Will that hub or dock slow your SSDs, or even make them faster?
Comments
Neywiny
Havoc
We should get someone from kindergarten to number these. Would be an improvement
twoparachute45
It would be comical if it weren't so ridiculous. The standards group is surely aware of how ridiculous it is, yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.
They honestly just need to kill off USB at this point and just let Thunderbolt supersede it. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are literally just implementations of USB4, except the Thunderbolt standards group is doing a hell of a lot better job at naming things and certifying cables than the USB group is.
redserk
Regarding Thunderbolt, I don't even bother buying USB-C cables anymore for anything important.
If it's in my backpack or used for a dock/monitor, it's going to be a Thunderbolt cable.
Expensive? Absolutely. Unnecessary? Almost certainly. But I haven't had any issues with them whatsoever.
Krasnol
I've been using USB cables since they exist, and I had never any "issues" with them.
The only "issue" I had, was that you often ended up without the proper one when you needed it. Almost all the cables came with the device which needed it. Only bought 2 which were longer.
What issues do you experience so frequently that it would justify investing more money into it?
Terretta
You answered your own question:
Q: What issues do you experience so frequently that it would justify investing more money into it?
A: ... often ended up without the proper one when you needed it
That's precisely the issue GP solves by only carrying one type of cable, Thunderbolt. If you want to transfer data at top speed, render high resolution high refresh rate video, or charge at maximum wattage, TB4 handles it. One cable to rule them all, no surprises.
Krasnol
It rules them all, only if you are on a Mac yourself and have a Thunderbold cable.
If you are on anything different and want to hook up, say a Studio Display, you can't use USB-C (below 4) and that is not USB-IFs fault.
Besides that, what I meant was the connector standards mix before USB-C has become mandatory here, and I think you knew that. Other than that, all what you wrote is also determined by the devices connected, so this may be why most of the people out there don't even realize there might be a reason to buy Thunderbold.
izacus
I don't think you thought your statement through. What you're proposing is a massive mandatory price hike on all hardware just because you're slightly annoyed by naming.
twoparachute45
There's no mandatory price hike required. Thunderbolt is royalty-free as of several years ago, and at this point USB4 pretty much _is_, at minimum, Thunderbolt 3. For example USB4 hubs are, per spec, required to be TB3 compatible, so I don't know why we would bother marketing them as "USB4 v1.0 / USB4 SuperSpeed++ / USB4 20 Gbps / USB 3.1 Gen2x2" when instead they can just be marketed as Thunderbolt 3 or 4.
wkat4242
True but due to lack of slow speed fallback it requires active signal conditioning electronics in every cable and the required interfaces on the client side are also way more expensive in peripherals. A simple mouse would cost $100 instead of $10 for no reason, it'll never need thunderbolt speeds.
kalleboo
Nobody is going to pay for a 40Gbps Thunderbolt cable to plug in their keyboard
xuki
Pricing aside, thunderbolt cables are usually thicker and more rigid. Sometimes you need a thin and flexible cable, cheap USB-C cable is a better choice.
usrusr
And truly lightweight cables, for slow overnight charging (or for charging of small batteries, e.g. smartwatch scale) have all but disappeared with the shift from A/micro-B to C/C. It's awesome that we have near-universal connector for that wide a range of use cases, but that requires some learning about cable classes beyond the old "does the connector fit?" and that learning process is not over yet. And by learning I don't just mean us memorizing classes, but also an effective narrowing of classes, e.g. no more almost but not quite TB4 compliant ones.
tjoff
Though poor cables do drop the voltage a bit I feel that the proper approach would be to to just use a weak charger. They are "all" USB-A and there are no lack of USB-A -> C cables.
thrw42A8N
I'm holding a thin USB-C Samsung cable right now.
twoparachute45
USB4 is required to support Thunderbolt, and USB4 cables are similar to Thunderbolt in their price and thickness, so this problem already exists, just with shittier naming conventions.
Basically for any cheap use cases, you just have to buy a random "USB-C" cable with unknown capabilities, while for specific data use cases you have to buy a "USB-C" cable that also supports a specific data rate, either USB 3.1, USB 3.2, USB4 v1.0, USB4 v2.0, or Thunderbolt 3/4/5 (and most cables will support multiple of these, for example USB 3.2 Gen2x2 is the same speed as USB4 v1.0 and TB3).
TheSpiceIsLife
Or ten for $1 off <your preferred Chinese marketplace>
lazide
Data rate between 10MB/s and 2 Gb/s.
josefx
Irrelevant for charging.
thrw42A8N
This kind of cheap cable won't fast charge in any case. Add a few dollars if you want that.
registeredcorn
I hope I don't come off sounding like a twit, but does fast charging really matter all that much to people? I've had a few fast charge cables before, and although it's fine to have my cellphone fully charged in say, 20 minutes, it doesn't really mean anything to me, given that it will be left plugged in over night regardless.
