ports? Is CalDigit the only company that understands that people don't just want hubs for as many legacy ports as possible? We want the most possible performance out of a single Thunderbolt port. That means more Thunderbolt ports on the hub. I don't care that my MacBook Pro has 3 TB ports on it...I only want to use one, for convenience. The Hub I use has to accommodate/enable that, or there is no reason for me to buy a hub.
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CES 2023: OWC's New Thunderbolt 4 Dock for Mac Features Built-In Power Supply
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The New Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub from Satechi looks more appealing and right now with promo code CES20, it will cost you $160:
One of them is how you connect it to the Mac. That doesn't count. There are 2 usable ports.
CalDigit Element hub have 4 times more USB-A ports and it is about the same size.The New Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub from Satechi looks more appealing and right now with promo code CES20, it will cost you $160:
Just as much in CalDigit TS4. 💁🏻♂️
This OWC is perfect for hotel/travel you don't need pick up extra power brick.
It's actually a limitation of Thunderbolt 4. This dock is a Thunderbolt 4 dock where one of the downstream ports is converted to HDMI.
10Gb Ethernet requires 2 lanes of PCIe Gen3 throughput. The current thunderbolt 4 chipsets only give 1 lane of throughput as a compromise to having the “hubbing” functionality of thunderbolt 4. Thus you will not find any thunderbolt 4 dock with 10GBASE-T. Thunderbolt 3 lacks the hubbing functionality (more than one downstream Thunderbolt port), but provides x4 lanes of PCIe Gen3.
If you're looking for a Thunderbolt 3 dock with 10GbE, they have an updated version of their Pro Dock (that is now fan-less and has new ports) here: https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-thunderbolt-pro-dock
TLDR: you will never find a Thunderbolt 4 dock/hub with 10GbE due to actual thunderbolt limitations. Your best bet is something like the Thunderbolt 3 Pro Dock from OWC.
This is not a friendly traveling part. My Mac Studio has 12 posts to start with.
The current M1 Mac Books have "portable friendly" side plug-ins by Hyper that can expand I/O with even an ethernet port.
The current M1 Mac Books have "portable friendly" side plug-ins by Hyper that can expand I/O with even an ethernet port.
They're completely different products with different specs, not to mention different power passthroughs. Why would you even compare them?The New Thunderbolt 4 Slim Hub from Satechi looks more appealing and right now with promo code CES20, it will cost you $160:
At first, I thought this thing had a battery in it for portable use, then realized they merely added a power supply inside so just a cord is needed and no brick. Who cares for a desktop device?
I do. For aesthetic reasons and for 'i don't want to find out how to fit 20 power bricks near each other' reasons.
For now, only Apple and Sony seem to be able to do it.
However, I want a nvme slot...
I don't understand why none of these docks has a SFP+ cage... it's pretty standard on many modern network devices.
I think most of the commenters are missing the point.
"Thunderbolt Go Dock"
It's a full-featured travel dock.
If the device name didn't explain it, the photo at the top of this post should. Purpose-built for travel, it replaces your MacBook power brick, includes fully-powered accessory ports, and takes advantage of the Thunderbolt chipset to make the entire bandwidth available across all of them. Unlike USB C port multipliers and hubs, which are almost always gimped to share what a single USB C port can offer, it does not require you to use your own—extra—power supply.
As TVV already mentioned, OWC offers a solution for just about every "competing" product mentioned in the comments above, whether it be TB4 hubs that provide additional Thunderbolt ports, desktop-centric TB3 docks that offer a larger array of ports, or professional-level devices that throw 10Gb Ethernet into the mix. Every company out there is just putting together a combination of features that work within the TB3 or TB4 spec, and this device fills a specific role and looks to be a major convenience for travelers with higher performance needs than a dongle, but would rather not shlep yet another giant brick with them to plug into a wall.
As far as I can tell, this is a one-of-a-kind solution and—for me, at least—it's exactly what I have been looking for.
"Thunderbolt Go Dock"
It's a full-featured travel dock.
If the device name didn't explain it, the photo at the top of this post should. Purpose-built for travel, it replaces your MacBook power brick, includes fully-powered accessory ports, and takes advantage of the Thunderbolt chipset to make the entire bandwidth available across all of them. Unlike USB C port multipliers and hubs, which are almost always gimped to share what a single USB C port can offer, it does not require you to use your own—extra—power supply.
As TVV already mentioned, OWC offers a solution for just about every "competing" product mentioned in the comments above, whether it be TB4 hubs that provide additional Thunderbolt ports, desktop-centric TB3 docks that offer a larger array of ports, or professional-level devices that throw 10Gb Ethernet into the mix. Every company out there is just putting together a combination of features that work within the TB3 or TB4 spec, and this device fills a specific role and looks to be a major convenience for travelers with higher performance needs than a dongle, but would rather not shlep yet another giant brick with them to plug into a wall.
As far as I can tell, this is a one-of-a-kind solution and—for me, at least—it's exactly what I have been looking for.
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That's a limit of the Goshen Ridge chip. There aren't a lot of (or any other) options for Thunderbolt 4 peripheral controllers. One option would be to put more than one Thunderbolt controller inside - some eGPUs do that.
