USB Hub ?

[Washac]

Can anyone recommend a decent reliable USB hub with its own power and with USB, USB C, Micro SD and SD adapter size ports
for use with my Mac Mini M2 ?

 

[Bigwaff]

Preference? .. Bus powered or w/ own AC power?

 

[Washac]

Preference? .. Bus powered or w/ own AC power?

Sorry yes with it own power source.

 

[FreakinEurekan]

It's like saying "what's a good car that seats 5 people?" - the options are endless.

Personally, I like Plugable.

 

[drrich2]

I suggest checking FaceBook Market Place and eBay for used docks and hubs. Someone mentioned in another thread it was possible to find CalDigit TS3+ Thunderbolt 3 docks used under $100, so I went to FaceBook Marketplace and found one for $90 that took me a 40 minute drive to meet up with the seller at a public location. It lacks a MicroSD reader, but otherwise should make you happy.

At least know your options. A big question is whether you want 'just' a USB-C 10-Gbps dock or a Thunderbolt dock (or hub).

Some comments:

1.) For a Mac Mini accessory with its own power supply + SD and micro SD readers, I suspect you may find yourself looking at docks more so than hubs (bigger, more elaborate).

2.) While the Mac Mini 2 has a fairly elaborate of ports, when you upgrade to an M4 or later Mac Mini, it probably will not, so factor that in as you decide whether you want HDMI, DisplayPort, etc... Assuming you like to future proof and want this thing to be useful with your next Mac.

3.) While you may not currently plan to use a single Thunderbolt peripheral, a Thunderbolt dock gives you (hopefully) a 40 Gbps 'data pipeline' from Mac to dock, to supply transmission to and from all devices hooked to it. With a USB-C dock, that's likely 10 Gbps.

4.) You may find a new USB-C dock and a used Thunderbolt 3 dock fairly close in price.

5.) At least some dock USB-C ports often don't support video output, so don't assume just because there's a USB-C port on one that you can hook a USB-C display to it (USB DisplayPort Alt mode).

6.) Thunderbolt 3 docks, from what I understand, will only have one Thunderbolt 3 'downstream' port (so you could daisy chain another TB 3 device), whereas TB 4 and 5 docks can have more than one downstream TB port (double check on this, but I think I remember right).

7.) If you see a great price on a used item, read carefully...some are non-functional and intended to be used for parts, or it may be missing a power cord, etc...

8.) Plan to buy near a holiday and check DealNews.com and TechBargains.com (reputable deal sites I've used) and do a search for 'dock' or 'computer dock.' I'm a fan of Woot, too.

9.) When buying off eBay, I like to see a lot of ratings culminating in the upper 90's positive ratings from customers.

 

[theluggage]

Can anyone recommend a decent reliable USB hub with its own power and with USB, USB C, Micro SD and SD adapter size ports

Hard to do without details of what sort of devices you want to connect to it.

While you may not currently plan to use a single Thunderbolt peripheral, a Thunderbolt dock gives you (hopefully) a 40 Gbps 'data pipeline' from Mac to dock, to supply transmission to and from all devices hooked to it. With a USB-C dock, that's likely 10 Gbps.

Sadly, it's not quite that simple.


You can't assume that a "40Gbps" TB hub with 4 USB 3.1 ports will give you 4 simultaneous 10Gbps USB 3.1 connections. A TB4/USB4 hub will typically still only offer a total of 10Gbps USB 3 bandwidth (plus 480Mbps of USB 2) shared between all its USB A/C ports. The advantage is that you can also connect Thunderbolt peripherals or DisplayPort displays which will get their own slice of the total 40Gbps...

There's a huge rabbit hole here, as it is possible for TB devices (particularly older TB3 docking stations) to have multiple USB controllers potentially giving more than 10Gbps of USB-C bandwidth. If you want to go down the hole, Caldigit's "knowledge base" has block diagrams of their docks showing how the internal USB C controllers and hubs are connected. However:

TLNR - if you only want to attach a bunch of USB 3.x/USB 2 devices, a TB4/USB4 hub won't necessarily be any better than a plain old - and much cheaper - USB 3.x hub. Choose TB4/USB4 if you also want to attach true Thunderbolt/USB4 devices and/or TB/DisplayPort/HDMI displays to the hub.

My way of looking at hubs/docks on a Mac Mini is that you should use them to consolidate low-speed devices onto one port in order to free up host ports for your performance-critical ones.

Thunderbolt 3 docks, from what I understand, will only have one Thunderbolt 3 'downstream' port (so you could daisy chain another TB 3 device), whereas TB 4 and 5 docks can have more than one downstream TB port (double check on this, but I think I remember right).

Roughly, yes, and for most practical purposes that - and a somewhat different way of implementing USB 3.x - are the only differences between Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4/USB4 - its the same underlying connection speed.

TB5 (based on USB4v2) offers faster speeds, but that's irrelevant to a Mini M2 (or even the current non-pro M4) so I wouldn't start worrying about future-proofing just yet.

