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June 13th, 2020 15:00

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June 13th, 2020 17:00

@helpmeearthling  The D6000 requires DisplayLink software to operate properly, which you can download directly from DisplayLink.com.  However, the D6000 is a terrible dock choice especially for the XPS 15, so if you can return it for something else, I would strongly recommend that you do. First, the DisplayLink "indirect display" technology that the D6000 uses creates several drawbacks all on its own, which I've written about in detail in the post marked as the answer in this thread.  And on top of all that, the additional problem specific to the XPS 15 is that the XPS 15 is designed for a 130W power source, but the D6000 only provides up to 60W of power.  So you either need to keep the XPS 15's power adapter connected separately if you want optimal performance, or else you need to put up with having the XPS 15 operate from a power source less than half as powerful as what it's designed to have, in which case you'll see severely reduced battery charging speeds and severely reduced CPU and GPU performance.

I would strongly recommend that you consider either a WD19 180W (not the 130W version, which can only pass 90W through to the attached system) or a WD19TB (comes standard with 180W adapter).  Both of those docks can pass up to 130W through to the attached system, so they'll adequately power an XPS 15, and both of them will tap into native GPU outputs rather than using DisplayLink, which means you avoid all of the downsides I described in that thread.  The main difference between the WD19 and WD19TB is available display bandwidth.  You didn't specify what display setup you have, so I can't tell whether you'd need the WD19TB over the WD19.  The WD19TB also comes with a "downstream" TB3 port if you ever wanted to attach a Thunderbolt accessory, which the WD19 doesn't support.

9 Legend

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14K Posts

June 13th, 2020 17:00

@helpmeearthling  Building on my earlier reply, if after reading that reply and the thread I linked you're wondering why anyone would ever use a D6000, it is useful in these scenarios:

  • Companies that currently have a mixture of laptops designed for USB-C/TB3 docks and older laptops designed for "traditional" docking stations.  In this case, the fact that the D6000 connects via USB-C or USB-A "regular USB" would allow them to standardize on a single dock model (although they'd need to provide separate power adapters for the systems that would use the D6000 connected via USB-A, since in that case the D6000 can't supply any power to the system at all.)  This standardization is particularly beneficial to companies that use "hot desks" or "hotel desks", where nobody has assigned seats and therefore you never know which user and which laptop will need to dock at a given desk on any given day.
  • People who need to run more and/or higher resolution displays than their system's GPU and/or display output connectors would support.  For example, Intel GPUs currently only support 3 displays max, but displays driven by DisplayLink do not count toward that max since they are "indirect displays" that aren't actually run by the GPU.  And the D6000 can run dual 4K 60 Hz displays at a minimum, plus a third 4K 30 Hz display when connected via USB-C to a system that supports DisplayPort Alt Mode (video output over USB-C).  So for people with systems that might only offer a single HDMI output and therefore would normally only support running one external display, the D6000 would allow them to connect two more displays.  And several systems on the market even today don't have the right display outputs to support even a single 4K 60 Hz display, never mind two, so here again the D6000 might be useful for those situations.

But unless you have a very high-end display setup, you don't fall into those categories.  You (presumably) don't have another system you need to dock with, and your XPS 15 has a TB3 output that would allow you to run dual 4K 60 Hz displays or triple QHD displays, all driven natively by the GPU.  So chances are you don't actually need the benefits DisplayLink can offer.  But you would suffer several drawbacks, namely:

  • Inadequate power for the XPS 15 (technically a D6000 issue and not a DisplayLink issue, but it's an issue.)
  • DisplayLink's general issues around compression and the CPU and GPU utilization it requires, which means less performance available for whatever else you're doing.
  • Inability to use your NVIDIA GPU for any content on displays connected through a DisplayLink-based interface (technically a Windows limitation with DisplayLink technology, but again it's still an issue.)

June 14th, 2020 08:00

Thank you very much for your very thorough replies. I’m using two 24” hd monitors. The primary purpose of this setup is to run multiple programs simultaneously. A video, some live-feed data, and some other programs. Which of the two docks you mentioned do you think would be better for that?

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