Perhaps it's more useful to people who are constantly traveling, but for someone who isn't, I guess I just don't see a point in it. Would I turn it down? No. Would I pay more for it? If it's greater than 2$ more, no. Slow charge is "good enough" in my eyes.
Kwpolska
I never charge my phone overnight. My charger is on my desk. I'll typically do a slow charge, but I'll do a fast charge in some circumstances (e.g. when I'm going somewhere soon but my battery is low).
wkat4242
I really value fast charging. Normally I turn it off because I do charge my phone at night. But sometimes I really need the boost and it's great that it can do so if needed. Especially because i normally limit my phone to 80%.
I don't use it a lot, probably once a month on average. But the times I do it's invaluable.
thrw42A8N
I was frustrated all day because I couldn't find my fast charging cable and just couldn't leave the phone plugged for more than 15-20 minutes at a time due to various activities, which also required a lot of battery charge (photo/video shooting), so I was dancing around the charger all day...
fragmede
Laptops need the additional power that fast charge can deliver to run/charge.
7bit
It's very important to me. I keep forgetting to plug it in at night and then I can just charge it for 30 minutes before I leave the house and can get a couple of hours usage into it, which is normally enough.
TheSpiceIsLife
Isn’t slower charging better for the battery too?
thrw42A8N
The problem with fast charging and batteries is overheating, and more frequent overcharging. It's possible to fast charge in entirely safe, non-damaging ranges.
Neywiny
Agreed. It's fine as a technical name but the consumer name doesn't seem to catch on or even be referenced most of the time. I'm still having difficulty with component manufacturers saying "usb 3.2" which was far as I can tell is 1x5, 2x5, 1x10, or 2x10. Plot twist it's always the slowest one but still, the standards body could've done that better.
Disagree on the replacement with thunderbolt, though. USB historically is very different, and it's USB4 that's a clone of TB3. Agreed the naming is better but a lot of micros have USB and thunderbolt would be ridiculous for them.
eviks
How are they better with the same meaningless 4 and 5?
7bit
> yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.
I think it matters a great deal, but not as they or you intend. Having technical and marketing terms sucks! I use Ubuntu on my home server. And whenever I need to troubleshoot some issues with packages or want to upgrade to a later release I am confronted with those awful names. I DONT KNOW WHAT JAMMY IS! JUST CALL IT 22.04, 22.10, 23.04, 24.04.......! I don't want to memorize random names and remember when they where released. And name your apt repos in the same version scheme goddamnit!
Same with USB! Just give it a sensible name and stop changing it for marketing reasons. Such a effing stupid thing to do!
jsheard
It would be a lot simpler if you could just install NVMe drives internally, wired directly to the CPUs PCIe bus with nothing inbetween to slow it down, but alas if Apple let you do that it would cut into their business of selling internal SSD upgrades at a 500% markup.
acchow
If you’re referring to speed, then thunderbolt does include PCIe support, including direct memory access.
wmf
Thunderbolt 5 is PCIe 4.0 x4 but CPUs now have PCIe 5.0. Thunderbolt will probably always be one generation behind and of course more expensive due to the controller chips.
userbinator
Thunderbolt is essentially external PCIe but there will definitely be higher latency than internal PCIe.
sureIy
> SSD upgrades at a 500% markup.
Is the price difference really that high or are you comparing them to cheaper SSDs?
jsheard
It's absolutely that high. Upgrading a Mac Mini from 256GB to 2TB is an extra $800, and a high-end 2TB NVMe drive like the WD SN850x is around $150 at retail. Even the 8TB version of that drive is only $650.
That's why external SSDs are so common in Mac setups, even accounting for the additional cost of a Thunderbolt enclosure it's usually still significantly cheaper than getting a bigger internal SSD from Apple.
fweimer
Surely the WD SN850x isn't high end? It doesn't even have power-loss protection as far as I can see. SSDs with protection are much more expensive.
(Not sure if Apple SSDs have power-loss protection. Not using sockets probably eliminates one source of accidental power loss.)
FireBeyond
When I bought my "cheesegrater" Mac Pro, I wanted 8TB of SSD. Except Apple wanted $3,000 for 7TB of SSD (considering the sticker price came with a baseline of 1TB).
I bought a 4xM.2 card and 4x2TB Samsung Pro SSDs, cost me $1,300, I got to keep the 1TB "system" SSD, and was faster, at 6.8GBps versus the system drive at 5.5.
Similar with memory. OWC literally sells the same memory as Apple (same manufacturer, same specifications. Apple also wanted $3,000 for 160GB of memory (going from 32 to 192). I paid $1,000.
wtallis
The SN850x is high-end for client/consumer SSDs. The ones you're referring to that have full power loss protection are enterprise SSDs, which is an entirely different market segment with different performance targets, different endurance rating methodology, and different expected feature set. Enterprise SSDs are not the right thing to compare Mac storage against.
dustyventure
Still, it's confusing to use WD as an example of high end. They have dramless which is like the winmodem of SSDs, and even in this case no encryption. Clearly they are a budget manufacturer that happened to have something that worked out for some people.
