Does anyone have USB-C dock recommends?

I have a Thinkpad P1 gen 4 running Fedora I’m going to be using as my desktop replacement, and I’m looking for a Linux friendly dock.

I don’t need the dock to do much. Ideally, it could drive 2x 4K DisplayPort displays, have a 2.5Gb+ Ethernet port, and a couple USB-A ports, but 2x 2K DisplayPort and 1GbE work too.

Preferred price is <$150.

  • thejevans@lemmy.ml
    ·
    1 year ago

    There are a couple of things that will get in your way with this.

    Bandwidth

    Let's go with the bare minimum of your high end given what you want:

    • running both of your displays at 4k 30Hz 8bit only will require 6.66Gbps per display
    • 2.5Gbps networking is self explanatory
    • assuming you only want USB 2.0 ports, 480Mbps per port

    without overhead, that's ~17Gbps. USB 3.2 Gen 2 can do 10Gbps, and USB 4 can do 20-40Gbps, so it would need to be a USB 4 dock at minimum, which means new and most likely above your budget. Your low end could probably be done on USB3.2 Gen 2, but you're still going to come close to your budget or blow it.

    Multiple displays

    Running multiple displays from a single usb-c port is not great. you can do it with thunderbolt docks just fine, but they are all going to blow your budget. With usb-c your options are a single display per port on your machine with displayport-over-usb-c implemented, or multiple displays using multi-stream transport (MST). MST is known to be extremely finicky and generally not worth the hassle in my opinion.

    Recommendation

    If you need multiple displays (on top of the HDMI 2.1 port on your machine), either dedicate both usb-c ports to it and use two cheaper docks, or go all in and get a thunderbolt dock like the Caldigit TS4.

    • jollyrogue@lemmy.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for the info! 🙂

      I may jump to the Caldigit TB dock based on reccs in the comments.

      $150 is the most I’m willing to spend on a USB dock. 😆 Above that, I might as well jump to a TB dock.

      This was more of a cheap stop gap solution to my many cables getting plugged into the laptop problem.

      • candle_lighter@lemmy.ml
        ·
        1 year ago

        This is the one we use but I'm not sure if it is compatible with your machine. This one is probably is compatible tho. Neither of them say that they support Linux but the one we use works fine on Fedora. Can't confidentially say that the second one I sent works for Linux but it might

  • flashgnash@lemm.ee
    ·
    1 year ago

    There are official thinkpad usb c hubs on eBay for like £30 that seem to work better than most on my Linux p50, dual display ports, PD (though sadly pd is not supported on the p50)

  • the16bitgamer@programming.dev
    ·
    1 year ago

    From my quick search you aren’t getting everything from under $150.

    I got a USB C dock from Amazon under the name LASUNEY, but it’s not for sale any more. I’ve seen equivalent under a 15 in 1 naming that seems to exactly the same, just under a different name LIONWEI that’s around the $100 mark, 2 DP 1Gbps and many usb ports.

    I believe resolution is determined by your machine’s chipset not the dock, but I could be mistaken.

    Now I also found one that has 2.5Gbps networking but that’s $270 under the Plugable brand. Not a fan of the specs of that one since the power comes from a barrel Jack instead of usb c.

  • Hillock@feddit.nl
    ·
    1 year ago

    A very recent review (translated from Dutch): https://tweakers-net.translate.goog/reviews/11340/10/20-usb-c-dockingstations-de-beste-basis-voor-je-thuiswerkplek-conclusie.html?_x_tr_sl=nl&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=nl&_x_tr_pto=wapp