THANK YOU! This was very helpful!

Michael D.

Is there a docking station for the XPS 7590 that will support 3 monitors and power the laptop while it's docked as well?

@Jer2675  all of the dock options I mentioned above will power the XPS 15 7590.  For three displays, you'd want a Thunderbolt dock, and I'd go with the WD19TB rather than the older TB16.  But whether you can run three of them all from the dock depends on the resolutions of the displays in question, and that might also create restrictions around which combination of outputs you'll need to use.  Grab the manual for the WD19TB on support.dell.com (direct link here for convenience) and check the Display Resolution Table.  You'd want Table 6 for Thunderbolt systems, and the 7590 is an HBR2 system, not an HBR3 system.

Lastly, in order to run 3 external displays, you will need to disable the built-in display because the Intel GPU in that system only supports 3 simultaneous independent displays, regardless of how they're connected, and even if your system configuration includes the NVIDIA GPU, all displays would be physically wired to the Intel GPU and therefore subject to that limitation.

Thank you so much for the detailed information and the link! This dock will work for a few of us in supporting three external monitors @ 1920 x 1080, however we have one setup with two monitors one running 3840 x 2160 and the other 1920 x 1080. From the looks of the display resolution table it doesn't look like that configuration can be supported. I know you said the XPS 7590 is an HBR2 system not and HBR3 but I'm a little confused by that. On the product page for the laptop Dell states that it will support up to 2 4k displays. (here is the link )

Thunderbolt™ 3 multi-use port allows you to charge your laptop, connect to multiple devices (including support for up to two 4K displays)

That would lead me to think you can have two external monitors running @ 3840 x 2160 but I'm not seeing this in the display resolution table for the HBR2, I do see it's possible with the HBR3 though. Would you have a recommendation on a laptop that supports HBR3? 

@Jer2675  a Thunderbolt-capable HBR2 system can run dual 4K displays, and that is indicated in Table 6 for Thunderbolt HBR2 systems -- but you have to scroll past the page break onto Page 23.  The key with dual 4K on the WD19TB is that one of the 4K displays has to be connected to the "upstream" Thunderbolt port on the back of the dock (NOT the regular USB-C port near the HDMI port), using something like a USB-C to DisplayPort cable.  That's why I said in my earlier post that depending on your display setup, there might be port restrictions depending on the bandwidth requirements of your proposed display setup.  However, you can't run dual 4K + 1080p from a Thunderbolt HBR2 (DisplayPort 1.2) system

As for HBR3 (DisplayPort 1.3 and up), I've posted the gory detail below, but the short answer is that if you want an XPS 15 type of system (slim and light, fast CPU, discrete GPU), there's nothing in Dell's current lineup that would get you HBR3.  You'd have to choose a model that would give you only 2 of those characteristics.  So if you want to run a third external display, your best options are unfortunately to either connect the third display directly to the system's HDMI output or else to connect it through an adapter that uses "indirect display" technology like DisplayLink (not to be confused with DisplayPort).  Those adapters plug into a regular USB port, so you could plug it into the dock, and they give you an HDMI or DisplayPort ouput.  They would work because their display data would be compressed and transmitted as regular USB data, not native video data, so that display wouldn't "count" against your available GPU display bandwidth.  However, DisplayLink technology has some significant drawbacks that I've written about in detail in this thread, specifically the post marked as the answer.

If you're curious about HBR3, there are very few HBR3 systems on the market right now for the simple reason that until recently, Intel GPUs didn't support HBR3, and even now only the only ones that do are their "Ice Lake" CPUs, which are a complete architectural redesign and include a new "Gen 11" GPU that supports HBR3.  The "Ice Lake" CPUs are SOME, but not ALL, of the new Core 10th Gen CPUs; other 10th Gen CPUs are just a minor refresh of an architecture they've been making small refreshes to since Core 5th Gen.  So Intel has really made their processor naming even more confusing than it's been for the past several years, and that's really saying something.  For example, the XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 has the new Ice Lake CPUs and can run HBR3, but the regular XPS 13 7390 uses non-Ice Lake 10th Gen CPUs that do not support HBR3.  Making matters worse for XPS 15 users, Ice Lake right now is only available for CPUs meant for systems that would otherwise have used the low-power (15W) U Series CPUs, like the XPS 13 models.  The XPS 15 models use higher performance (45W) H Series CPUs, and Intel isn't slated to give those a major architectural redesign that would presumably include Intel's new GPU until late 2020 or even 2021.

