Caldigit TS4 Dock

[kajukenbo]

This particular update has been available since mid-2022. There are lots of people in the thread who have applied it, and new TS4s have been including the same firmware since at least then.
There is another new update which was released last week which updates the USB-PD portion of the dock.
Caldigit says it fixes:
- Inability to attain certain refresh rates/resolution combinations
- Monitor wake from sleep issues
- USB-C adapters not working as intended

My apologies. I was thinking about the new firmware update. Per CalDigit

We’re happy to announce that we have just released the TS4’s power delivery firmware update v.4208.
his firmware update resolves issues that arose as a result of incompatibility found on many monitors that were triggering issues such as:
- Inability to attain certain refresh rates/resolution combinations
- Automatically defaulting to a lower setting upon wake of sleep
- USB-C dongles not outputting video to monitors properly
- Incorrect display arrangement on wake from sleep.

I was curious if this was resolving some of the issues folks were having.

 

[herbert7265]

Since a few weeks happy owner of a 16” MacBook Pro M2 Max and now also the TS4.

While the TS4 works in general I recognize two topics where I would be really thankful for some feedback:

1) My TS4 gets over time really warm, I could even say hot. Okay, at this moment we have temperatures around 35 degrees Celsius during the day, I also have no fan around it, but I am not sure if it is normal that the TS4 gets really warm / hot. I use in vertical mode, not in horizontal mode.
Connected to the TS4: A NEC 27” monitor via Display port and USB upstream, two SSDs, two HDDs and an Anker USB hub (powered) with some more HDDs for archiving, but these HDDs are normally off.
Any ideas in here?

2) Connecting my HDDs for archiving via the Anker USB hub to the TS4 works only using the TB4 ports, not via the USB-C ports.
Is this normal?

Saludos, Herbert

 

[chrfr]

Since a few weeks happy owner of a 16” MacBook Pro M2 Max and now also the TS4.

While the TS4 works in general I recognize two topics where I would be really thankful for some feedback:

1) My TS4 gets over time really warm, I could even say hot. Okay, at this moment we have temperatures around 35 degrees Celsius during the day, I also have no fan around it, but I am not sure if it is normal that the TS4 gets really warm / hot. I use in vertical mode, not in horizontal mode.
Connected to the TS4: A NEC 27” monitor via Display port and USB upstream, two SSDs, two HDDs and an Anker USB hub (powered) with some more HDDs for archiving, but these HDDs are normally off.
Any ideas in here?

2) Connecting my HDDs for archiving via the Anker USB hub to the TS4 works only using the TB4 ports, not via the USB-C ports.
Is this normal?

Saludos, Herbert

It is normal that the TS4, or really any Thunderbolt dock gets warm.

 

[kitsunesoba]

It is normal that the TS4, or really any Thunderbolt dock gets warm.

Additionally it's pretty normal for heat output to scale with power output. When I have my TS4 hooked to an MBP which has its power adapter plugged in (to enable clamshell mode), it doesn't pull any power from the TS4 which makes the TS4 get only a little more warm than ambient temperatures. On the other hand if I have an MBP hooked up with TB only and have my iPad hooked up through a USB-C port with both pulling power, it gets quite hot.

 

[herbert7265]

Additionally it's pretty normal for heat output to scale with power output. When I have my TS4 hooked to an MBP which has its power adapter plugged in (to enable clamshell mode), it doesn't pull any power from the TS4 which makes the TS4 get only a little more warm than ambient temperatures. On the other hand if I have an MBP hooked up with TB only and have my iPad hooked up through a USB-C port with both pulling power, it gets quite hot.

Hmm, that sounds logical, considering that my MacBook Pro normally uses the 140W charger. Let me try it with the charger connected, which I took off since using the TS4, and see if that helps keeping the temperature lower.

Hope you don´t mind when I dare to ask another rookie question: When connecting my laptop to the TS4 I use the designated TB4 upstream port. But that way my laptop always will be charged. Now, there are people saying that always having the laptop on power is not good for the battery. So my question: Could I also connect the laptop to one of the TB4 downstream ports, that way have the same functionality / connectivity, but without charging my laptop?

Herbert

 

[dstyp]

Hmm, that sounds logical, considering that my MacBook Pro normally uses the 140W charger. Let me try it with the charger connected, which I took off since using the TS4, and see if that helps keeping the temperature lower.

Hope you don´t mind when I dare to ask another rookie question: When connecting my laptop to the TS4 I use the designated TB4 upstream port. But that way my laptop always will be charged. Now, there are people saying that always having the laptop on power is not good for the battery. So my question: Could I also connect the laptop to one of the TB4 downstream ports, that way have the same functionality / connectivity, but without charging my laptop?