If a TB3 dock has the ports you need than there's no real advantage for having TB4 over TB3. I'd say that, as a gross generalisation, if you're in a hurry to switch to a more USB-C/TB-centric ecosystem, TB4/USB4 hubs with (typically) 3 downstream USB4/TB4/USB-C ports are the best bet, but if you're still happy with the "old ways" then TB3 does the job for multi-port, everything but the kitchen sink "docks" - and they may even be slightly better for USB 3 bandwidth if you go down the aforementioned rabbit hole and start poring over block diagrams (they tend to use their own PCIe-to-USB3 controllers rather than TB4/USB4 which 'tunnels' USB 3 from the host machine).

 

[drrich2]

You can't assume that a "40Gbps" TB hub with 4 USB 3.1 ports will give you 4 simultaneous 10Gbps USB 3.1 connections. A TB4/USB4 hub will typically still only offer a total of 10Gbps USB 3 bandwidth (plus 480Mbps of USB 2) shared between all its USB A/C ports. The advantage is that you can also connect Thunderbolt peripherals or DisplayPort displays which will get their own slice of the total 40Gbps...

Very interesting. Which raises a question. Let's say someone has a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 dock hooked to their Mac, and wants to connect 2 USB-C 10-Gbps external SSD drives to it. From what you explained, if that person connects each to a separate 10-Gbps USC-C port on the dock, even if the 2 are used at the same time, their combined throughput won't exceed 10-Gbps because the dock only offers that 10-Gbps to all it's USB ports in total.

But what about this scenario. Our user connects one of his external SSD drive to a USB-C port on the dock, and he connects his other external SSD drive to a downstream Thunderbolt (3 or 4) port on the dock.

Will the dock give the 2nd SSD drive (which is USB-C in design and limited to 10-Gbps max. throughput) 10-Gbps of its own, from the Thunderbolt system's share of bandwidth, while allowing the 'plain old' USB-C connecting external SSD its separate 10-Gbps data throughput?

Is this a way someone could give each external SSD its own 10-Gbps bandwidth, so the sum of the 2 could in theory be 20-Gbps transmitted through the dock if both drives were being used by the Mac at the same time?

 

[theluggage]

Will the dock give the 2nd SSD drive (which is USB-C in design and limited to 10-Gbps max. throughput) 10-Gbps of its own, from the Thunderbolt system's share of bandwidth, while allowing the 'plain old' USB-C connecting external SSD its separate 10-Gbps data throughput?

OK - hopefully someone will correct me if I'm wrong (this is all as clear as mud so there's a bit of guesswork here - plus what I can work out from plugging things into my Element hub and looking at the system report) but, as I understand it on a "modern" TB4 hub with multiple downstream TB ports, the answer is "no" - although there may be exceptions.

If you connect a USB-C/USB 3.x to one of the downstream TB ports, that port will run in USB 3.x mode and the device will be connected via the same internal USB 3.x hub as any other USB device in, or connected to the hub.

(On the Element hub, the front USB-A ports are served by a 4-port hub cascaded off the USB 3 hub providing USB to the Thunderbolt ports - so you do probably avoid a bit of latency by going via the TB port and avoiding a layer of hubs - but any USB hub with more than 4 ports will use cascaded hubs like that to get the extra ports)

If you connect a true TB or USB4 SSD, however, the port will operate in TB/USB4 mode and the drive will get it's share of the full Thunderbolt bandwidth, without the 10Gb bottleneck of the internal USB hub.

On an "old style" TB3 dock, there may be multiple internal USB 3.x controllers running off PCIe - so if you're strategic about what ports you use you may get more than 10Gbps of USB bandwidth - but bear in mind that some of those internal controllers are also serving sound, SD card readers etc. Still - TB3 remains a perfectly valid choice if you don't need the multi-port

Here's Caldigit's guides to bandwidth allocation on the TS3 and TS4 hubs - note how, on the TS4 hub, the Ethernet adapter gets the sole PCIe lane and everything else that isn't Thunderbolt shares the same 10Gbps USB 3 hub - whereas on the TS3 there are 2x5Gbps and 1x10Gbps hubs serving different ports & devices.

TS3 Plus Interface Bandwidth Allocation and Diagram – CalDigit

Bandwidth allocation breakdown and diagram for the interfaces on the TS3 Plus.

www.caldigit.com

TS4 Interface Bandwidth Allocation and Diagram – CalDigit

www.caldigit.com

Here's a diagram for the Element hub - if I'm reading it right, all the connected USB 3 devices use the orange pathway, only TB devices use the blue pathway.

Element Hub’s Controllers and Data Paths. – CalDigit

www.caldigit.com

...it gets even more convoluted because it all works differently depending on whether the hub is attached to a TB4/USB4, TB3 or USB-C/3.x port...

Apologies to the thread starter because this is all over-thinking things unless you're worried about squeezing the last drop of bandwidth and lowest latency out of your USB... I'll just re-iterate my Too Long: Did Not Read - TB/USB4 hubs are worth it if you want to connect a mixture of true TB/USB4 devices, displays and USB 3.x peripherals, but if you just want to connect a bunch of USB 3.x devices a cheaper USB 3-only hub will probably do the same job.