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Stephen.R

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Original poster
Nov 2, 2018
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Thailand
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).
 

Stephen.R

Suspended
Original poster
Nov 2, 2018
4,356
4,747
Thailand
Reading the eGPU thread it seems others have had good results with the OWC solution, and then use the mini’s hdmi port as a “fallback” direct to one display for eg recovery mode/FileVault password etc.

Swapping the dock for an eGPU would probably better solve the displays issue, and I can likely just continue to use the display hub (or another regular USB hub) for most remaining USB devices. It does make it a $1400 (plus $200 shipping) purchase rather than a ~$1K purchase, but it possibly solves the bigger problem more effectively...
 
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