Herbert

There's a good app for this called AlDente - limiting the battery charge %.

AlDente

AlDente – Charge Limiter The ALL-IN-ONE charge Limiter App for MacBooks. Download Free Get AlDente Pro AlDente gives you the tools you need to extend the life of your MacBook battery. Why do I need this? Li-ion batteries (like the one in your MacBook) last the longest when operated between 20%...

apphousekitchen.com

Have been using it since release. Using my MBP16M1Max daily also some on battery so charge every day. Not sure how much it has helped but I guess some - it's at 245 cycles and 95% health after about 18 months and daily use and usually some charging.

Not sure about your other question but I would assume no since proper max PD is requred for full use.

 

[SteveOfTheStow]

Hmm, that sounds logical, considering that my MacBook Pro normally uses the 140W charger. Let me try it with the charger connected, which I took off since using the TS4, and see if that helps keeping the temperature lower.

Hope you don´t mind when I dare to ask another rookie question: When connecting my laptop to the TS4 I use the designated TB4 upstream port. But that way my laptop always will be charged. Now, there are people saying that always having the laptop on power is not good for the battery. So my question: Could I also connect the laptop to one of the TB4 downstream ports, that way have the same functionality / connectivity, but without charging my laptop?

Herbert

Mac laptops since late 2020 have the Optimized Battery Charging feature that's meant to stop them fully charging, and thus help prevent premature ageing: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT212049

So you should be able to connect to the upstream port with no worries.

 

[DAppleYlan]

Hi Guys! Just stumbled upon this topic about TS4 experiences and issues.

I am curious about your Caldigit TS4 Ethernet experiences. I have the cal digit TS4 for more then a month now and have decided to neatly hide all cables from all my peripherals in the walls and baseboards, while also pulling an ethernet cable to all internet devices.

Unfortunately, I now encounter ethernet speed problems when using the Caldigit TS4. Both my TS4 and my Sony Playstation 5 are Ethernet connected to an Ethernet Switch.

The playstation achieves a download and upload speed of approximately 960 mb/ps.

The Macbook M1 Pro only achieves an embarrassing 80 mb/ps via the TS4 via speedtest.net. What am I doing wrong?

My Macbook Pro M1 Pro is connected with TB4 to the Caldigit TS4.

The TS4 has firmware version 39.1.

Connected to the TS4 are:

- An external 4k 120hz monitor.
- An audio interface
- 2 wireless QI chargers.
- An audio interface from my gaming headset
- A monitor lamp

Could any of these devices, especially the monitor, be throttling my Ethernet speed bandwidth?

The cables I use for Ethernet are CAT 8 from Ugreen. Have also swapped it with the playstation to test what this does to the speeds. The playstation kept the high speeds, cables are most likely excluded from the problem.

I'd love to hear what your experiences are!



EDIT: WiFi on MB M1 Pro I get also around 80 mb/ps. When I turn WiFi off, I still get max 80 mb/ps over ethernet, around the same as WiFi. Also when I connect my Dell XPS 13 with Windows, this device has the same problems, over WiFi it's getting around 80 mb/ps and over ethernet it's getting around 80 mb/ps.

While my iPhone on the same WiFi with the same speedtest is getting around 600 mb/ps.

 

[N9JIG]

Hi Guys! Just stumbled upon this topic about TS4 experiences and issues.

I am curious about your Caldigit TS4 Ethernet experiences. I have the cal digit TS4 for more then a month now and have decided to neatly hide all cables from all my peripherals in the walls and baseboards, while also pulling an ethernet cable to all internet devices.

...

With my TS4 and M1Max MBP I get over 2GB in both directions off my fiber connection.

I would first check that you are using a true Thunderbolt 4 cable between the Mac and TS4 and that it is plugged into the correct port on the dock. If so, try a different cable and perhaps a different port on the Mac. Also be sure that your switch and firewall are configured to provide your expected Internet speeds on the ports connected, try different ports if they are unmanaged.

 

[chrfr]

Hi Guys! Just stumbled upon this topic about TS4 experiences and issues.

I am curious about your Caldigit TS4 Ethernet experiences. I have the cal digit TS4 for more then a month now and have decided to neatly hide all cables from all my peripherals in the walls and baseboards, while also pulling an ethernet cable to all internet devices.

Unfortunately, I now encounter ethernet speed problems when using the Caldigit TS4. Both my TS4 and my Sony Playstation 5 are Ethernet connected to an Ethernet Switch.

The playstation achieves a download and upload speed of approximately 960 mb/ps.

The Macbook M1 Pro only achieves an embarrassing 80 mb/ps via the TS4 via speedtest.net. What am I doing wrong?

My Macbook Pro M1 Pro is connected with TB4 to the Caldigit TS4.

The TS4 has firmware version 39.1.