Samsung is a much better example of a manufacturer that Apple would be emulating, investing in their own controllers, etc, and certainly not leaving out security features with no plan.
wtallis
You're completely wrong. Both Samsung and WD have a full lineup of consumer and enterprise SSDs, retail and OEM, including low-end DRAMless budget drives and high-end drives, with vertical integration of the NAND manufacturing, controller silicon, and bringing the complete drive to retail. Writing off WD as a budget manufacturer in favor of Samsung is stupid brand loyalty ungrounded in reality. Dismissing a high-end product because the same company also sells different low-end products under a different sub-brand is also ridiculous.
dustyventure
So I'm wrong that Samsung is a possible example of what Apple could be that doesn't make WD a realistic example. Apple would have no more experience designing and selling trash than a UNIX vendor would have had with IDE and that makes it harder to sell top end that uses cheap performance hacks some of the time.
wtallis
I'm having difficulty parsing your comment and I'm not at all sure you're not just trolling, but I'll try to be simple and clear: WD as a brand is on par with Samsung. WD's high-end consumer SSDs are comparable in quality, performance, etc. to Samsung's high-end consumer SSDs. Using a WD high-end consumer SSD to compare against Apple's storage options is every bit as valid as using a Samsung high-end consumer SSD to compare against Apple's storage options. Implying that WD drives are all (or almost all) trash is wrong. Implying that Samsung drives are all (or almost all) trash is wrong. Asserting that Apple's Mac storage is substantially superior to high-end consumer SSDs in performance or reliability is wrong. Believing that any of these companies are above "cheap performance hacks" is wrong.
dustyventure
In the long term, Apple was on a cycle of market failure and then rejuvenation attempt because they either can't make high volumes of questionable components or they ruin their whole brand selling them. They have no dumping capability like a PC brand, I.e. I didn't even know what compromise Samsung's non-Pro models made vs EVO and they are obfuscated in searches by the PRO models. Great for dumping garbage for scale and testing out cost cutting tricks..
Intel leaving the SSD market probably has more relation to Apple than WD or Samsung.
I'm not asserting that Apple succeeds in making high quality, I'm saying their hardware trust makes them uncompetitive with the entire PC market where some brands will deliver high enough quality and all brands have access to low quality dumping to reach scale, etc.
goosedragons
Yes, they do. The base models. They gimp those in stupid ways ALL the time to use up questionable old components. Just look at how silly the iPad lineup got with regards to how they interface with the Pencil. Low end models use old lightning Pencils that require plugging in and an adapter from lightning to USB C. Then you got models with way too little storage and cut back storage so it's smaller and considerably slower than what's advertised, etc.
magicalhippo
There are different ways to implement power-loss protection. There was a Twitter thread where a guy tested actual power-loss protection but it doesn't load anymore, too bad he didn't blog about it...
But at least the tech press wrote a bit about it, for example here[1], including a link on how Samsung implements it using journaling on consumer SSDs. I would expect WD to do something similar given that multiple WD drives passed the test.
[1]: https://hothardware.com/news/heads-up-nvme-ssds-lose-data-po...
yread
There are also a lot cheaper ssds (nv2 or p3 are under 100 eur for 2tb often)
Retric
Using a gaming part is a poor comparison because gaming parts get higher speeds at lower prices by sacrificing longevity/energy efficiency. Clearly not the tradeoff Apple wants to make here.
Which isn’t anything against the SN850x, it’s a great fit for the intended use case it’s just many people assume there’s zero trade-offs involved beyond speed/price/capacity.
Apple is definitely raising storage prices to milk their customers and promote their iCloud cash cow, but it’s still worth considering when looking at ‘gaming’ parts in different situations.
wtallis
It's a fair comparison. Both Apple's computers and drives like the WD SN850x are using commodity SSD-grade TLC flash; there's no significant difference in quality, performance, efficiency, or durability in the flash itself. It's possible (maybe even likely) that a Mac with 2TB of built-in storage is using literally the same NAND flash dies that show up in a SN850x.
SSD performance and power efficiency are significantly affected by the choice of controller. Apple's Macs have the controller built-in to the SoC, so it's a sunk cost that doesn't really factor in to upgrade pricing.
Retric
I said poor not unfair. They might happen to end up with equal price per flash chip, but either could end up being more expensive it’s just not a good yardstick IMO.
Anyway, what you might consider insignificant differences are things companies do consider these worth paying for. You not caring isn’t the same thing as nobody caring.
> significantly affected by the choice of controller
Aka it is more complicated than just slapping different controller on the same chips and calling it a day.
twoparachute45
The SN850x isn't a "gaming part", it's a top-of-the-line consumer SSD that uses the exact same type of NAND chips (3D TLC) that Apple uses in its products.
