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brian783948
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December 18th, 2020 10:00
External USB C Dock Question XPS 13 9310
Hi All,
I am trying to run 2 x 1080 external monitors from my XPS 13 9310. I am using a USB C external dock from cable matters (Cable Matters 10Gbps USB C Dock (USB C Docking Station) with Dual 4K HDMI and 80W Charging for Windows - USB-C & Thunderbolt 3 Port Compatible - Supports One External Display with MacBook Pro: Amazon.ca: Electronics). I am using two 27inch dell monitors.
The issue I am facing is that it seems the XPS is struggling with two monitors. When plugging in the dock, only one monitor lights up. If I take out and re plugin the second monitor into the dock, then it too lights up and I can use two monitors. However, if I try to sleep and then turn on again, or even sometimes when getting it up and running, the usb C port on the XPS seems to just completely shutdown. It takes power, but nothing else. In this situation, I need to restart the whole computer and try again. In other words, I can get two monitors working, but it is very temperamental and it would seem that the USB C port is overloading or something.
I have used this dock setup with other many computers, so I don't think it is a dock issue. So, my question is - what would cause the USB C port to keep shutting down?
Thanks for your help!
brian783948
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Posted December 19th, 2020 17:00
Thankyou very much for your reponse!!! I will keep working with that and play around with it. Thankyou!!
I'm on the XPS 13 9300 bought February 2020 and it was working great to a Dell monitor I had at the time via third-party Thunderbolt dock. About a year ago (mid 2023) my 10+yo Dell monitor died (which is fine - it lived a good life), and I bought a name-brand non-Dell monitor with a KVM system built in, where the USB-A + Display Port goes to my other gaming PC. My only option for the XPS 13 9300 laptop for this monitor was to then use the USB-C DP 1.4 Alt Mode.
I have had no end of trouble from that point on. What trouble you ask? Well the XPS 13 9300 would sometimes connect with just mouse and keyboard and no screen. Sometimes screen but no keyboard and mouse, and a lot of times, wouldn't connect at all. Sometimes it would get half-way there, where the laptop screen would go blank, but nothing would show on my dedicated monitor. Didn't matter if it was clocked to 120Hz or 60Hz.
I would do such things as turn the monitor on and off; reboot the laptop; unplug and re-plug the USB-C; swap USB-C cables around, and just hope things would work. A nightmare. With every Dell firmware update I would pray to the tech Gods that it would solve everything.
I thought maybe my Thunderbolt dock was the issue so I took it out of the equation by plugging directly into the monitor using my second USB-C port. I thought I had a solution but it was only temporary. I thought maybe Thunderbolt doesn't play well with my monitor setup so I sold it and bought a third-party USB-C dock and I continued to have stability issues, even after turning off the now-unneeded Thunderbolt in the BIOS. Thinking it was maybe the dock, I bought a Dell Universal Dock UD22 and I thought that was a solution, but still I had issues.
I bought all new premium USB4 USB-C cables and I'm still not out of the woods. The laptop firmware, monitor firmware, and dock firmware and all drivers are up to date. I even did a full reinstall of Windows 11.
I have since put my Dell XPS 9300 on a dedicated laptop stand with cooling fan and things are better not not perfect, but it's the best stability improvement I've seen so far. I've just ordered a PC repair toolkit to open up the laptop and remove any dust I find, it case it's all heat-related.
Summary a summary of things to try:
- Update all firmware and drivers.
- Use new quality USB-C shielded cables.
- Put the laptop on a cooling stand
- Service the laptop, cleaning out all dust internally, and also around the external USB-C ports
- If you don't need Thunderbolt then turn it off in the BIOS, and get a USB-C dock rather than a Thunderbolt dock
- Reinstall Windows
Then pray to the almighty Tech Gods!
jphughan
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Posted December 18th, 2020 13:00
@brian783948 This sounds like a firmware issue. The previous XPS 13 9300 had a variety of firmware issues relating to USB-C/TB3. It couldn't run dual 4K 60 Hz displays through Dell's own WD19TB dock, at one point Dell issued a BIOS update that broke compatibility with several basic USB-C to DP and USB-C to HDMI adapters/cables and had to issue another BIOS update much later to fix that. And the XPS 13 9310 seems to be generating similar reports of quirky behavior with these types of USB-C/TB3 docks, hubs, etc. as well. If you haven't already updated your BIOS to the latest release, I'd do that. And if the dock itself has a firmware update available even if the dock works fine with other systems, since this could be some issue that only gets triggered when the dock is paired with certain systems. But if you're current on firmware on both ends, this might be an issue that hasn't been fixed yet, in which case your options would be to hope a fix arrives or try a different dock model in the hopes that it will work with all of the systems you want to use it with.