An exposed PCIe lane is not required for hubbing - downstream Thunderbolt controllers will have their own PCIe lanes. I think Intel just didn't want to make the Goshen Ridge big enough to expose 4 PCIe lanes so they decided to expose only 1 lane to at least provide some PCIe functionality.
Alpine Ridge has: DisplayPort, two Thunderbolt, 4 PCIe.
Titan Ridge has: USB, DisplayPort, two Thunderbolt, 4 PCIe.
Goshen Ridge has: USB, three Thunderbolt, 1 PCIe.
1 PCIe lane should allow near 8 Gbps. While you won't see 10 Gbps speeds, it's still better than 2.5 Gbps.
Does anyone make a 10Gbps USB to 10 Gbps Ethernet adapter? That might give better than 8 Gbps (while you're not transmitting to/from a USB storage device or camera or whatever). Again, they could put a second Thunderbolt controller inside to expose more PCIe lanes.
I don't think there are any other TB4 peripheral controllers that will do hubbing and expose at least 2 lanes of PCIe Gen3. And I'm not aware of any USB based 10GbE chipsets. One advantage of using the Aquantia PCIe chipsets is that the drivers are already built into MacOS since Apple uses those chipsets in their Mac desktops.
Yes, one way to do it would be two have two thunderbolt controllers inside a device. But that would also raise the cost on an already expensive product. And also it would mean that the max device chain would be 1 less (which isn't an issue, just need to make sure users are aware I guess).
Hopefully the next version of Thunderbolt solves this issue.
Price is on the higher side. Looking to see more reviews about it.
I wanted to love my CalDigit TS4 but which took me months to get but 1) I got a "problem" power supply that was humming and took 6th months to replace
2) I have been having Kernal Panics since I started using the dock which causes a reset every other day or so. Last I checked the firmware update was only available for windows users so I've just been shutting down my computer every day.
9 months in after that I won't get CalDigit again and I had no issue with my TS3
It's insane it's still windows only. I have just been shutting my work computer down everyday with a keyboard maestro macro.
Some folks are going to really enjoy an item like this. If I wanted portable for a few hours at a time, I would prefer a dock with a battery that does "assist" for external devices and thus really portable. If you have to plug it in, it really isn't all that portable. I like this item but would leave it on a desk. However, for my needs I have the CalDigit Elements that meets my needs for the desktop.
You do know that in some games the 4090 draws less power than the 7900xtx right? Lovelace uses Tsmc 4nm and can be quite power efficient relative to the FPS achieved.Built in power supply!!
That's something Nvidia should have done with the 4090s.
Docks like this are designed for people who want as many "legacy" ports as possible to connect their perfectly good type A/DP/HDMI etc. peripherals . If you want to move to an all-Thunderbolt setup, there are TB4 hubs available from Caldigit, OWC, Plugable (and probably others) which give you 3 downstream TB4 ports - the maximum supported by current chipsets. If you need more than that, you probably need to sit down and do the math about bandwidth and latency.
...as are cheap male A to female C adapters for those who understand that the majority of mass-market "USB-C" peripherals are still only using USB 3.1 protocols, don't gain anything from being plugged into a type C port, and often come with a USB C to A cable in the box anyway. If you do have multiple (usually expensive) TB/USB4/USB 3.2 2x2 devices then - again - you need to sit down and think why you would pay a premium for super-fast connectivity and then force them to share bandwidth with (e.g.) a couple of 4k displays... Best use of a hub/dock like this is probably to consolidate your non-speed-critical devices to free up top-level host ports for your high priority devices.
Oh and can we please stop all this ridiculous gaslighting about USB A, DisplayPort and HDMI which are still frequently found on brand new products (Mac Studio?) - and in the latter two cases still being actively developed - somehow being "legacy"? If you don't have any, congratulations have a cigar, get a USB4 hub - many, many other people still have a ton of kit that uses them.
A hub/dock can only share out the bandwidth of a single host port and even then there are a whole bunch of constraints - imposed by the small handful of TB controller chips on the market - as to how that can be shared between displays, USB 3.x, TB/USB$ and PCIe.
Oh and at the other end of the scale - if you just want to connect a lot of USB 3.1 devices (whether A or C) you are probably better of with a cheap and cheerful USB 3 hub (Satechi even do one with USB-C connectors). If you do the research most of the TB4 docks only share out 1 or 2 USB3 streams between devices.
It's amazing that so many users of Apple devices cry about the high premium prices for Ram and SSD capacities, but then are willing to spend 400+ for a hub and 110+ for a TB4 enclosure and then 200 for an NVME......for a Laptop ?..... bye bye mobility.
For the studio as a 4K video editing suite ok, but even there I've always worked with professional equipment and not a Mac at home. And here a Pro would use a OWC ThunderBlade, or 10GB/sec Network Storage.
Now we are logging into data centers.
For the studio as a 4K video editing suite ok, but even there I've always worked with professional equipment and not a Mac at home. And here a Pro would use a OWC ThunderBlade, or 10GB/sec Network Storage.
Now we are logging into data centers.
Yep I was kind of shocked that the XTX is as power hungry as it is.
Its kinda wild how much power both can draw when overclocked. I mean 650+ watts is pretty wild.