MP 7,1 Mac Pro 7,1 only provides 15W charging at the 2 top USB-C ports

[LeonPro]

A few of us tested and tried to charge our Thunderbolt equipped laptops. Both Dell and MacBook Pro 16 are taking a maximum of 15W when connecting to the top two Thunderbolt ports of the Mac Pro 7,1.

This is a bit of a disappointing omission from Apple. Does anyone know the reason why this has been limited in power despite being a Thunderbolt 3 port?

 

[goMac]

A few of us tested and tried to charge our Thunderbolt equipped laptops. Both Dell and MacBook Pro 16 are taking a maximum of 15W when connecting to the top two Thunderbolt ports of the Mac Pro 7,1.

This is a bit of a disappointing omission from Apple. Does anyone know the reason why this has been limited in power despite being a Thunderbolt 3 port?

Thunderbolt 3 only provides 15 watts of charge power.

Thunderbolt (interface) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Thunderbolt 3 has up to 15 watts of power delivery on copper cables and no power delivery capability on optical cables."

I think what you're asking about is power delivery ports for something like a laptop. The ports on a Mac Pro are not power delivery ports like you'd find on a power adapter. Most Thunderbolt 3 ports on any computer max out at 15 watts.

 

[Pressure]

That's the limit for Thunderbolt 3 unless they incorporate USB Power Delivery.

 

[LeonPro]

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize this info and always assumed TB3 can do Power Delivery as a standard feature.

 

[goMac]

Thanks for the info. I didn't realize this info and always assumed TB3 can do Power Delivery as a standard feature.

It would be real tough to build into computers standardly. A PD Thunderbolt 3 port delivering 100 watts would mean that a Mac Pro could need 800 watts just to deliver power on all it's ports! Computers don't really have power budgets for that. A Mac mini or an iMac might even exceed what the power supply is capable of if they had to provide 100 watts.

 

[LeonPro]

That makes sense.

 

[joevt]

The GC-TITAN RIDGE Thunderbolt add-in card can provide 100W to one of it's Thunderbolt ports but it requires two 6 pin PCIe power connections (like a graphics card). It takes a bit of effort to make it work in a Mac and it's not 100%.

 

[LEOMODE]

So I guess to answer OP's question about charging it, you would probably have to do it from the monitor that supports laptop charging, which is usually around 85w I recall.

 

[LeonPro]

So I guess to answer OP's question about charging it, you would probably have to do it from the monitor that supports laptop charging, which is usually around 85w I recall.

Yes, that's correct. Although that will not help users like myself that use the Mac Pro with the XDR monitor which makes that port unavailable. I wanted to leverage the existing Thunderbolt 3 ports of the Mac Pro to charge the laptop without having to source another outlet.

In any case, it's my omission. I presumed all TB3 ports of Apple supported Power Delivery.

 

[Average Pro]

As others have already said, thank you for the info on the optical TB3 cables. I'm preparing to purchase one of the Areca 33 foot cables. Luckily it won't need to deliver power, but I would have been really confused if I plugged something into it expecting power.

Thunderbolt 3 only provides 15 watts of charge power.

Thunderbolt (interface) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

"Thunderbolt 3 has up to 15 watts of power delivery on copper cables and no power delivery capability on optical cables."

I think what you're asking about is power delivery ports for something like a laptop. The ports on a Mac Pro are not power delivery ports like you'd find on a power adapter. Most Thunderbolt 3 ports on any computer max out at 15 watts.