Dan Charlton

Highly recommend this site: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chi… It's key to get an enclosure with a chipset that will support whatever interface your computer actually provides, otherwise a lot of these enclosures will fall back to USB-3 speeds for compatibility and things will be slow. This site gives a pretty good overview of the chipsets out there and pros/cons of each one. I've had good experiences with Acasis[1] enclosures - they seem have a lot of aluminum surface area for dissipating heat - but I get the feeling that a lot of these things are very similar in practice since they're just slapping the same chipsets into different boxes. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Enclosure-Aluminum-External-Support-Compatible/…

Not sure how this is newsworthy, there are many quad display thunderbolt 4 docks on the market and some have been available for ages: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/usb4-tb4-docks/#triple-qu…

I've always suspected Thunderbolt (and USB-C with a thick, inflexible cable attached) is a terrible port for a dock. This guy tears down and analyzes docks with incredible detail, he might like to hear about your experience https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/category/surface/

Don't bother with thunderbolt 4, go for USB 4 enclosure instead - I've got a Jeyi one. Any SSD will work, I use a Samsung 990 pro inside. It was supposed to be the fastest you can get - I get over 3000MB/s. Here is the rabbit hole you might want to check out: https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chi…

Or, for the techy detail and practical advice, the first enclosures which make use of USB4 and are faster are based on a ASMedia ASM2464PD controller chipset. USB4 ASM2464PD SSD ENCLOSURES [1]: These enclosures sustain higher throughputs compared to older Thunderbolt 3 designs which reserved bandwidth for DisplayPort and legacy USB. Real-world peak throughput is ~3.1-3.8GB/s with the latest Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. Many enclosures since 2020 are marketed as “USB4 compatible” but are based on the older Thunderbolt 3 chips, so you need to pay attention to the fine print. [1] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chi…

> apparently, the protocol allows for building bidirectional DP devices, which is certainly idea-provoking https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2020/05/10/bi-directional-usbc-dp-ca…

See https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/ I use a Gorilla Creek-based Razer Thunderbolt 4 Dock in front of the USB-C monitor, which provides the additional convenience of easily swapping out the source device (Windows laptop with Thunderbolt, Intel NUC11 with Thunderbolt, MacBook Pro M1) while keeping all other peripherals connected. In this setup, the webcam and the USB conferencing headset connect via USB Type A at the monitor's built-in, lower-speed dock, and the keyboard, mouse and high-performance audio interface (plus occasional storage) connect at the (higher-speed) Thunderbolt dock.

I use an inexpensive USB dock with a single HDMI port for my M1 air, on a single 27 inch 4K monitor. It works with a single port and also provides gigabit network and power, and works at 60Hz. It’s one that supports DisplayPort 1.4 for the link between the laptop, so it can fit 4k60 over the available lanes, but then HDMI to the display. There are many like it, but this is mine: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08SLS9W72 - the internal DP1.4 support is essential and relatively new. Some more here about that, https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/01/03/4k60-monitor-plus-usb-dev… I’ve found that if I use it with a USB extension cable it works, but my wireless mouse stops working reliably - even on other computers. I think the extension cable throws off interference in the 2.4Ghz range. Apart from that, no issues.

Or a dock. Not disputing the DP MST, just noting there are docks that can drive 2 x 6K. CalDigit's new dock takes a single TB4 cable to drive, and can do: - 2x TB4 - 1x DP 1.4 - supporting - 2x 5K60 OR - 1x 8K60 OR - 1x 4K144 OR - 1x 1440p240 According to https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/ Or, as CalDigit puts it (see final paragraph): Single 8K or Dual 6K Monitors Users on Windows can connect a single monitor up to 8K resolution, and users on macOS can connect up to a single 6K 60Hz monitor. When connecting dual monitors Windows users can connect up to dual 4K 60Hz monitors, and macOS users on M1 Pro or M1 Max computers can connect up to dual 6K 60Hz monitors. Users on original M1 computers cannot connect dual monitors as original M1 computers do not support dual displays.

I've found https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/ has a nice comparison of the many very similar (only slightly differentiated) thunderbolt 4 docks. It notes that the Kingston, Sonnet, and others are rebrands of the Goodway DBD1100.

Your assumption is correct. Those docks are all based on the Goodway DBD1100 [1]. When I was researching which dock to purchase myself, I came across this comprehensive list [2] of Thunderbolt docks which was super informative. [1] http://www.goodway.com.tw/prodimg/edm/DBD1100.pdf [2] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2021/02/05/usb4-tb4-docks/

That's pretty cool. I wonder how hard it would be to add USB-C docking capability to an old server in my homelab. Seems like a graphics card with Virtual Link USB-C [0] would be ideal, but maybe overkill. There are some other options [1] but it's not clear to me how much graphic horsepower you need. Definitely a VGA-only motherboard is not gonna cut it... [0] https://uploadvr.com/every-virtuallink-gpu/ [1] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2020/07/20/add-usb-c-with-dp-alt-mod…