Also, passive (certified) 40 Gbps cables, so generally those under a meter in length, but definitely not the active TB4 cable used in this video, can carry the TB5 signal at full speed. Lots of engineers worked very hard to make it so you wouldn’t need to buy new (passive) cables to get the speed boost, but Apple sells mostly active cables, so they won’t tell you this. Also, unverified crap Chinese cables generally have much lower signal integrity, and very likely will NOT work at TB5 speeds. But if you’ve got a cable like that, there’s no harm in trying it out.

Re displays, an M4 Mac mini (non-pro) can drive 2x4k144 + 1x4k60. Which is pretty good. My TB3 dock attached to a TB4 port of the non-pro Mini can display dual 4k144, which is honestly more than I thought you could squeeze through a 40 Gbps pipe. Looks like MacOS is doing a decent job of using DSC. My USB4 windows machine can do the same, of course. So I would expect the TB5 dock can actually do a good deal more display-pushing than the Mac can. Wait for the M4 Mac Studios with the Ultra chip to see what the dock is actually capable of. But just to be sure, triple 4k144 is only 50% more than what TB3 can handle. And TB3 and 4 only allot about 70% of the outbound 40 Gbps for displays, so maybe 30 Gbps. TB5 can go into a 120 Gbps outbound mode, with 80 Gbps of that reserved for displays. So I think a maxed-out TB5 dock should be capable of 5x 4k144, with a little room left over for a sixth 4k running at 4k60. Approximately.

Thank you for what ended up being a very simple fix. Yet another example where Apple and developers such as Adobe do NOT communicate with one another, leading the end user to waste an in ordinate amount of time seeking a solution. This isn't the first time and won't be the last. Now who do I invoice for time wasted? The irony is they charge for a service but do not deliver! Time to do a Moe Howard impersonation and get 2 Knuckleheads / Lame Brains together. 👍🤬👍🤬👍🤬👍🤬👍🤬

Wayne, saw this somewhere else: If a USB4 SSD is to be used with an Intel Mac, connecting it via a TB5 dock could almost double its performance, but a TB4 hub doesn’t help. Connecting a TB3 SSD to any Mac via a TB4 hub or TB5 dock is likely to reduce its write speed to about 1.5 GB/s or less. Connecting a USB4 SSD to an Apple silicon Mac via a TB4 hub will reduce its read and write speeds below 3 GB/s. Some combinations of host port, hub/dock and SSD can result in more severely impaired performance. Those are unpredictable, and can only be discovered by careful testing in combination.

@cwaynefox great analysis - thanks for taking the time to do this. I spent quite a bit of time looking at the specs of TB docks. For all of the ports I wanted and the guarantee of the bandwidth and ethernet, I got down to the CalDigit and the Echo 20 Superdock. I have 2 OWC Express 4M2 enclosures and a Thunderbay Mini connected in sequence to the Echo 20 and all are getting full bandwidth which I found pretty amazing. The other plus was that the Echo 20 has a space for an NVME drive which I use for my Time Machine backups.

A few years ago I needed to do a large restore. BackBlaze sent me a hard drive in a few days. I restored the files and sent it back. In the end it did not cost me any extra money. I trust BackBlaze.

One year version history on BackBlaze no longer costs extra.

thank you.

That brings up the port on the Mac itself. I assume one internal controller handles 2 ports. To get max throughput, I would guess the best is drives on one controller and displays on another. I have tried to sort that out- which controller supports which actual physical USB C connections, but it's not clear. I just move them around until the speed maxes out. I have seen other computers where there's one controller for 4 ports, and those crawl. Cheers!

No nvme option, no 10Gbe, or 25Gbe, what a waste of hardware…

Your videos are very easy to follow and understand. No annoying background music and no distracting video breaks or zooming in and out. They are really well produced. Thanks for your time and effort. It really shows.

Nice work on the video Wayne. The upstream Pc input on the front is annoying enough to keep me away from this dock. Hopefully Caldigit has a TB5 dock right around the corner.

Thanks for the review. Being on the bleeding edge of every thunderbolt revision comes with flaky products that usually never work as they should and are ridiculously expensive for fomo buyers. The markup on these docks is nuts, just look at how much cheaper TB3 docks are now. My thought is to simply wait. Outside of the instant gratification of seeing BM speed tests the difference between TB 3/4 and TB 5 isn’t game changing in a real world work environment. You are paying money just to be the first.

goodluck! depends on the company, i've had Asus "Support" bs me, for almost a year, gave up, eventually.

huh, yeah, it came from different times. Now we are used to huge Data on just some drives. Big numbers to make it easy to fail.

ive asked around before, on other videos, so are all the thunderbolt ports on a mac laptop, independent? like each one is at full spec? or is it really 3 ports, being split up over 1 pcie/bus/lane most likely pcie 3.0x4 or pcie 4.0 x4?

i wouldn't use a monitor, unless it was your only option, use the built in ports on laptop.

Thank you for this. Good information.

