Thunderbolt dock recommendations

[modev]

Hello everyone,

I'm looking into Thunderbolt docks for my 16" MacBook Pro and I'm kind of overwhelmed and confused by the availability of TB and USB-C docks and hopefully get some help. My goal is to use to connect the dock to LAN, keep the MacBook charged (I rarely have 100% loads on my machine, but getting relatively high PD would be great nonetheless) and connect two external displays to it. I'm currently running a single 1440p 144 Hz display with the intention to add another one later this year. Having a reasonably fast USB Port would be a welcome addition as well.

A product I often stumbled across is the Caldigit TS3 Plus, I also checked CalDigits website but I'm confused by their broad selection of docks. Would the TS3 Plus be a good fit for my usecase?

PS: iirc the 16" MacBook Pro has a TB 3 port. I am considering an upgrade to an Apple Silicon based system next year, is the difference between TB4 and TB3 for my usecase significant enough to think about futureproofing my dock choice?

I appreciate any suggestions!

 

[joevt]

Any Thunderbolt Dock should be able to connect two 4K 60Hz displays. One display to a DisplayPort, a second display to a downstream Thunderbolt port.

A USB-C dock will not connect two displays - they will be limited to one 4K 30Hz display unless the dock only supports USB 2.0, then it could connect a 4K 60Hz display. Or the USB-C dock could support DisplayPort 1.4 and include a MST hub to convert two lanes of HBR3 to four lanes of HBR2 to output 4K 60Hz (but only up to 8 bps). Or the USB-C dock could support HBR3 + DSC which would allow 4K 60Hz 10 bpc. Your MacBook Pro has the 5300M or 5500M which should support DSC but maybe only in Catalina (not sure about Big Sur - Apple may have disabled DSC in that case). The CalDigit Element Hub is an example of a hub that support DisplayPort 1.4 and DSC through an MST hub. Note that macOS doesn't support MST for multiple displays so only connect one display to the MST hub. The Apple USB-C Digital AV Multiport Adapter is an example of a USB-C adapter that supports USB 3.0, two lanes of DisplayPort 1.4/HBR3 and DSC. Cable Matters has USB-C docks that support 4 lanes of DisplayPort 1.4 by limiting USB support to USB 2.0.

The CalDigit TS3 Plus is fine for most things. It is old so it uses Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt controller which is limited to DisplayPort 1.2 output but that's ok because two equally sized displays will be limited to the HBR2 link rate of DisplayPort 1.2 (two 4K 60Hz displays). Because it uses Alpine Ridge, it means it cannot be connected to a USB-C only (not Thunderbolt) port - it must be connected to a Thunderbolt host. Alpine Ridge based docks usually contain multiple PCIe controllers for all the ports. In the case of the TS3 Plus, there's one Intel controller for Ethernet, two FL1100 for four 4 Gbps USB ports, one ASM1142 for one 8 Gbps USB port and a slightly less constrained 4 Gbps USB port, the Alpine Ridge controller is the PCIe bridge for all the controllers and includes 10 Gbps USB (faster than the ASM1142) and 40 Gbps Thunderbolt (depending on what is connected to the downstream Thunderbolt port).

A newer Thunderbolt dock that uses Titan Ridge (Thunderbolt 3 - e.g. HP Thunderbolt Dock G2) or Goshen Ridge (Thunderbolt 4 - e.g. CalDigit SOHO, OWC Thunderbolt 4 Hub, OWC Thunderbolt 4 Dock) will support:
- connection to a USB-C (not Thunderbolt port) host
- DisplayPort 1.4 (supports HBR3 link rate, but in that case the second display would be limited to HBR link rate because Thunderbolt is limited to 40 Gbps)
It probably won't contain any PCIe controllers - everything will be connected to a USB 10 Gbps hub connected to a USB port of the Thunderbolt controller because PCIe controllers cannot be used by non-Thunderbolt hosts. The 10 Gbps hub will provide faster ports (10 Gbps) than the ASM1142 (8 Gbps) and more of them (up to 4 separate from the downstream Thunderbolt port which makes a fifth in the case of Titan Ridge but not Goshen Ridge). An additional USB hub (5 Gbps or 10 Gbps) can be connected to that first hub.

In the case of Goshen Ridge, the USB 10 Gbps hub is used to provide USB for 3 downstream Thunderbolt ports and a fourth seperate USB 10 Gbps port. A Thunderbolt 4 dock will connect a second USB 10 Gbps hub to that fourth port to provide four more additional 10 Gbps port.

