USB C Cables - Lesson learnt from buying cheap.

[deckard666]

I was just chatting to a mate who is talking about getting some new external drives and I said I just had four external 3.2 SSD drives and they were fine getting anywhere between 500 and 800mb read/write. I thought I better check just to make sure I was correct and using BlackMagic I noticed one of my SSD drives was around 40mb which is total garbage (just a drive for emulator ROMS so thats why hadnt I noticed before in day-to-day running ) so I changed the cable to a more expensive (named) cable and voila I was back to over 800mb - Lesson learnt !

 

[Cave Man]

You should specify the brand/part numbers of the good and the bad cables. That could be very helpful for people.

 

[IvyKing]

This may be slightly off topic, but the ultimate lesson is still the same:

Back in the dial-up days I bought a USR 56k Courier modem. Spent a good part of the year listening to it going through two re-tries to get connected at 30 - 40Kbps. As part of a house remodel the computer needed to be moved quite a bit away from the phone jack, so got a 50' cable. I was. concerned that the modem would have even a harder time with the longer cable, but on the first try with the new cable the modem connected immediately and got the full speed.

Lesson learned: The old cable was a "silver-satin" with wires aligned in parallel, the new cable was done with two twisted pairs. Cable quality can make a huge difference!

 

[deckard666]

You should specify the brand/part numbers of the good and the bad cables. That could be very helpful for people.

These were the good ones -

UseBean USB C to USB C Cable 100W 0.2M(2 Pack), USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 20Gbps Data Transfer Type-C Cable PD Fast Charging,4K Video Monitor Cord,for Thunderbolt 3/4 MacBook Pro, iPad Pro,Galaxy S21/S20, Red

UseBean USB C to USB C Cable 100W 0.2M(2 Pack), USB 3.2 Gen 2X2 20Gbps Data Transfer Type-C Cable PD Fast Charging,4K Video Monitor Cord,for Thunderbolt 3/4 MacBook Pro, iPad Pro,Galaxy S21/S20, Red

www.amazon.co.uk

I cant remember where I got the other "rubbish" ones.

 

[IvyKing]

Keep in mind that USB-C cables are supposed to have markings for high power capacity, ThunderBolt ratings, etc. The USB-C standards documents list how the cables interact with the USB-C ports for supporting the various data rates and power handling. The nice thing about USB-C is that the connectors have the same physical size, so one can plug any USB-C cable into any USB-C port. The down side is that is just as easy to plug in a cable that won't work as it is to plug in a cable that does work.

In other words, there is no such thing as a generic USB-C cable.

BTW, the 100W means that the cable is rated to handle 5A at 20V on the PD conductors.

 

[Che Castro]

Keep in mind that USB-C cables are supposed to have markings for high power capacity, ThunderBolt ratings, etc. The USB-C standards documents list how the cables interact with the USB-C ports for supporting the various data rates and power handling. The nice thing about USB-C is that the connectors have the same physical size, so one can plug any USB-C cable into any USB-C port. The down side is that is just as easy to plug in a cable that won't work as it is to plug in a cable that does work.

In other words, there is no such thing as a generic USB-C cable.

BTW, the 100W means that the cable is rated to handle 5A at 20V on the PD conductors.

So we should get only cables that saw 100w?

 

[IvyKing]

So we should get only cables that saw 100w?

Unless you have a need for greater than 100W power delivery, the 100W cables will be more than satisfactory. From your initial posting, getting adequate data transfer rate was your top priority, so picking cables that can support 20Gbps with 100W PD rating is the right choice.