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March 18th, 2021 15:00

Help me find a docking station

I have a Dell G7 1770 laptop that I am very pleased with.

When I'm in my office I would like to use it with a couple of monitors, a full-size keyboard, and a mouse.

I know the G7 1770 has a very large charger. Are there any docking stations I can use?

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March 18th, 2021 16:00

@sifuhall  There's no docking station that will adequately charge your system, so you can get a docking station that will consolidate all of your other peripherals, but you'll need to keep the system charger directly connected as well.  The reason for this limitation is that the USB PD spec that's used for USB-C/TB3 charging maxes out at 100W.  Dell did something proprietary to stretch that to 130W with some of their systems and docks, and they have one dock that can push up to 210W of power by plugging into two USB-C/TB3 ports on the system, but that requires special support on the system side, which to my knowledge is only implemented on the Precision 7000 Series systems that are designed to be used with that particular dock.

If you're ok buying a dock even though it won't charge your system, then you certainly have options, but which options would work would depend largely on the details of the displays you want to run, particularly their resolution and refresh rate, and unfortunately you didn't specify any details about your displays other than that you have two of them.

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March 19th, 2021 00:00

a usb hub would be more than sufficiett

just make sure it has sufficient ports for your needs.

 

 

do accept solution if okay  

have a nice day 

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March 19th, 2021 09:00

@megadisc  A USB hub would not cover the dual displays mentioned in the original post.

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March 19th, 2021 11:00

Docking station is already last century concept. Try looking for usb-c Monitor with Daisy Chain capability and usb Hub. All you need is one single USB-C cable to link to one monitor and it will do the rest. 

my memory is very bad but Dell should have a few monitor with that feature, like P2421DC,UP2720Q (if I remember correctly) there are even models with LAN port if you need. 

I use U2720Q which has USB Hub to hook up keyboard and mouse, but it does not have daisy chain feature to link an additional monitor( the additional monitor does not need to have such feature)

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March 19th, 2021 12:00

@Meister Bing  That's fine if people are in the market for another display anyway, but for people who don't want to spend money on new displays and/or want to run displays that don't have USB-C, a docking station can still make sense.  The reason the U2720Q doesn't have a daisy chain output is that it's a 4K 60 Hz display, and with most system and cabling combinations in use today, a single 4K 60 Hz display would consume all available video bandwidth on its own, so there wouldn't be any left for a second display.  The exception would be a full bandwidth DisplayPort HBR3 connection, which would be able to run dual 4K 60 Hz, but especially on a USB-C display, that isn't normally how it works.  USB-C displays typically set up the USB-C link to support both video and USB 3.x data to enable the USB ports built into the display (and Ethernet if available), and doing that causes video bandwidth to get cut in half.  So even if your system supports DisplayPort HBR3, at that point you only have enough bandwidth for a single 4K 60 Hz display.  But many systems on the market today still only support DisplayPort HBR2, and in that case, you'd only be able to run a single 4K 30 Hz display if you wanted to run USB 3.x.  Some displays give you an option to have the display configure the link for full bandwidth video by limiting USB data speeds to USB 2.0, in which case even an HBR2 system can run 4K 60 Hz, but you still only have enough bandwidth for that single 4K 60 Hz display, and of course you're now limited to USB 2.0 performance.

4K 60 Hz displays with daisy chain capabilities probably won't get much traction until DisplayPort 2.0 arrives, which will increase total raw bandwidth and also make DisplayPort DSC support much more common, which will allow that additional raw bandwidth to be used more effectively.

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