Retric
There’s a lot of diversity under that “3D TLC” umbrella.
But anyway, in what world isn’t this a gaming product: https://shop.sandisk.com/products/ssd/internal-ssd/wd-black-...
“Built for elite gaming.
Crush load times and slash throttling, lagging, and texture pop-ins with the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe™ SSD. …
Do more with WD_BLACK Dashboard The downloadable WD_BLACK Dashboard (Windows® only) monitors your drive’s health, lets you customize your RGB lighting, and, exclusively on the SN850X SSD, enables Game Mode 2.0 to transform your gaming experience.”
pbhjpbhj
>Built for elite gaming //
That's just marketing language for "this is expensive af but you'll buy it because otherwise you're not an elite gamer!".
Retric
At one point that was true, but product lines have started to meaningfully diverge.
lazide
Also ‘has RGB LED’s all over it’
twoparachute45
> There’s a lot of diversity under that “3D TLC” umbrella.
There really isn't. Apple is reported to use SanDisk 3D TLC NAND chips. SanDisk is owned by Western Digital, and the WD SSDs use SanDisk chips. They're literally the same chips.
Retric
They could in theory come off the same assembly line, that doesn’t mean the everything is identical.
Hell WD chips could be of higher quality as I am not suggesting I know their internal processes. I am saying things are optimized differently.
izacus
At this point of the conversation, you seem to be really grasping for theoretical stuff to defent Apple's margins with very little proof. Why?
Retric
I’ve said several times they could be using worse components.
The why I’m still talking is because people seem to think buying a gaming SSD is a good idea when they also want longevity / low risk of future. The parts can last 10+ years but they’re designed with something else in mind.
wtallis
There really isn't much diversity in NAND flash product lines. Each generation of 3D NAND from WD+Kioxia basically consists of two sizes of TLC die and one or two sizes of QLC die. For the purposes of this conversation, binning doesn't matter because "SSD grade" is already the top bin. So the only variable on the NAND side for a high-end 2TB drive is the question of whether it's built with the high-capacity die (cheaper per GB), or twice as many of the low-capacity dies (potentially faster if it allows more controller channels to be fully populated, but that's usually not a problem at 2TB).
Retric
I’m not sure what you mean by SSD grade, Grade A to D chips aren’t strictly about binning but also traceability/fraud.
One hardware guy mentioned internal defects can cause differences is the amount of reserve sectors that a final product ends up with. That’s exactly the kind of arbitrary cutoff that lets companies charge different prices for the same part.
wtallis
SSD-grade is the term used for flash with a low initial defect rate. See eg. https://www.szyunze.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/08/SpecTek-N... (from https://www.szyunze.com/spectek-unveiling-truths-about-degra... )
Lower-grade flash with higher initial defect rates is what gets used in USB flash drives and SD cards, and some bargain-bin SSDs with lower usable capacities (ie. 960GB rather than 1TB).
The stuff used in a WD Black or WD Blue branded consumer SSD is not a different quality grade from the stuff used in any other mainstream consumer SSD, Apple's included.
pdpi
> They could in theory come off the same assembly line, that doesn’t mean the everything is identical.
It could just come down to different binning of the same part, and it would still make a difference.
bayindirh
> They're literally the same chips.
At what grade? Plus, how much extra endurance is baked in to Apple's drives, i.e. how over-provisioned are they?
My MacBook Air M1 reports 99% health after being daily driven (and some 26TB written to it) at work since 2020 (we got these as soon as they introduced), and I don't baby its drive in any way.
dazed_confused
Any decent consumer SSD will be exactly the same, brands such as SK Hynix, Samsung, Crucial, WD, etc. same chips and same performance, much cheaper than the Apple tax.
bayindirh
I'll respectfully disagree on the performance front.
Any flash storage has two main components: A controller and a set of flash chips, and a third component enters to the picture when connecting these two: number & nature of channels.
Starting from the controller (and channels), beside the obvious PCIe generation, there are some other factors. DRAM support, NAND support (not all NAND is the same!), number of channels, and the speed of these channels. A DRAMless SSD will suffer after its "pseudo-SLC" cache runs out, and the performance of the drive will generally suffer if the number of channels can't absorb the traffic coming from the PCIe side. Here, to have a top notch SSD, you need to have a good/fast controller with DRAM support, and enough channels with enough speed to absorb all traffic requests, so you can get use of the premium NAND chips you bought.
Next, we have the flash layout. Flash chips vary in speed, density and drive. A high density flash chip might be slower, or a flash chip might require higher drive, resulting in higher temperatures in general. In some cases, instead of populating all channels, a manufacturer might decide to populate a few channels and leave the rest unpopulated, creating a big but slower SSD.
Beyond that, there are other considerations like over-provisioning at flash level, "soft SLC cache" size, wear leveling capabilities under sustained load, etc. etc.