Thunderbolt 4 docks/hub require Big Sur. They have limited functionality in Catalina.

So, Alpine Ridge docks will allow using more of the 22 Gbps bandwidth of Thunderbolt by using multiple PCIe controllers. Newer Titan Ridge/Goshen Ridge docks are limited to a single USB 10 Gbps upstream connection - downstream USB devices will share that 10 Gbps connection through hub(s) - you can only get up to 22 Gbps by connecting downstream Thunderbolt devices.

Your MacBook Pro 16 inch is pre Thunderbolt 4, so you don't need to worry about USB4's USB tunnelling feature that is used by Thunderbolt 4 hosts connected to a Thunderbolt 4 dock/hub to bypass the USB controller of the Thunderbolt 4 controllers of the dock/hub. USB tunnelling means the USB controller of the host is used for the downstream USB ports of the Thunderbolt dock/hub. This is the case with M1 Macs - it is undesirable because the USB controller of the M1 is inferior to the USB controller of the Thunderbolt dock/hub.

 

[modev]

Thank you for so much in depth information!
So if I understand everything correctly, I should be fine with pretty much any Thunderbolt Dock, as long as it is an actual thunderbolt dock. Since basically every TB3/4 Dock supports two 4k 60Hz displays I should be fine with my two 1440p 144Hz displays.
A newer TB dock than the TS3 Plus would give me the benefit of being able to connect USB-C devices as well which comes with some USB bandwidth limitations and no support for connecting a my dual 2k monitor setup?

Do you have any particular products that you can recommend? Is picking the right dock just a matter of finding the one with the right I/O ports for my usecase? Would the TS3 plus be a good choice? Does my need to use a Windows Notebook with the dock as well change the recommendation?

 

[joevt]

So if I understand everything correctly, I should be fine with pretty much any Thunderbolt Dock, as long as it is an actual thunderbolt dock. Since basically every TB3/4 Dock supports two 4k 60Hz displays I should be fine with my two 1440p 144Hz displays.

True, most any Thunderbolt dock should allow connecting two displays for macOS.

A newer TB dock than the TS3 Plus would give me the benefit of being able to connect USB-C devices as well which comes with some USB bandwidth limitations and no support for connecting a my dual 2k monitor setup?

Any Thunderbolt device with two or more Thunderbolt ports should have the ability to connect 2 displays unless the manufacturer doesn't expose the second DisplayPort output of the Thunderbolt controller (the first DisplayPort output comes from the downstream Thunderbolt port).

Any Thunderbolt device with two or more Thunderbolt ports (including the TS3 Plus) will allow connecting any USB-C device (including USB-C docks and displays) to a downstream Thunderbolt port.

The HP Thunderbolt Dock G2 has another USB-C port (not Thunderbolt) that can also be used for any USB-C device (including USB-C docks and displays). I'm not sure there are any other docks that have a USB-C DisplayPort alt mode capable port in addition to the downstream Thunderbolt port.

I missed a detail about the Titan Ridge based Thunderbolt docks: compared to Goshen Ridge it has better USB because the downstream Thunderbolt port uses a different USB port of the Titan Ridge Thunderbolt controller's USB controller than the rest of the ports.

Therefore max bandwidth from each type of Thunderbolt dock (without daisy chained additional Thunderbolt devices) should be:
- Alpine Ridge: 22 Gbps (4 USB controllers each with one or more ports of varying speeds - eight 4 Gbps PCIe 2.0 x1 limited, one 4 Gbps (maybe firmware updatable to 8 Gbps?), one 8 Gbps, one 9.7 Gbps)
- Titan Ridge: 19.39 Gbps (one USB controller, two USB ports) (I should test this one using two USB NVMe enclosures and ATTO Disk Benchmark which can test multiple disks at the same time without using RAID)
- Goshen Ridge: 9.7 Gbps (one (or zero) USB controller with one USB port)

Do you have any particular products that you can recommend? Is picking the right dock just a matter of finding the one with the right I/O ports for my usecase? Would the TS3 plus be a good choice? Does my need to use a Windows Notebook with the dock as well change the recommendation?

I haven't used every Thunderbolt dock so I can't really make a recommendation.

You can't connect more than one computer to a single dock. You'll have to cable swap. Does the Windows Notebook support Thunderbolt? If so then any Thunderbolt dock will do. If it only supports USB-C then you might want a Titan Ridge based dock like the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2. Note that many PC laptops only support one display from a Thunderbolt port and they don't tell you how many displays you can connect. If it supports Thunderbolt 4 then it's guaranteed to support two displays from Thunderbolt.