Hi, Wayne. Immediate thumbs up for your disclosure and honestly right at the start of the video 👍 Cheers, Dave.

That power cable is a standard connector, look up Mickey Mouse Power Cable. It’s the +ground version of the two-pin you’re familiar with.

thanks c wayne, for what you do. your work is inspiring.

I am holding out for the Caldigit TS5

huh, I am looking to get a Thunderbolt 5 dock, since I am planning on upgrading my M1 Pro MacBook Pro to a M4 Pro Mac. But this is not the solution I look for. But thanks for pointing out the issue, I would have never thought they release a product like this with lesser bandwith than TB4 can do already. But if iVanky has a thermal "ptoblem" then this isn't good either. A pain. I am happy I found your channel.

Your videos are so down to earth and helpful - I'm so glad I found your channel!

Cool, you are on the cutting edge for docks. Really enjoy the information...it's rich in real word use case scenarios. Thank you.

My two problems: There often is a useless „main port“ with charging (a PC) and that copying between two Thunderbolt SSD at a dock is veeery slow.

Maybe it’s just me, but this whole video is a “yeah, of course”, I’m only really surprised that the impact isn’t higher when connecting a 4K monitor. Also fun, there is also USB C with DisplayPort-alt mode, in which case you’re using dedicated wires for video and it doesn’t interfere with speed (but you’re almost definitely way better off with Thunderbolt in the first place so this is just a “one more thing to worry about”, not a “solution”). I believe some hubs can downgrade from Thunderbolt mode to USB mode, although I haven’t actually tested this. But I have a pair of Lenovo laptops, one I kept Thunderbolt disabled and the other enabled, and I recall both could connect to a particular Thunderbolt 3 dock, although I have no recollection if I used video or anything else. It makes sense that the read speed wouldn’t be impacted but the write would, doesn’t it? The monitor connection and write are both moving data from the system “out”, so are sharing bandwidth, but the “inbound” stream isn’t involved.

We had an issue in the office: ran network sniffers and identified on $80 docks there was network traffic to chinese IP adresses when LAN cable was attached. Copnnecting via Wifi that traffic dissappeard.

Firmware updates should solve a lot of the problems you're seeing. I ran into a similar issue with a TB4 add-in card for a Gigabyte motherboard that doesn't have the latest NVM firmware so it doesn't support USB4 devices properly and sees them as USB3.2 Gen 2. Unfortunately, Gigabyte doesn't have any publicly available firmware for it.

That the read speed is not affected is imo due to the direction of the data streams. The video signals go the same direction as the write signals. The read signals have the highway to themselves. The problem with the video signals slowing the write down is apparently an HMDI thing. Display-port should not, according to my research, inhibit the write. The reason for that is called "display-port alt mode". Requires certified TB4 or USB-C cables with (non-fake) DP Alt Mode symbols though.

I’m surprised that you are surprised. You can use a toaster at every power outlet in your house, but you can’t use a toaster at every power outlet in your house *simultaneously*. That goes for data transfers within a computer as well. If you read video data from a disk, display that video and apply rendering to that data everything has to happen *simultaneously*, which means that any component involved in more than one or all of these processes will have to manage the maximal throughput and share that over all I/O channels involved. The second point stunned me: “compatible to” any USB standard, did never and will never mean, that a device or cable is capable of handling the maximal throughput. That is one of the key differences in Thunderbolt compatibility: In order to be compatible you have to do exactly that. Docking stations connected by a Thunderbolt 5 cable have to be able to handle that specification’s maximal throughput *on that port*. That doesn’t mean, every device connected to that docking station will be able to have that throughput, as they have to share the bandwidth going to and from that docking station to it’s host between them.

Man that is crazy I have seen the same issues with docks I like the Caldigit, and I have a Anker at work that is a good dock but I have to use a separate cable for the second display!! Thanks so much for the video and you have another sub!!

the problem isn't docks ..the problem is apple is garbage

"I didn't plan it too well..." Indeed. This is a video with a lot of data but not much information. What dock should we buy?

It was not clear how the display was connected to your dock - thunderbolt? display port? hdmi? You just said it was connected Cheers

Thank you! I have a question: My thought is to use a dock to my mini pc! For all the extra ports, particularly external ssds and a nas. Thanks..

Docks are so inconsistent its almost a farce to get tech that works as advertised. As a technologist I have a budget to test whatever tech i am interested with - so for example, finding docks that can fast charge a mobile gaming rig, needs just 65 watts and most docks fail to deliver the charge to the device so the device goes to slower speeds… also lets not get into usb c cables and different standards, charge rates and clone cables…. Yeah docks are tricky

Interesting- i recently upgraded to Fios Gigabit and I was testing some cheaper docks with Ethernet ports on my Mac, and was testing my internet speed and read and write to network drives. I noticed that my wired internet was getting only 80mbps while my WiFi connection was getting 540mbps on WiFi 6e. These Ethernet ports are supposed to be 1 Gigabit ports - I am still troubleshooting and it might not be the dock’s fault but that is also something that surprised me and that needs to be considered- the newest Caldigit dock has a 2.5Gbit Ethernet port.