For example, an enterprise SSD comes with the "same" TLC chips, but over-provisioned 5:1 or 10:1 (10TB flash for 1TB capacity)
Now, let's see some real-world examples:
- Kingston NV2, NV3: A budget SSD with great capacity and price. DRAMless, no channel number guarantee, and might come in with TLC or QLC chips. Burst speeds are OK, will make 90% of the people happy, but slows down in long transfers and under heavy load. Runs cooking hot in both controller and flash side.
- Kingston KC3000: A higher end drive with part/channel guarantees, handles sustained load better, runs way cooler, ironically.
- Samsung 980/990 Pro: Samsung's higher end drive. Runs cool, sustains speed all over due to DRAM and tons of channels and vertical integration of controller + NAND.
- Samsung T7 Shield: Looks like an bulky 1.8" drive, but it's selling point is it can sustain 1050MB/s writes wihtout even slowing down until it's full. Never gets warm.
So, flash drives comes in all shapes and sizes and with specifications and capabilities all over the place. A WD Blue and WD Black won't perform the same. Same for Sandisk's Plus, Extreme, Extreme Pro series.
This is why OWC was/is the go-to 3rd party SSD provier for Macs for quite some time. They tune their drives similar to Apple's and very similar to what OS expects as behavior. It's not slap some controllers and flash chips on a PCB, change three fields in a firmware and sell.
Flash storage is black magic at this point, and thinking every box is the same is a big mistake.
This comment can be easily 3x longer, but I want to keep it readable.
LukeShu
Western Digital themselves are literally calling the WD_BLACK line their gaming line[1], and their page for the SN850X in particular is dripping with "gaming"[2].
Maybe that doesn't make it a bad comparison, but the SN850X is def intended to be a gaming part.
[1]: https://www.westerndigital.com/brand/wd-black
[2]: https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/products/internal-drive...
vlovich123
What is a competing part that you think would be more comparable?
Gamers are the ones buying expensive parts so it makes sense to market to that. The next tier after this is basically server-class 10-20k machines which Apple is definitely not competing with (and SSDs are not really that much better in that class anyway). Dismissing SSDs as “gaming” parts as if it’s diminishing the quality misunderstands what’s happening here. It would be one thing if WD was ignoring fsyncs to achieve this performance but gamers don’t care about writes so much anyway and there’s no indication WD did that.
Source: I have the WD and Samsung parts as well as cheapo random SSDs.
twoparachute45
The other product lines would be WD Blues (marketed at "creative professionals working with large files") and WD Reds (marketed specifically for use in NAS's), but neither of these really support the argument that the SN850x isn't a good comparison, because both the Blue and Red lines are cheaper and less performant (and the Blues are even rated for less longevity), and just make it seem like Apple is price gouging even more.
The point I was trying to make by pointing out that the SN850x isn't a "gaming part" is that the SN850x is literally the top-of-the-line, most expensive consumer SSD sold by WD, and has practically the same specs as other top-of-the-line, most expensive competing parts like the Samsung 990 Pro. Being one of the most expensive SSDs on the market means that saying that the SN850x is a bad comparison because it's supposedly "lower price" is just false on its face.
Retric
Ahh you misunderstood what the lower prices is in reference to. Gaming parts often have a real premium, it’s specifically the price at a specific performance level where they preform well.
To be more clear, getting equal performance without sacrificing anything would raise costs even further.
Retric
I personally don’t think anything is a great comparison.
It’s easy to say moderate premium over normal business grade SSD’s but that doesn’t mean any specific number is correct. I’d say the equivalent to a 130$ to 220$ SSD assuming a stand alone equivalent exited, but the actual number depending on info Apple isn’t sharing. And yes the range is both above and below the specific part suggested.
rudedogg
A Samsung 990 Pro dips to the same prices. I got a 2TB one for $150 this Black Friday.
Apple is overcharging for storage. You get a lot of compute for cheap though :/
Retric
A perfectly reasonable comparison and I agree with your point.
kayson
Is it clear? Apple doesn't publish endurance specs for their drives so there's actually no way to tell. 600x full drive writes (what the 2TB SN850X is specced for) is probably enough for the vast majority of users to never have to worry about it. You can even get enterprise SSDs, which are rated in whole drive writes per day for less than that.
wqaatwt
Is something like the Crucial T705 or Samsung 990 or also “gaming” parts?
Their manufacturers provide 5 years warranties unlike Apple. AFAIK Apple doesn’t even disclose endurance ratings. Wouldn’t you expect the opposite?
Retric
Samsung 990 is marketed as a PRO part and a reasonable comparison, hell it’s likely a better product than what Apple is shipping. But when a company slaps gaming 30 times on the product page, lists specific features to minimize load times etc it’s clearly targeting a specific demographic who in general wants different tradeoffs.
