17 R5, TB15 dock, issues

Are you sure you have a TB15 rather than a TB16? The TB15 was completely recalled quite a while ago due to major and widespread hardware issues, and Dell replaced all of them with the TB16. If you have a TB15, exchange it asap. If you have a TB16, make sure you’ve updated the following in this order:

- System BIOS/firmware

- Thunderbolt driver/software

- System TB3 controller (not part of the BIOS update)

- TB16 firmware

- ASMedia PCIe USB xHCI driver

- Intel Graphics driver

I can’t believe a sales rep recommended a DA200 adapter as an alternative to a Thunderbolt dock. That thing only supports a single display up to 1080p! But anyway, Dell doesn’t make any other Thunderbolt docks, so if you need Thunderbolt rather than just regular USB-C for the display configuration you have and even the TB16 doesn’t work, you’d need to go to third parties. StarTech makes some solid options. But make sure they will support the display configuration you want. Some only do single displays up to 4K rather than dual displays, for example.

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@Wildeone2 wrote:

Yes I have a tb15 nothing but trouble, sales support is beyond bad lol, would a tb16 work as I don't mind buying one but as long as its going to do what it says on tin , i brought my tb15 of ebay so lost my money there although it was new 

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@Wildeone2I don't think you'll need to buy the TB16. To my knowledge Dell didn't put an expiration date on the recall/exchange program, so if you contact Dell Support with the Service Tag or Express Service Code of your TB15 ready and say that you want to exchange their recalled product for a TB16, they should arrange that. But if not, I've seen reports of people successfully running the TB16 with your system. The only things I'd be aware of are:

- The TB16 won't charge your system because your system requires way more power than can currently be provided over USB-C/TB3, so I don't think the system supports being charged at all via that port.  So if you end up buying the TB16, get the version that comes with the 180W adapter rather than the 240W adapter.  You only need the latter if you'll be using the dock with systems that require 130W of power, like the XPS 15.

- Certain features that aren't part of the TB3 standard might not work with your system, such as the system Power button on the dock and the ability to update the dock's firmware.  Those capabilities require the system firmware to have support for those features, and while Dell has that in its Latitude and Precision systems, it might not in the Alienware systems.

- As a general note about the TB16 when used with any system, some users have had USB issues.  They seem to boil down to certain devices not working well with the ASMedia PCIe USB xHCI chipset/driver used by this dock.  I don't think this is a hugely widespread issue relative to the number of TB16s in use, but you'll occasionally see reports of USB issues with certain devices when connected through the dock.  I don't know if third-party TB3 docks fare any better in this regard since I haven't looked into them in detail.