What do you think of this Mac Studio peripherals setup? And how to attach 2nd display?

[danqi]

I plan on upgrading to a Mac Studio Max. To figure out what I need exactly I made a diagram of the stuff I plan to attach:

What do you think? Does this make sense? Anything I can optimise?

One big problem: How do I attach my old Apple Cinema Display (Mini Displayport & USB A) which I want to use as a secondary display?

Could I attach it using one of the front ports? I don't see how I could free up one of the Thunderbolt 4 ports for it. Or can it be attached to the Studio Display?

 

[chabig]

Either of these could be daisy chained to the Studio display, freeing a Thunderbolt (DisplayPort) for your Cinema Display. I’m sure neither of those two drives are Thunderbolt, so you won’t lose any speed.

 

[danqi]

Either of these could be daisy chained to the Studio display, freeing a Thunderbolt (DisplayPort) for your Cinema Display. I’m sure neither of those two drives are Thunderbolt, so you won’t lose any speed.

View attachment 1981217

Actually both are. I should have labelled that more clearly. Those are supposed to be very fast nvme SSDs inside of individual Thunderbolt 4 enclosures. They are intended to be my fastet drives for work and each of them should pretty much max out a Thunderbolt 4 port by themselves.

 

[chabig]

Actually both are. I should have labelled that more clearly. Those are supposed to be very fast nvme SSDs inside of individual Thunderbolt 4 enclosures. They are intended to be my fastet drives for work and each of them should pretty much max out a Thunderbolt 4 port by themselves.

Thunderbolt enclosures are rare, so I didn’t expect you were using any. Daisy chain those together. Run Black Magic Speedtest on those SSDs to see what speed they are actually capable of, but neither one will should saturate a Thunderbolt interface (5 GB/s) by themselves, and during normal use the pair won’t either. That will free one port for your Cinema Display.

 

[atonaldenim]

USB 3 is supposed to be about 20% slower on M1 Macs compared to recent Intel Macs, the Intel controller chips are just more mature. For your 4-5 disk USB enclosure that could be an issue.

One trick to avoid that is to daisy chain the USB device off a Thunderbolt 3 device, that can make data transfers faster I think? Or connect the USB device to the USB 3 port on a Thunderbolt 3 dock. (Not Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 dock.) Something about putting a Thunderbolt 3 device in the chain can speed things up, I haven’t yet had an M1 Mac myself (Studio on order) so don’t completely understand it.

Adding a TB3 dock in the mix could give you a DisplayPort connection for your monitor as well.

Another thought is you have a lot of devices on that one USB port, I’d probably split the load with 2 USB hubs…

Enjoy and let us know how it goes!

 

[danqi]

Thunderbolt enclosures are rare, so I didn’t expect you were using any. Daisy chain those together. Run Black Magic Speedtest on those SSDs to see what speed they are actually capable of, but neither one will should saturate a Thunderbolt interface (5 GB/s) by themselves, and during normal use the pair won’t either. That will free one port for your Cinema Display.

Probably best to test, like you say. Problem is just I'd have to get enclosures that are capable of daisy chaining if I am eyeing that option. The ones I've been looking to buy for the nvme SSDs don't support that as far as I can tell. Will take a closer look!

USB 3 is supposed to be about 20% slower on M1 Macs compared to recent Intel Macs, the Intel controller chips are just more mature. For your 4-5 disk USB enclosure that could be an issue.

One trick to avoid that is to daisy chain the USB device off a Thunderbolt 3 device, that can make data transfers faster I think? Or connect the USB device to the USB 3 port on a Thunderbolt 3 dock. (Not Thunderbolt 4 / USB4 dock.) Something about putting a Thunderbolt 3 device in the chain can speed things up, I haven’t yet had an M1 Mac myself (Studio on order) so don’t completely understand it.

Adding a TB3 dock in the mix could give you a DisplayPort connection for your monitor as well.

Interesting, I didn't know about this at all!

Another thought is you have a lot of devices on that one USB port, I’d probably split the load with 2 USB hubs…

Those are all super low transfer rate devices (mostly input devices like keyboards and such). The idea was basically to group them all together using a cheap hub since data speed won't ever be an issue.