At scale failures are more than just endurance ratings. Gaming laptops for example often cook their components due to prioritizing performance over long term stability. That doesn’t guarantee early failure, but it reduces the likelihood the system is working in 4 years.
nickjj
> Their manufacturers provide 5 years warranties
Yep and it's possible to get much more out of it.
I've been running a Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD for 10 years. It's at 63% health from a S.M.A.R.T. readout. It's been powered on 125 times over ~10 years and transferred 56 TB in that time. It's my main Windows partition and runs WSL 2 where I've built and ran thousands of Docker images. Basically, it hasn't been sitting here unused.
Retric
0.5% is a meaningful difference in defect rates, but simply isn’t meaningful on an individual scale.
wqaatwt
Apple is selling 256 GB for $200
So it’s probably even considerable more than 500%.
Unless you believe that Apple only buys “magic” components like the 8GB=16GB crowd there is nothing particularly special about their storage or memory.
Their SSDs even aren’t that fast. You can get faster ones for $200 (EXCEPT they are 2TB instead of 256GB)
jchw
AFAIK the NAND they use on Mac products is not really particularly special, they seem to shift between a lot of different chips (often Kioxia/Toshiba) and many of them seem at best to be middle of the road. A lot of industrious folks were just buying the chips directly and performing SSD upgrades the very hard way, since it was simply worth the savings if you could.
edgineer
M4 Pro 512GB --> 2TB cost: $600
M4 Pro read/write: ~5.4/6.7 GB/s
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB: $170
990 Pro R/W: ~7.1/6.2 GB/s
Samsung 990 Evo 2TB: $130
990 Evo R/W: ~4.8/3.9 GB/s
Sorry no links, looked at tomshardware, Amazon, and macrumors forums for numbers.
jillesvangurp
Samsung has an 8TB and 4TB model as well. The 8TB is 509 euros in Germany (inc VAT). The 4 TB one is 233 euro.
I have an older 2TB one. USB 3.2. Plenty of speed for putting lots of media, large software packages (e.g. Xplane 12 with a lot of scenery) etc.
shae
CalDigit TS4 is the best dock I've used. I tried several. I get 2.5 GB Ethernet, two external 4k monitors, and much throughput.
shwouchk
PSA: STAY AWAY!
I had two expensive caldigit docks (TS3 i believe). One was warranty replacement for the first one. Each died after about a year.
After that I had an expensive alogic dock. Seemed great when it was working, but after just over a year it went dead (warranty is for two years).
The dock i had is out of stock. After weeks of “checking” I was offered an exchange for a cheaper version (whatever) that doesn’t include features i rely on (3 screens).
As “compensation” I was offered about 30% of the original price, since “the item was used”.
Thanks but no thanks. Standard amortization time for computer equipment is 5 years. And in either case, who has patience to go for weeks without their familiar computing environment? And my cost is replacement of the item, i did not rent it.
I got a Kensington dock sold by amazon at slightly less than the original price of that one, with better features and a brand name that is worth more than the piece of paper it is written on.
We’ll see how it lasts
simoncion
$DAYJOB issues us Mac laptops. (Seems like a waste of money, but it's not MY money.)
So, I've been using a CalDigit TS3 Plus device for the last two or three years. I have USB 3, Ethernet, and DisplayPort going out from it, and a Thunderbolt cable going into it. Other than sometimes having to unplug and replug the DisplayPort cable to get the screen to wake [0], it works fine.
[0] To make this easy, I have an F<->F coupler near the display that doesn't have latches. I just slip out one end of the cable from the coupler and slip it back in. Quick and easy, if slightly annoying that I have to do it at all.
shwouchk
Yep that was my exact story too, before the first sock gave out shortly before warranty, was replaced (at least regarding customer service im happy), and then same exact story with the second one.
Given that i had a third unrelated dock fail recently it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect something on my end might be causing this, but then again that’s the only hardware that failed on me in a while and i don’t do anything that unusual besides having 3x4k screens plugged into it and the occasional mouse charging/flash drive drawing power off it.
In all cases the PSU of the dock died with it (but also the docks themselves) so i suspect current DL chipsets overheat and eventually burn out when pushing clost to their max resolution.
phantompeace
Off topic but why refer to it as $DAYJOB (is it really a variable like that?) rather than just saying “work” or “my job”? I see it all over HN but I’ve actually never understood why people do this. Sorry for veering off topic.
orta
The syntax is written like a bash shell variable, the idea (I assume) is that the actual job itself doesn't matter but the idea of it being something they do for work does (because contextually it means they have less decision power.) So, if it were me, saying I work for Puzzmo is about as useful as me saying I work for $DAYJOB in a sentence like that.
pjerem
Also it’s just some HN slang. No more, no less.
wging
Way more, actually. It likely predates HN by decades.
simoncion
Yeah. Over the past (dear god) fourteen years, I've noticed approximately zero HN-unique vocabulary.