Here's an interesting idea: what if you have a display with a built-in USB 3.0 hub connected to a dock or host via USB, then connect the DisplayLink adapter to the downstream USB port of the display and have the display's DisplayPort cable connected to that DisplayLink adapter. Then your two cable display (USB+DisplayPort) essentially becomes a single cable display because the display's second cable is basically connected to itself.

 

[modev]

You can't connect more than one computer to a single dock. You'll have to cable swap. Does the Windows Notebook support Thunderbolt? If so then any Thunderbolt dock will do. If it only supports USB-C then you might want a Titan Ridge based dock like the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2. Note that many PC laptops only support one display from a Thunderbolt port and they don't tell you how many displays you can connect. If it supports Thunderbolt 4 then it's guaranteed to support two displays from Thunderbolt.

I know that, cable swapping is not a problem. My MacBook is my private device used for university, the Windows laptop is my employer provided notebook which is relatively ****** but thanks to all the shortages sourcing a replacement which is long overdue is not possible right now. However, I know that my notebook is TB3 and I had it connected to a 4k display as well as a 1080p monitor via the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2. But since I'll get a replacement notebook next year there is no reason to worry about that.

(It feels like most business notebooks have a TB/USB4 port by now anyways or is this wrong?)

So basically, the Caldigit TS3 Plus is fine for my usecase but the Element Hub with TB4 support would allow for more I/O assuming a future MacBook upgrade to an Apple Silicon based System. Both of them should work fine with USB-C only devices although the I/O bandwith (including monitor connectvitiy) is limited?

 

[joevt]

However, I know that my notebook is TB3 and I had it connected to a 4k display as well as a 1080p monitor via the HP Thunderbolt Dock G2. But since I'll get a replacement notebook next year there is no reason to worry about that.

You probably used the MST hub of the Thunderbolt Dock G2 to connect two displays. For macOS, which doesn't support MST for multiple displays, only one display should be connected to the MST hub ports while the second display needs to be connected to the Thunderbolt port.

(It feels like most business notebooks have a TB/USB4 port by now anyways or is this wrong?)

If they use Tiger Lake CPU, then yes. Ice Lake isn't Thunderbolt 4 (or is it?) but it should be just as good (at least I don't think it's possible for Ice Lake to support only one display from Thunderbolt?)

So basically, the Caldigit TS3 Plus is fine for my usecase but the Element Hub with TB4 support would allow for more I/O assuming a future MacBook upgrade to an Apple Silicon based System. Both of them should work fine with USB-C only devices although the I/O bandwith (including monitor connectvitiy) is limited?

The Element Hub should work just as well with your current MacBook Pro if it's running Big Sur. The Element Hub won't perform better when used with an M1 Mac. Two displays can be connected to the Element hub for your MacBook Pro, but only one display for an M1 Mac (maybe new Apple Silicon Macs will allow two displays from Thunderbolt?). I don't know if the Element Hub allows for more I/O - for USB it has only one upstream 10 Gbps port, but for Thunderbolt it has 3 downstream ports. For Thunderbolt 3 you can connect 6 devices in a chain per Thunderbolt port of the host. The Element hub allows for 3 chains. This makes the Element hub more flexible because some Thunderbolt devices don't have a second Thunderbolt port to allow chaining. Thunderbolt 4 reduces the total length to 5 which means each of the three chains connected to a Thunderbolt 4 dock can have length 4. I don't know if the total length is 6 if the Thunderbolt 4 dock is connected to a Thunderbolt 3 Mac - I should test that...

 

[modev]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I was finally about to order the CalDigit TS3 plus but it seems like CalDigit was hit hard by the semiconductor shortage. I can't find it anywhere in stock at a German shop and even neighboring countries. Seems like I have to look for alternatives

 

[EzisAA]

Thank you for sharing your knowledge! I was finally about to order the CalDigit TS3 plus but it seems like CalDigit was hit hard by the semiconductor shortage. I can't find it anywhere in stock at a German shop and even neighboring countries. Seems like I have to look for alternatives

You can buy Refurbished TS3 Plus. http://shop.caldigit.com/eu/Refurbished?product_id=195
2 year ago I also get Refurbished TS3 Plus for my MacBook Pro 15 (2019), now I use TS3 Plus with MacBook Pro M1 - and still work fine.