I have two Dell 4K displays, which primarily I use connected to a 2018 Mac mini but occasionally (when the mini inevitably has a hardware fault, like now) I will revert to my “spare” machine, a 2018 MBP15.
At the moment I’m using a tb3>dual DisplayPort adapter from OWC, and a plethora of USB 2.0/3.0/3.1G1 “type a” and 3.1G2 “type c” devices (mostly various external drives but also a printer & scanner) that run off the Dell’s built-in USB hub, and the unused tb3 port(s) on the host machine in question.
The DisplayPort adapter works mostly fine (occasionally it needs to be disconnected or even changed to a different port to work properly after a reboot), but it’d be nice to have a solution that provides a bit more functionality give the number of TB3 ports available.
Most of the storage devices are from a Chinese brand, Orico and honestly they’re living up to the reputation of cheap(er) Chinese stuff. I’m at the point where I’m considering just ordering ~$1000 of stuff from OWC and having it shipped internationally, this would be a thunder bay6, a 14-port “dock” and a tb3 portable ssd (Envoy Pro EX I believe?).
So in this scenario I’d have two devices that provide one native (mini)DP port each, plus of course performing their other duties (disk array, USB/etc port expansion/charging), and still have two free TB3 ports on either Mac that’s connected at the time for devices that benefit from a direct connection to the host machine (eg Envoy Pro EX).
So my question is, has anyone got a similar setup, who can report success/issues/failures of this scenario, or even success/failures of individual components I’m intending to purchase?
[doublepost=1546571219][/doublepost]Oh and of course to add to this, is the consideration of whether an eGPU is required realistically to use it with the Mini - using them as-is even at plain 2x scaling (looks like 1080p) had some issues not seen when using them with the MBP (which has a dGPU).
At the moment I’m using a tb3>dual DisplayPort adapter from OWC, and a plethora of USB 2.0/3.0/3.1G1 “type a” and 3.1G2 “type c” devices (mostly various external drives but also a printer & scanner) that run off the Dell’s built-in USB hub, and the unused tb3 port(s) on the host machine in question.
The DisplayPort adapter works mostly fine (occasionally it needs to be disconnected or even changed to a different port to work properly after a reboot), but it’d be nice to have a solution that provides a bit more functionality give the number of TB3 ports available.
Most of the storage devices are from a Chinese brand, Orico and honestly they’re living up to the reputation of cheap(er) Chinese stuff. I’m at the point where I’m considering just ordering ~$1000 of stuff from OWC and having it shipped internationally, this would be a thunder bay6, a 14-port “dock” and a tb3 portable ssd (Envoy Pro EX I believe?).
So in this scenario I’d have two devices that provide one native (mini)DP port each, plus of course performing their other duties (disk array, USB/etc port expansion/charging), and still have two free TB3 ports on either Mac that’s connected at the time for devices that benefit from a direct connection to the host machine (eg Envoy Pro EX).
So my question is, has anyone got a similar setup, who can report success/issues/failures of this scenario, or even success/failures of individual components I’m intending to purchase?
[doublepost=1546571219][/doublepost]Oh and of course to add to this, is the consideration of whether an eGPU is required realistically to use it with the Mini - using them as-is even at plain 2x scaling (looks like 1080p) had some issues not seen when using them with the MBP (which has a dGPU).