There's the proliferation of both "manager speak" and "self-help coach vocabulary", but that's (sadly) not unique to HN.
simoncion
> Sorry for veering off topic.
Nah, there's no need to apologize. If folks don't want to read and/or participate in the subthread that changes the topic, then they can just fold up the subthread using the handy "fold up the subthread" button.
And yeah, with the exception of the fellow who called it "HN slang" (or whatever) the folks who replied to you all have good answers to your question.
radley
I'm using a CalDigit TB4. It's two years old and no issues.
I don't push it too often, but when I do, it's fast enough to play six or more concurrent 1080p video layers in Resolume from a single Gen4x4 NVMe. It's not as fast as my M1's internal storage, but it does the job.
skunkworker
I have been using a TS3+ daily for more than 4 years now without any major issues, there was a firmware update a few years ago but since then it's been very reliable ever since.
cced
I’ve been using the TS3+ for many, many years now. Not a single issue.
joshstrange
That’s not been my experience. I have 2 TS3+ and multiple friends with TS3+/TS4 that have no issues.
kalleboo
Just watch out for the TS3 dock, a few of the USB ports on it are driven by a flaky chipset and should be avoided https://sebvance.medium.com/the-secret-caveats-of-the-caldig...
simoncion
> 2. Don’t expect to run any USB hubs behind any of the USB ports on this dock whatsoever... even if the downstream hub is only powering wimpy devices like wireless mouse dongles. You might not have this problem if you plug the hub into the dock’s extra Thunderbolt port...
I have this device and don't have this problem? I have a couple of self-powered hubs downstream of this thing and have plugged them into the USB-A-shaped ports on the back.
I don't have any downstream Thunderbolt devices plugged into this thing. Maybe that's the major difference between my setup and the author's? (Or maybe I'm running better firmware on this thing than he is?)
kalleboo
I haven't tried any hubs, but my problem was using a 2.5 Gbps USB Ethernet controller off of one of the Fresco Logic USB ports (the front 5 Gbps ones or the rear right-hand 3 USB-A ports), after a few hours it would drop. I thought the cheap USB adapter was bad, replaced it, same thing.
I found this blog post, switched to one of the ASMedia ports (the rear 10 Gbps USB-C port or the most left-hand USB-A port) and both of the Ethernet controllers are rock-solid now.
I now have it in the Thunderbolt port which ekes out another 100 Mbps or so compared to the ASMedia USB ports.
The blog post is probably a bit sensationalistic but I still can't recommend the dock to anyone when half the ports on it are flakey, especially at that price.
simoncion
Sounds like I should plug the subset of the ports that are on that Fresco Logic controller so that I don't unwittingly use them at some point in the distant future.
> ...I still can't recommend the dock to anyone when half the ports on it are flakey, especially at that price.
This is understandable.
However, I'm pleased with my purchase and I'm only using the built-in Ethernet port, the built-in DisplayPort port, and a couple of USB ports. If it lasts me five years, I will have paid ~60 USD per year, which I think is a bargain when you compare it to fighting with something that's flaky no matter what you do, or just fails after a year or two... requiring you to go on the hunt for a new "dock".
Honestly, I think it's pretty damn stupid to have so many USB ports on the thing to begin with. Decent USB hubs are inexpensive; remove all but one or two of the USB ports and use now-spare bandwidth to put additional DisplayPort ports on the thing!
marxisttemp
I like my Kensington a lot, don’t seem them mentioned a lot but the build quality is very high, lots of ports and it even has an official mount for under-desk use
codetrotter
What’s the model name?
shwouchk
I recently got this one (see sibling comment to parent) and am quite happy with it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CMT7WMVM
Note that as all docks it requires displaylink software on mac to use more than one screen, and the software is a bit buggy - needs to be restarted every couple of times i reconnect to the dock for the displays to work right. TBH this is the first dock i experience this with but then again os and software updates, and ive seen weird flaky behavior before, just not specifically this.
twoparachute45
Not all docks need DisplayLink. Thunderbolt-powered ones like this [0] or this [1] can support multiple displays for Macbook Pros without it, so if you want to avoid having to use DisplayLink, they're solid picks. The one thing you need to watch out for is that if you go with the second one, there are no HDMI ports, so you need a USB-C to HDMI converter, which in my experience can be flaky at higher refresh rates. If on the other hand your monitors support DisplayPort, then USB-C to DisplayPort is native, doesn't need a converter (just an adapter), and works better.
fragmede
From the first link
> On Mac systems, dual display is only supported on M1 Pro/Max, M2 Pro/Max, M3 Pro/Max, and M4/Pro/Max systems
So if you're still on an OG M1 it won't work for you.
wtallis
Base M2 or M3 won't work either; a Thunderbolt dock cannot work around a lack of display pipes on the SoC. The M4 is the first base M-series chip that supports two external displays in addition to the internal display, hence the slightly different phrasing in your quote for the M4 generation.
shwouchk
Aside from my justified negative opinions about caldigit, i was referring to docks that offer 3+ (simultaneous) screen outputs (eg not one with 2 hdmi+2dp that can use either set but not all 4 together).
