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NDantone

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Dec 27, 2015
7
0
Does it matter how many hard drives, monitors, and other peripherals (keyboard, printer, etc.) that I plug into one of the USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports on the new MacBook Pro?

I have two external monitors, 3 hard drives, 2 printers, a microphone, hd camera, etc.

Will I get better performance if I plug the hard drives into one port, the monitors in another, and the printers, mic, camera, etc. into the third one? It would be easiest to plug everything into one port but I'm not sure if that's the way to get the best performance.

Educate me!

macOS 12.0
MacBook Pro (16" 2021)
M1 Max

32 GB RAM
 

Fomalhaut

macrumors 68000
Oct 6, 2020
1,992
1,724
Does it matter how many hard drives, monitors, and other peripherals (keyboard, printer, etc.) that I plug into one of the USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports on the new MacBook Pro?

I have two external monitors, 3 hard drives, 2 printers, a microphone, hd camera, etc.

Will I get better performance if I plug the hard drives into one port, the monitors in another, and the printers, mic, camera, etc. into the third one? It would be easiest to plug everything into one port but I'm not sure if that's the way to get the best performance.

Educate me!

macOS 12.0
MacBook Pro (16" 2021)
M1 Max

32 GB RAM
Presumably you mean plugging multiple devices into one port via a hub or dock. Short answer: yes it does matter, particiularly if you are sharing high-bandwidth video and data transfer via the same controller.

Each port has it's own Thunderbolt / USB controller with up to 40Gbps bandwith duplex (in both directions simultaneously).

From: Understanding Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth - Mac Performance ...https://macperformanceguide.com › blog › 20190128_13...
A single 6K display uses about 30Gbps so that would only leave 10Gbps for other things

From: https://www.snapav.com/wcsstore/Ext...cuments/4K/4K-Dealer-facing-sell-sheet-x3.pdf
A 4K display (HDMI 2.0) can use up to 18 Gbps, leaving a theoretical 22Gbps for other things.

From: Understanding Thunderbolt 3 Bandwidth - Mac Performance ...https://macperformanceguide.com › blog › 20190128_13...
A very fast external Thunderbolt SSD might use 20-25Gbps of bandwidth.

So you can see that you need to think about separating high bandwidth devices into their own ports if you are getting close to these limits. If you are using relatively low bandwidth devices like audio interfaces, thumb drives, slower USB drives, HD cameras etc, then you can probably chain a whole load of these together. I have all of the above running via a CalDigit TB3 Hub, connected via a single cable to my M1 Mac Mini, and have no issues. I have a high speed external drive connected to the second TB3 port with nothing else.
 
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