Connected to the TS4 are:

- An external 4k 120hz monitor.
- An audio interface
- 2 wireless QI chargers.
- An audio interface from my gaming headset
- A monitor lamp

Could any of these devices, especially the monitor, be throttling my Ethernet speed bandwidth?

The cables I use for Ethernet are CAT 8 from Ugreen. Have also swapped it with the playstation to test what this does to the speeds. The playstation kept the high speeds, cables are most likely excluded from the problem.

I'd love to hear what your experiences are!



EDIT: WiFi on MB M1 Pro I get also around 80 mb/ps. When I turn WiFi off, I still get max 80 mb/ps over ethernet, around the same as WiFi. Also when I connect my Dell XPS 13 with Windows, this device has the same problems, over WiFi it's getting around 80 mb/ps and over ethernet it's getting around 80 mb/ps.

While my iPhone on the same WiFi with the same speedtest is getting around 600 mb/ps.

Agreeing with the previous comment, it sounds like you may not be using the correct port or cable from the dock to the computer. You can verify in the System Information app that the dock is connected via 40Gbps as a Thunderbolt device and not a USB device.
There's also a USB-PD firmware update available for these docks which is pretty new, so your dock may need that update as well. This update probably won't affect ethernet performance as the ethernet controller in the TS4 is a PCIe adapter, not USB.

 

[DAppleYlan]

Thanks for your replies guys! After all it was a problem with my wifi extender. The wifi extender is connected through ethernet with my switch downstairs and capable of passing 2 Gbit/s through. But for some reason it only passed through 100 Mbit/s to the switch underneath my desk according to my router information. After a reset of the wifi extender I was able to get around 960 Mbit/s download and upload speeds through the TS4.

Problem solved!

 

[xgman]

My TS4 gets super hot with no charging and no displays connected and no drives connected. Just some low power midi controllers, mouse etc. I assume the giant power block pumps some standby ready to charge heat into this thing, but it is the hottest dock/hub I have ever seem.

 

[miagg]

Does anyone have issues with MacOS Sonoma 14.0 while connected to this dock? I think CalDigit needs to update the firmware or something. There are several crashes and reboot loops that are caused while connected to the dock. I've found similar references on other threads.

 

[br403]

It works fine here for me since release day of Sonoma, Macbook Pro 14" M1Pro.

 

[miagg]

It works fine here for me since release day of Sonoma, Macbook Pro 14" M1Pro.

Thanks for letting me know. This makes it even trickier since it seems to be random based on other conditions.

 

[dstyp]

Does anyone have issues with MacOS Sonoma 14.0 while connected to this dock? I think CalDigit needs to update the firmware or something. There are several crashes and reboot loops that are caused while connected to the dock. I've found similar references on other threads.

Saw this post the other day and was going to reply that I had no problems. But before I had the chance, lo and behold, a surprise crash today related to sleep while connected to the TS4. I discovered that it had restarted when I grabbed to use it elsewhere.

So something seems weird again. But the TS4 has worked fairly ok for a little bit, hope Caldigit will get to work again on an update.

 

[xraydoc]

Saw this post the other day and was going to reply that I had no problems. But before I had the chance, lo and behold, a surprise crash today related to sleep while connected to the TS4. I discovered that it had restarted when I grabbed to use it elsewhere.

So something seems weird again. But the TS4 has worked fairly ok for a little bit, hope Caldigit will get to work again on an update.

No trouble at all for me. TS4 with current firmware. 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro. TS4 connected to two 5K Apple Studio Displays, an SSD, ethernet and a bunch of USB devices (keyboard, mouse dongle and an old school Apple DVD-R SuperDrive). No issues at all, though I will say that my Mac doesn't sleep when connected to power. The displays will power down, but the Mac itself remains awake since I've got it doing some email filtering in the background and such).

 

[dstyp]

No trouble at all for me. TS4 with current firmware. 14" M1 Pro MacBook Pro. TS4 connected to two 5K Apple Studio Displays, an SSD, ethernet and a bunch of USB devices (keyboard, mouse dongle and an old school Apple DVD-R SuperDrive). No issues at all, though I will say that my Mac doesn't sleep when connected to power. The displays will power down, but the Mac itself remains awake since I've got it doing some email filtering in the background and such).

This is key. You won't have problems if you disable sleep. Look at the posts from around the TS4 release when all users had these problems - all crashes involve sleep. I remember using Amphetamine to disable sleep for a while then updating the TS4 (took forever to get that update though) seemed to fix it.

 

[miagg]

This is key. You won't have problems if you disable sleep. Look at the posts from around the TS4 release when all users had these problems - all crashes involve sleep. I remember using Amphetamine to disable sleep for a while then updating the TS4 (took forever to get that update though) seemed to fix it.