That requires DP.
Terretta
> docks that offer 3+ (simultaneous) screen outputs ... requires DP
Still incorrect.
What you actually have to use is two thunderbolt ports on the MacBook. Then you can power not just two but four 6K screens, as each TB port can push 2 externals (in addition to built-in screen).
So this iVANKY dock is native TB quad screen, for example:
https://www.amazon.com/FusionDock-Thunderbolt-Monitor-Dockin...
shwouchk
Im sorry, despite their marketing, this is a 2 output dock. Offering TB passthrough doesnt count, just like we wouldnt call regular usb hubs "multiple display docks" if some manufacturer came out with usb screens (whih im sure exist already for lowres output).
marxisttemp
SD5700T
codetrotter
Thank you
begueradj
What about no dock and no 3 external monitors ?
peachpossum
I've been using an OWC 14 port TB3 dock with my 2018 Intel Mac mini for about 5 years now with no issues. I keep a 2TB Samsung T7 external SSD connected and it is always mounted when I wake the system from sleep. I've been very happy with this dock so far. https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3DK14PSG/
anonymousiam
I've been dabbling with this issue for a few months. I've got a one-year-old ThinkPad that multi-boots Linux (Ubuntu 24.04, 23.10), and Windows 11. Upon purchase, I immediately upgraded the 1TB internal NVMe drive to a Samsung 4TB (990). Later, I had some difficulty while upgrading from 23.10 to 24.04. To make things easier while troubleshooting, I was backing up the 4TB image, and restoring it when the upgrade failed. After doing this a few times, I was looking for more speed.
I tried several NVMe/TB4 enclosures. Some of them were junk, some were just okay, and this one (which I now have two of) is great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CSFFMQWF
I now also have three of these 8TB NVMe SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D9WT512W (I also have a few others that are slower and/or smaller.)
I've tried a few docks, and this is the one I'm using now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DBHG7486 It's a good dock, but unfortunately needs the DisplayLink driver to use the DisplayPort output. This works okay, but the monitor stays dark until the desktop is booted, and cannot be used for switching between Linux virtual consoles.
First off, because my ThinkPad has only one TB4 port that also serves as the USB-C PD input, I needed a dock if I wanted to use a TB4 accessory while not running from the battery. The dock is also quite valuable for using an external (4K/60Hz) display when using another TB4 peripheral.
The SSDs work fine when plugged into the non-TB4 port, but they operate at less than half of their potential speed, and are enumerated as /dev/sdX instead of /dev/nvmeXnX.
Operating the SSDs from the TB4 port gives variable performance depending upon what else is connected, and when it was connected. The Linux PCI+bridge enumeration has some issues with hotplugable devices. Various combinations of pci=assign-busses, realloc, native, hpbussize=XX, lastbus=XX, hpmmiosize=XXXM, hpmmioprefsize=XG will all give varying results. At best, with my 4K monitor operating, I can get 20gbps on one external SSD, or some division of that speed distributed amongst multiple other SSDs.
Leaving the PCIe enumeration to the kernel with no additional boot arguments did not go well with 23.10, but works better with 24.04. Hot-plugging performance is always a compromise, depending upon kernel parameters, and the order in which things are plugged in.
__mharrison__
Would love to hear about folks favorite docks.
I have a fancy pluggable dock and after my Mac goes to sleep it sometimes stops working when the Mac wakes up. Often, it appears to go into a loop where it detects an external monitor for 5 seconds then disconnects. Pretty annoying and guess away after a reboot.
nottorp
What annoys me is not speed, but why there are so few docks with a storage slot inside.
It's bad enough that you have to have a box hanging off your machine, but with most docks you have to have several boxes.
goosedragons
There are several designed that way for the Steam Deck. They are just generic USB C hubs with a slot of the deck. Not Thunderbolt though.
nottorp
I have a TB3 dock with a fast ish nvme slot. But I only found two options when I looked... something from OWC and the WD "game dock" i ended up buying.
It does do the job including display passthrough.
declan_roberts
I bought a dock for my Mac mini. It works great, but I do notice that it takes a few seconds/minutes after waking up before the NVMe SSD is mounted, which means I can't keep any of my dotfiles on it.
harha
Ah thunderbolt, yet another standard that started with a promise of simplicity but requires a lot of digging to understand what actually works.
For me some things worked better than expected (5K + 4K monitor at 60Hz, even though it states only one 5K or two 4K monitors), some things don't (work laptop detects the hub, but the displays stay blank.
My biggest takeaway from this was finding out they have USB4 2.0. Come ooooonnnnnnnnn. Wikipedia starts by saying USB4 isn't 4.0 (that'd make too much sense I guess). So disappointing.