Thank you, Wayne. Most Buses are shared at some point, be it Memory, CPU, I/O or Controller Chip etc - you also need to consider the Computers internal layout, not just the Dock.

usb4 has a little less overhead than thunderbolt.

Thank you. Informative. Unrelated have you had trouble with external drives whether via dock or direct plugin. I noticed that they often unplug themselves With the error message that you should eject them first. Wondering if this is an issue with the new Mac OS….

The Ivanky FusionDock Max 1 works fine with the new Macbook Pro with Thunderbolt 5. It does have a glitch with the speaker connection but by just updating the firmware of the dock and a few clicks in the system settings it works flawlessly.

Thanks for the video. And you have a wonderful voice, I could listen for HOURS 😉 Question: A TB5 dock (if available) would solve the problem, right?

Great info on the TB hub bandwidth sharing and how the monitors impact it. I can always count on you for in-depth technical content. I just got an M4 Pro Mac Mini and a Caldigit Elements hub so I’ll definitely keep your findings in mind when I connect all my devices. Looks like I’ll be investing in a TB hub when the prices come down at some point. I hope you’ll do a TB 5 hub review some day.

Great find. Very useful info throughout. Thank you.

I realized this bandwidth limit/sharing while using a USB-C upstream on the LG 32UP83a monitor. Essentially, the monitor is a dock with 2 USB type A ports (3.0) and display connected with audio. I used a USB-c connection to drive the monitor from my iPad Pro M1 12.9, so I can utilize the external display feature, enabling the iPad as a desktop (stage manager). Initially, I plugged in a USB-Ethernet dongle to provide wired connectivity to the iPad. I was reaching around 350-300Mbps network speeds. This is when I realized the display output from the iPad uses around 700Mbps @ 4k-60Hz over the 10Gbit USB-C connection. Since then, I have returned to using a wireless network as I would achieve 500Mbps on average. Additional notes: The USB dongle was not the bottleneck. The iPad received power from the monitor up to 65watts over that connection. I determined the use for those USB 3 ports are only useful for HMI devices. Not sure if how well and what USB camera would work with that iPad, hmm.

Thanks, Wayne. Very helpful. I’ve used various docks and hubs on different devices and I’ve come to the conclusion that I can’t trust stated specs with any device combination until I test the specific configuration myself.

My problem connecting DIRECTLY to the M1 Studio Max is (apparently?) the Mac Studio's Thunderbolt 4 port isn't providing enough power to the NVME enclosure? Just one NVME enclosure is connected - It just loses connection. I've tried multiple Thunderbolt 4 cables. I was hoping a dock would solve this issue? Any thoughts?

Did you test every cable you have with the same drive and dock? I now have all my cables labelled depending onm performance.There is a big difference.That is why the Caldigit Pro cable costs so much.Just a thought.

It helps to know the "architecture" of your computer because you may have more bandwidth than you think. In the video, the starting point is a specific Apple computer. In the case of Windows, the high-level reasoning still applies. But. If you can track down a logical diagram of the motherboard in your computer, then you can see if there is a so-called "South Bridge" (SB) processor (chip). This would be referenced as the chipset of the motherboard in times when there also was a "North Bridge" (NB). Both would be "switches" and the NB was specialised in addressing memory and passing on other I/O to the SB. The SB then would provide time sharing of the link from the North (CPU/NB) and hook the North up with peripherals at the South end. In the SB, your mouse and HDD/SSD are competing for a CPU's I/O time. The NB, in the past decades, generally got integrated into the CPU, but the SB is still present in most cases (by market share). As a CPU has I/O lanes for the peripherals, we expect dedicated lanes for the GPU (graphics adapter card) or GPU processor if on the motherboard. An SB then may have a couple CPU I/O lanes and in most cases (of desktop and mobile CPU) this is the end of CPU I/O lanes. However workstation class motherboards, and the processors fitting that, have more lanes and these relay to PCIe connectors that are to be used optionally. In my workstation motherboard, the SB time shares 4 PCIe lanes between all USB and storage devices. It has 2 Thunderbolt connectors on separate PCIe lanes (from the spare ones in the explanation above) and then it still has "free", "optional" PCIe lanes. I hooked a PCIe I/O adapter into that and it gives me 8 lanes for HDD/SSD. I use these for the OS's page file, and temp, or scratch files used by applications. Keeping these I/O channels, that impact latency or user experience, separate from the basics means better performance - that exceeds the computer's pay grade. If you want very fast SSD/I/O, then don't buy into a time sharing device that mimics an SB. I have a 2-slot Thunderbolt CFexpress Type B card reader that is the fastest in the market and has its own power supply. It has a TB pass-through and that hooks into another fast SSD device. The other TB connector on the mobo hooks into two daisy-chained TB SSD. The moral of the story is that it's not desirable to hook slow devices into a time-sharing device. 2 Monitors of 4K , fine, but make sure the TB connector they're on is not sharing CPU time on its I/O lanes.