Yes I am aware of this issue. Although I did an early firmware update (using a windows machine) and no problems ever since. Had to revert to Ventura for now until either Caldigit or Apple fix this issue. It seems to happen on Apple Silicon chip machines when laptop is on clamshell mode with an external monitor through USB-C. Reinstalling OS does NOT help.

 

[davewolfs]

Hoping someone can explain this.

Two displays.

5120x2160@72Hz
2560x2880@60Hz

5120 display requires HBR3.
2560 display requires HBR2.

How does MacOS handle both with single Thunderbolt? My PC can’t as once a single display uses HBR3 the other is limited to HBR. Is MacOS doing some form of compression or bandwidth sharing?

 

[PaulD-UK]

Yes, since 2020ish MacOS has used Display Stream Compression, to get a single 5/6K stream down one TB3/USB-C cable. But its more complicated...

I found this explanation of the process:
"An Apple Pro Display XDR requires two HBR3 connections over a single Thunderbolt cable to get 6K 60Hz (the display has two tiles) when using a GPU that doesn't support DSC.

Apple's drivers won't allow dual HBR3 through an intermediate Thunderbolt device - the display needs to be connected directly to the Mac or Blackmagic eGPU.

Windows drivers don't allow dual HBR3 at all. I'm not sure if dual HBR3 works in Boot Camp.

Normally, Titan Ridge allows HBR2+HBR2 or HBR3+HBR (neither exceeds the max Thunderbolt bandwidth of 40 Gbps) over a single Thunderbolt cable.

Dual HBR3 can exceed the max Thunderbolt bandwidth but it can be allowed if the resolution doesn't require the full bandwidth of HBR3 (such as each tile of the 6K display) because Thunderbolt does not transmit DisplayPort stuffing symbols - the controller recreates the stuffing symbols when converting the Thunderbolt DisplayPort stream back into DisplayPort. DisplayPort over Thunderbolt is described in the USB4 spec (since USB4 uses the same method as Thunderbolt)."

See also this @joevt posting - link:

 

[davewolfs]

Not using an apple display.

 

[joevt]

Hoping someone can explain this.

Two displays.

5120x2160@72Hz
2560x2880@60Hz

5120 display requires HBR3.
2560 display requires HBR2.

How does MacOS handle both with single Thunderbolt? My PC can’t as once a single display uses HBR3 the other is limited to HBR. Is MacOS doing some form of compression or bandwidth sharing?

Which Thunderbolt dock? Which displays? Which Mac? Which macOS version?

If it's an Intel Mac, then you can use AllRez or AGDCDiagnose to determine how the displays are connected. You can use AllRez to get the list of display modes and to see the timing and pixel format of the current display mode.

It's unlikely that one is using HBR3 and the other is using HBR2. I haven't seen that before but it's not impossible. The XDR uses a dual HBR3 mode over Thunderbolt for GPUs that don't support DSC.

5120x2160@72Hz = 837 MHz.
2560x2880@60Hz = 470 MHz.
Total = 1307 MHz.

Two HBR2 connections can do 1440 MHz total (720 MHz each) at 8bpc RGB.

A single HBR3 connection can do 1080 MHz 8bpc or 864 MHz 10 bpc.

Thunderbolt is limited to 1333 MHz 10bpc RGB or 1667 8bpc RGB using the dual HBR3 method that only the XDR uses (XDR uses 1298 MHz total 10 bpc RGB).

Either Apple has enabled over-provisioned DisplayPort connections over Thunderbolt for displays other than the XDR, or your displays are using DSC or chroma sub sampling.

Over-provisioning of DisplayPort connections over Thunderbolt can work because Thunderbolt does not transmit the stuffing symbols that DisplayPort uses to fill the bandwidth. This means that while a HBR3 connection is 25.92 Gbps of data, the host Thunderbolt controller only transmits 19.47 Gbps for each half. The Thunderbolt controller in the display recreates the stuffing symbols to produce the 25.92 Gbps HBR3 signals.

If Apple has enabled over-provisioned DisplayPort connections over Thunderbolt, it may be because of their work with the XDR or because of the upcoming Thunderbolt 5 / USB4 v2.

 

[davewolfs]

LG 40WP95C
LG DUAL UP
MacOS Ventura
Mac Pro M2

I think what is happening is that it is using YCrCb 4:2:2 on one display.

I just turned on the service menu for my LG and can see that one display is connecting at RGB HBR3 while the other is HBR YUV 422.

 

[davewolfs]

Is there anyway with the EDID to force a screen to not use more than HBR?

Should I care if the screen selects YUV 422 sometimes? It seems that MacOS tends to favor this mode which is how it achieves 60Hz on a 2560x2880 in HBR mode.