Help me find a dock for my dream setup....

[mrjohnnyglass]

I want to run my 2020 16" in clamshell mode with 4x Monitors and a few accessories. Here's what I have.

2x 27" 4K Monitors
2x 24" 1080p Monitors
2x USB External HDs
1x USB Audio Interface
1x USB Webcam

What I'm thinking is doing the CalDigit TS3+ for one of the 4K monitors via DisplayPort, and one of the 1080p monitors, along with my external HDs and audio interface/webcam. That's one cable USB-C to my MBP. Then thinking the other two monitors via USB-C to HDMI on 2 of the remaining 3 USB-C ports. Leaving me 1 port open as needed.

Am I thinking right here?

 

[Stephen.R]

If you want to save some ports, TB3 to Dual-DP adapters work well IME.

 

[carestudio]

I want to run my 2020 16" in clamshell mode with 4x Monitors and a few accessories. Here's what I have.

2x 27" 4K Monitors
2x 24" 1080p Monitors
2x USB External HDs
1x USB Audio Interface
1x USB Webcam

What I'm thinking is doing the CalDigit TS3+ for one of the 4K monitors via DisplayPort, and one of the 1080p monitors, along with my external HDs and audio interface/webcam. That's one cable USB-C to my MBP. Then thinking the other two monitors via USB-C to HDMI on 2 of the remaining 3 USB-C ports. Leaving me 1 port open as needed.

Am I thinking right here?

you can connect one side with Caldigit TS3+ and another side with Caldigit Usb-C PRO dock, which can do 2x 24" 1080P.

 

[TriApple]

May be out of budget, but an eGPU is an awesome way to get a "clean setup" here. I use a 2019 15" i9 32gb Vega 20 with:

1. Thunderbolt 3 Cord Connected to: CalDigits TS3 Plus

1. External Mic
2. WebCam
3. Usb-C cord that connects either my conference call speaker or gaming keyboard (work v play)
4. Gaming Mousepad + Mouse
5. Wireless phone charger
6. Headphones via USB-C
7. the display port remains open

2. Thunderbolt 3 Cord Connected to: Razer Core Chroma X w/ Sapphire Nitro+ Rx 5700 XT

1. DP to 4k 60hz 27"
2. DP to 1440p 144hz curved 27"
3. 2 extra HDMI ports for 2 more monitors

The thermals of this setup are pretty awesome for working since so much of the GPU heat is offloaded to the eGPU. And all of it is just 2 TB3 cords and I have room to expand.

 

[ght56]

I think you might want to consider the brand new Pluggable dock instead of the Caldigit. The Caldigit underpowers the 16-inch and with that many displays, your system is likely going to be consuming good bit of power at idle and more under load...I would not personally want to feed it anything less than the full 96 watts given how much power the 8 core can consume along with the GPU. As an added bonus the Pluggable has a more modern chipset. Alternatively, you could do the Caldigit + the OEM charging cord used in a different port.

That said, I would probably personally go for an eGPU in your situation and use the eGPU to power the MBP and drive all external displays, and then buy an inexpensive USB-C dock for other accessories (it would not need to be a TB3 dock). It would expose your system to so much less heat and mean so much less fan noise, and it would potentially mean much better CPU performance (especially if using your 5500M to drive the external displays results in the GPU defaulting to 20-ish watts consumption at idle, which always happens with the clamshell open, and can still happen in many cases in clamshell mode.)

 

[TriApple]

I think you might want to consider the brand new Pluggable dock instead of the Caldigit. The Caldigit underpowers the 16-inch and with that many displays, your system is likely going to be consuming good bit of power at idle and more under load...I would not personally want to feed it anything less than the full 96 watts given how much power the 8 core can consume along with the GPU. As an added bonus the Pluggable has a more modern chipset. Alternatively, you could do the Caldigit + the OEM charging cord used in a different port.

That said, I would probably personally go for an eGPU in your situation and use the eGPU to power the MBP and drive all external displays, and then buy an inexpensive USB-C dock for other accessories (it would not need to be a TB3 dock). It would expose your system to so much less heat and mean so much less fan noise, and it would potentially mean much better CPU performance (especially if using your 5500M to drive the external displays results in the GPU defaulting to 20-ish watts consumption at idle, which always happens with the clamshell open, and can still happen in many cases in clamshell mode.)

On the dock piece, the 87-watt is fine for most uses cases. If you check your power draw, it would be extremely difficult to make the battery drain.

More here from CalDigits: https://www.caldigit.com/using-the-16-macbook-pro-with-the-caldigit-ts3-plus/

That pluggable dock looks nice though!

 

[ght56]

On the dock piece, the 87-watt is fine for most uses cases. If you check your power draw, it would be extremely difficult to make the battery drain.

More here from CalDigits: https://www.caldigit.com/using-the-16-macbook-pro-with-the-caldigit-ts3-plus/

That pluggable dock looks nice though!

I agree it is fine for many cases, but here I am not certain if it is optimal if using the dedicated GPU in the stated fashion?

With the 5300/5500M GPU models, just using an external display with the clamshell open pulls 20 watts to the GPU alone, and that is at idle. With four displays, I think it could consume more? Under load, depending on the usage scenario, that number can really add up. I've observed that the system can pull over 120 watts during peak periods of usage.

With the 16-inch models, battery drain while on the OEM charger is sometimes reported. (This is more often reported with Windows 10 under hard usage driving both the CPU and GPU, but it has been reported in macOS, generally with externals being used.)