 

[BotchQue]

Thank you for posting that. I'm still waiting for my Studio Max, your diagram clarified what I need to do. Have you picked out/recommend a USB-3A hub?

 

[enricoclaudio]

Probably best to test, like you say. Problem is just I'd have to get enclosures that are capable of daisy chaining if I am eyeing that option. The ones I've been looking to buy for the nvme SSDs don't support that as far as I can tell. Will take a closer look!



Interesting, I didn't know about this at all!



Those are all super low transfer rate devices (mostly input devices like keyboards and such). The idea was basically to group them all together using a cheap hub since data speed won't ever be an issue.

If you want to free up some thunderbolt ports on the Mac Studio, then get a Thunderbolt dock like the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Dock or the OWC Thunderbolt 4 Element. I personally got the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Dock because it's fully compatible with macOS. In fact, it's only for macOS. I'm going to plug in my pair of 2TB G-Drive SSDs and the 4TB G-Drive for Time Machine backup. Also a pair of USB 3.2 10Gbps USB hubs from Inateck. My pair of 32" displays go directly via USB C into the Mac Studio. This way I would get 1 x Thunderbolt port free in the Mac Studio and 1 free in the Satechi dock.

 

[danqi]

Thank you for posting that. I'm still waiting for my Studio Max, your diagram clarified what I need to do. Have you picked out/recommend a USB-3A hub?

Glad it's helping you out! I have not yet looked at USB 3 A hubs closely. But since I will be using that mostly for input devices like keyboards and such, pretty much any cheap 20$ hub should do, right?

If you want to free up some thunderbolt ports on the Mac Studio, then get a Thunderbolt dock like the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Dock or the OWC Thunderbolt 4 Element. I personally got the Satechi Thunderbolt 4 Dock because it's fully compatible with macOS. In fact, it's only for macOS. I'm going to plug in my pair of 2TB G-Drive SSDs and the 4TB G-Drive for Time Machine backup. Also a pair of USB 3.2 10Gbps USB hubs from Inateck. My pair of 32" displays go directly via USB C into the Mac Studio. This way I would get 1 x Thunderbolt port free in the Mac Studio and 1 free in the Satechi dock.

My concern with a dock is that you then have drives sharing bandwidth and especially when it comes to the media and scratch drives I wanted to be able to use them both at full speed at the same time.

But now I am thinking maybe I can get away with daisy chaining my SATA SSD&HDD 4 bay enclosure to the Studio Display. I am also thinking of ditching the external scratch disk and using the Mac Studio's internal system disk for that.

That way I would free up one port for the second display and still have one port left over.

 

[Chancha]

front type-C: Type-C to DisplayPort cable to Cinema Display

the 3 type-C at back of the Studio Display: iPhone, mouse and KB dongle A to C (RF dongles at hub typically are choppy in my experience)

Do you already own that “4-5 bay SATA enclosure”? Looks like this could be a NAS instead, which then you connect through ethernet. Of course if you need striped RAID0 speed then leave them as DAS.

Your lighter type-C and type-A stuff will need to be shuffled around to find if interferences and bandwidth issues arises. Otherwise your plan seem to be quite set.

 

[danqi]

front type-C: Type-C to DisplayPort cable to Cinema Display

the 3 type-C at back of the Studio Display: iPhone, mouse and KB dongle A to C (RF dongles at hub typically are choppy in my experience)

Do you already own that “4-5 bay SATA enclosure”? Looks like this could be a NAS instead, which then you connect through ethernet. Of course if you need striped RAID0 speed then leave them as DAS.

Your lighter type-C and type-A stuff will need to be shuffled around to find if interferences and bandwidth issues arises. Otherwise your plan seem to be quite set.

Thanks, I will rework my plan tomorrow and incorporate your ideas. I did not know that RF dongles can be problematic on a hub.

What does KB dongle A to C mean? Keyboard dongle? Wont't have one I think as I'll just be getting a Magic Keyboard.

