Best DisplayLink devices for M1 Mac Mini to drive 4 additional displays (6 total w/ 2 integrated)?

[ylluminate]

Looking for an optimal DisplayLink arrangement to offer 4 total additional displays with a nice range of additional USB-A and C options. Any suggestions?

I'm guessing I'll need to get two DisplayLink devices either with 2 outputs each or one with 3 outputs + 1 with 1 or 2 outputs. I'm only going to be running 1080 resolution at this time with no near term plans of moving up to 4k so bandwidth shouldn't be a big problem.

BUT I have wondered if I should go with using the straight USB-A (5Gb/s) ports or Thunderbolt (USB 4) ports since external storage is a big consideration and I need to maximize storage bandwidth since I plan on running the OS + Users folders on two different external (probably software RAID APFS) devices and volumes to save the internal for things that might benefit from higher internal bandwidth.

Thoughts? Suggestions?

 

[joevt]

All DisplayLink adapters connect using 5 Gbps USB (4 Gbps of data because USB 3.0 uses 8b/10b encoding) except the USB 2.0 adapters. I'll ignore the USB 2.0 adapters even though they might be good enough for your situation.

Below are a couple options. I don't know how DisplayLink behaves in either case.

1)
This super expensive one from Targus has four display outputs provided by a single 5 Gbps USB connection:
https://ca.targus.com/products/usb-...ng-station-100-watt-power-delivery-dock570usz
In this case, you have 1 Gbps per display. The Targus uses a USB 3.0 hub and connects two DisplayLink DL-6910 chips which each handle two displays. Given two displays, does sending data for two displays to one chip save a small amount of overhead compared to sending data for each display to separate chips?

2)
There are Thunderbolt 3 docks with up to four separate USB controllers, each can do at least 5 Gbps USB to a separate DisplayLink device - up to 16 Gbps of DisplayLink data total.
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...able-thunderbolt-3-dock.2286171/post-29639488
https://www.displaylink.com/integrated-chipsets
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...able-thunderbolt-3-dock.2286171/post-29644981
https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus-interface-bandwidth-allocation-and-diagram/
https://www.displaylink.com/products/find?res=1920x1080&num=1
In this case, you have 4 Gbps per display.
Will DisplayLink use the entire 4 Gbps for a single 1080p display? No, 1080p 60Hz 8bpc RGB only needs 2.99 Gbps.
Will DisplayLink send 2.99 Gbps for 1080p 60Hz 8bpc RGB? Or will it compress it even though it doesn't need to be compressed?
Does one DisplayLink adapter per USB controller per display perform better than one DisplayLink adapter per USB controller per two displays? Only if DisplayLink can send more than 2 Gbps for a display.

3)
You could connect four single port DisplayLink devices to a USB-C dock instead of a Thunderbolt 3 dock. If the USB-C dock supports 10 Gbps, then you can get better performance than option #1 but not #2 unless DisplayLink won't send more than 2 Gbps for a display. If DisplayLink won't send more than 2 Gbps for a display, then you you can use a 10 Gbps USB-C dock with two dual port DisplayLink adapters.