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Mini Dock 87W Handling?

S

schalliol

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 7, 2002
229
50
Carmel, IN
I have a CalDigit TS3 Plus dock for work, but at home I just want to be able to do full power charging and a USB device(headphone amp/DAc) from a single cable. Is there any reasonable solution that can handle Apple’s 87W as a pass through or otherwise supply it? I can’t find anything on this.

Thanks!
 
Thanks. I got a CalDigit TS3+ and it seems to be nice. What I’m wondering is if there’s a way to use a simple USB hub and use the power from the power adapter so I can use just one cable. No options other than a full dock, right?
 
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This is great. While reviews didn’t seem to be that great on this one, I’ll keep looking for others. Thanks!
 
Hmm. I can’t seem to find any hubs that have a 2M cable or so or decent extension cables that would make this work. Anyone have an idea there?
 
Most usb hubs seem to be limited to 60W PD, but there are some that list full 100W PD spec.
 
Yeah, the 100W would be great, and I can't seem to find a way to get one that's 6 feet away so I don't have a dongle hanging off the thing.
 
schalliol said:
Yeah, the 100W would be great, and I can't seem to find a way to get one that's 6 feet away so I don't have a dongle hanging off the thing.
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- Yes, those will probably be few and far between - at least in the simple hub category as they typically have the cable permanently attached.

The other solution is a USB-C extension cable as you mention. That requires that they be pretty high quality and compliant with all USB-C features, though, which all won't be.
 
I thought I'd bump this here. I don't suppose anyone is aware of a product $100 or less that could allow me to use a single cord and 6 feet away use USB and deliver 87W power.
 
Do you really need 87W of power delivery at home? Is 60W not sufficient for general use?

I haven't received my MBP15 yet, but when using my rMB12 from something like a 12W supply (USBA to USBC cable attached to 5V 2.4A supply) it runs just fine -- though it'll charge more slowly -- or not charge and pull some from the battery when I'm doing something heavy such as creating a bunch of previews in lightroom -- and then when the compute load drops it'll go back to charging.

So from that I'm figuring 60W ought to keep a MBP15 running pretty good for anything but the heaviest loads when it'd start to dip into the battery until the load backed off a bit. So maybe a big long multi-hour render you may need more power, but for general use?

I could of course be wrong, but I'd say give it a shot -- just buy from somewhere with a good return policy.

(FWIW my rMB12 came with a 29W charger, so 12W is *much* more of a drop than using 60W would be with a MBP15)
 
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deeddawg said:
Do you really need 87W of power delivery at home? Is 60W not sufficient for general use?

I haven't received my MBP15 yet, but when using my rMB12 from something like a 12W supply (USBA to USBC cable attached to 5V 2.4A supply) it runs just fine -- though it'll charge more slowly -- or not charge and pull some from the battery when I'm doing something heavy such as creating a bunch of previews in lightroom -- and then when the compute load drops it'll go back to charging.

So from that I'm figuring 60W ought to keep a MBP15 running pretty good for anything but the heaviest loads when it'd start to dip into the battery until the load backed off a bit. So maybe a big long multi-hour render you may need more power, but for general use?

I could of course be wrong, but I'd say give it a shot -- just buy from somewhere with a good return policy.

(FWIW my rMB12 came with a 29W charger, so 12W is *much* more of a drop than using 60W would be with a MBP15)
Click to expand...
That’s fair. Obviously it would be better to just pass through the power, but if the computer is truly fine in Apple’s eyes to run on 60W, that works for me. Anyone have a recommendation they know works?
 
schalliol said:
That’s fair. Obviously it would be better to just pass through the power, but if the computer is truly fine in Apple’s eyes to run on 60W, that works for me.
Click to expand...

All I can say with certainty today is that for the past couple years I regularly travel with my rMB15 and I never bring the 29W charger. I bring along a multiport USB charger that delivers multiple 2.4A and use that to charge all my gadgets, including the rMB12. Takes longer to charge (and it's not my work computer so I don't do heavy usage), but otherwise has been perfectly fine. Some sort of magic seems to take whatever it can get from the port and supplement it with the battery if / as needed -- charging the battery if the system needs are less than what's coming in the USBC port.

I'd expect a three-year-newer model to at least do that. :)
 
schalliol said:
That’s fair. Obviously it would be better to just pass through the power, but if the computer is truly fine in Apple’s eyes to run on 60W, that works for me. Anyone have a recommendation they know works?
Click to expand...
If you are not running anything processor heavy, 60W will be safe/enough power to charge your 15" MBP. It will just take a bit longer to charge (30-45 minutes-ish).

Honestly almost all of the good quality built USB-C hubs with pass through charging top out at 60W, and even if you find one that charges at 89W or more, you are almost might as well spend a tad more to get a second dock.

Personally, I would just buy a hub for plugging the peripherals at home with, and use the Apple 89W charger. Does the same thing as using a hub with pass through charging, just uses two ports instead of one.
 
What I did is buy a used Belkin USB-C dock, which was marked down to $79 or so. On Amazon, new ones are $99, but the list price is closer to most docks. It has built-in ethernet and some other good stuff. Unfortunately even with Apple's 2M USB-C charge cable, it can't charge the machine at all using that cable. With that cable however you can use the dock without charging. I'd really love to find a way to get the 60W output at 2M, but alas, it seems I'm stuck with two cables. Still, I can't find any socketed USB-C hubs, so this was the best solution to remotely locate these items at low cost…even though 2 cables are needed.
 
While you mind be able to find some 2m or 1.5m USB-C data cables, I don't think most will support more than 60w of power transfer at that length. USB-C cable extenders, I believe I've read, are not permitted per the spec. So don't spend too much time looking for extension cables (i.e., F to M extensions).

Here's one (USB-C; not Thunderbolt 3) that is 2m and claims to support 100w of power: http://www.belkin.com/us/p/P-F2CU049/
 
What I'm curious about is why the Apple 2M USB-C to USB-C cable doesn't seem to offer power when connected to this dock.
 
It actually seems to be the best cable for charging and also passes data. It does at least 87W and does data at 2M. The issue is that it doesn't seem to be able to do the charging at even 60W with the Belkin USB-C hub.
 
Interesting.

I actually now have found that I CAN charge the MBP over Apple’s 2M cable and Belkin’s super cheap USB-C dock. It sometimes says it can’t, and then if starts charging.
 
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