I don't have the SATA enclosure yet but I don't think I'll be going for a NAS. I prefer to keep everything as simple as possible and also always switch the power off when I leave my workplace. Don't know if a NAS would like that or would have to be manually powered down.

 

[danqi]

My updated plan:

I have scratched the scratch disk . Will instead use the internal system storage for that.

The SATA enclosure is now attached to the Studio Display, as well as the stuff from the front (for aesthetic reasons). I think that should work out in terms of bandwidth?

The mouse dongle is attached to the Cinema Display similar to Chancha's suggestion.

 

[Chancha]

Something like this. Since Logitech doesn't make type-C RF transceiver, this kind of adaptor is therefore the smallest solution to plug their type-A into your type-C ports on the Mac / dock / hub / Studio Display. RF transceivers themselves are fine but they are small and short, when buried in like a generic 10 port UAB type-A hub you can subject to that 3rd party's ability to properly shield, or the rest of the cables that you plug into that hub as well. Using the back ports of the Studio Display keeps the RF antenna higher up above desk level with only one bounce to the back wall needed. At least that's my experience with using them in a crowded desktop cabling setup. (And I didn't notice the G13 is a wired assistive input device, I thought it was one of the G lineup full KBs.)

Well yes just get a multi-bay DAS enclosure if that's what you want. That said if I were you I would seriously looking thunderbolt enclosures for 4bay+, due to bandwidth and stability. Also such TB enclosures typically have a pass-through port so you don't lose that TB4 port entirely in this chain. But if it stays USB (type-C or not) there's nothing wrong with it.

For scratch disk it depends on how aggressive your workflow / app is. In the HDD days since disck are much more prone to wear and tear so a dedicated sacrificial scratch disk made a lot of sense. Nowadays the threshold of SSDs hold it much higher so it is hard to say if a normal user should need this. But since you already have the hardware, you can test how its reading and writing performs against your internal SDD to determine later.

 

[danqi]

Something like this. Since Logitech doesn't make type-C RF transceiver, this kind of adaptor is therefore the smallest solution to plug their type-A into your type-C ports on the Mac / dock / hub / Studio Display. RF transceivers themselves are fine but they are small and short, when buried in like a generic 10 port UAB type-A hub you can subject to that 3rd party's ability to properly shield, or the rest of the cables that you plug into that hub as well. Using the back ports of the Studio Display keeps the RF antenna higher up above desk level with only one bounce to the back wall needed. At least that's my experience with using them in a crowded desktop cabling setup. (And I didn't notice the G13 is a wired assistive input device, I thought it was one of the G lineup full KBs.)

Thanks, that is really helpful! I was now planning to just attach the mouse dongle to my old Cinema Display, which has 3 USB-A ports on the back. The Cinema Display itself would be attached to the USB-A hub. That should work as well, right? If not, I will go with your suggestion.

Well yes just get a multi-bay DAS enclosure if that's what you want. That said if I were you I would seriously looking thunderbolt enclosures for 4bay+, due to bandwidth and stability. Also such TB enclosures typically have a pass-through port so you don't lose that TB4 port entirely in this chain. But if it stays USB (type-C or not) there's nothing wrong with it.

My idea was that it would probably be best to get a cheaper enclosure (USB) for now and re-asses in something like 6 months, because I expect new products to come out, motivated by the release of the Mac Studio. Also I plan on getting a fast NVME SSD in its own TB4 enclosure for demanding work (also in the diagram).

For scratch disk it depends on how aggressive your workflow / app is. In the HDD days since disck are much more prone to wear and tear so a dedicated sacrificial scratch disk made a lot of sense. Nowadays the threshold of SSDs hold it much higher so it is hard to say if a normal user should need this. But since you already have the hardware, you can test how its reading and writing performs against your internal SDD to determine later.

I don't yet have the drive I would use for an external scratch disk, I'd have to buy that. Basically, I am also coming from the school of thought that you should always physically separate system, scratch and media drives. But it seems that belief might be outdated, especially with how fast these internal SSDs are. And it would really simplify things overall...