The only way to get HBR3 support other than that is to have a system that has its built-in display connectors wired directly to its discrete GPU (assuming that GPU supported HBR3), but for reasons I can go into if you really want to know, that wiring design is very uncommon to see even among systems that have a discrete GPU in the first place, at least within Dell's product line.  If you find it at all, it's often on gaming systems or big workstation-grade laptops, since there are some use cases for giving the discrete GPU direct control of the display output that are relevant to those markets (other than running higher-end display setups).  But even Dell's high-end Alienware gaming systems to my knowledge still have their USB-C/TB3 ports wired to the Intel GPU even though they sometimes have other display connectors wired to the discrete GPU.  On the workstation side, Precision 7000 Series laptops from the 7x20 models onward have a BIOS option allowing you to choose which GPU controls the outputs, which they can offer because they have a more complex motherboard design to enable that, so they would support HBR3 if you gave control of those ports to the discrete GPU.  But those are a whole other animal from the XPS 15.

Sorry I don't have better news for you!

I think I've learned more about laptop docking in the last 24 hours than I could of ever imagined... lol. Thanks again for all your help and taking the time to discuss this with me! From what I understand with all of this we should be able to then run the following configurations. With the Dell XPS 7590 and the WD19TD?

Setup 1

Dell XPS 7590 docked to WD19TD - Dock then going to 2 Display Port monitors @ 1920x1080 and 1 USB-C Monitor @ 1920x1080

Setup 2

Dell XPS 7590 docked to WD19TD - Dock then going to 2 Display Port monitors one @ 3840x2160 one @ 1920x1080

@Jer2675  happy to help!  Sorry for the length of the posts, but this is one of those situations where the devil is in the details and there are quite a few.  In terms of your proposed setups, Setup 1 will work fine, and fyi if all three displays are 1080p, then you can use any combination of ports if USB-C isn't convenient, e.g. two on DisplayPort and one on HDMI, for example.  For Setup 2, one of the displays will need to be connected via the USB-C/Thunderbolt "upstream" port.  The reason is that when the WD19TB being used with a Thunderbolt-capable HBR2 system, which provides two full DisplayPort 1.2 interfaces, one of the interfaces is allocated to the "upstream" port and the other is allocated to be split across the remaining ports.  A 4K 60 Hz display requires essentially an entire DisplayPort 1.2 interface all to itself, so if you use one of the "core" display output ports for it, you wouldn't be able to put the 1080p display on that same bank.  If you want to learn even more about docking stations and the WD19TB in particular, I wrote a long "Demystifying WD19TB Supported Resolutions" thread here that goes into detail theorizing why the supported display resolutions and port restrictions are they way they are.  All of the pertinent info is in the first post, then the thread sort of went off-topic.  But the bottom line is that if you need to support setups involving a 4K 60 Hz display and ANYTHING else, you should stock up on some USB-C to DisplayPort cables so that one of the displays can always be connected to that "upstream" Thunderbolt port -- and again, NOT the regular USB-C port near the HDMI port.  It has to be the one on the far edge of the dock.

Hi jphughan,

Is it confirmed that the New XPS 13 2-in-1 7390 supports DP 1.4/HBR3?

I want to run 2 QHD displays from a docked 2-in-1 7390, and I believe the WD19 should work for this application (whereas a TB dock would've been needed for an HBR2 machine). Am I correct? 

Also, do the monitors have to support DP1.4, or would DP1.2 monitors work? I.e. would using DP1.2 monitors knock everything down to 1.2 and prevent me from running them at QHD, if that makes sense...

Thanks!

@nputer  all CPUs available on the XPS 13 7390 2-in-1 -- not the regular XPS 13 7390 -- are the Ice Lake variety, whose GPU supports DP 1.4 over USB-C.  I've seen no indication that it would be possible for a system to be designed in a way whereby the GPU could support DP 1.4 over USB-C but would be limited by some other component to DP 1.2 over USB-C.  In addition, I read a post from someone a while ago saying that he was able to run a 4K 60 Hz display out of a DA300.  That capability requires at least DP 1.3 over USB-C because the DA300 uses 2 USB-C high speed lanes for USB 3.x, which means only 2 DisplayPort lanes are available for video.  The only way to get 4K 60 Hz out of USB-C using only 2 lanes is with DP 1.3 or better -- with a DP 1.2 system you can only run 4K 60 Hz over USB-C when the entire interface is dedicated to video -- but since no Intel GPU ever supported exactly DP 1.3, the logical conclusion is that it supports DP 1.4 as long as the device on the other end does.  (But as it happens, DP 1.3 and DP 1.4 both have the same maximum bandwidth, called HBR3, so even DP 1.3 support would be enough to run dual QHD in a non-Thunderbolt dock setup.)

So while I haven't tested this myself, based on that information I would say that the 7390 2-in-1 supports DP 1.4 over USB-C, and therefore dual QHD from a regular WD19 will be possible.  To the best of my knowledge, the displays would NOT need to support DP 1.4 themselves, because if they did then a) that requirement would severely limit the usefulness of the dock at this point because there are very few DP 1.4 displays on the market right now, and b) especially due to what I just said, I would expect a caveat like that to be mentioned in the WD19's documentation, but it only mentions the system's capabilities as an important factor.  And from a technical standpoint, the reason I don't think the displays matter here is because the only bandwidth constraint is on the USB-C link between the system and the dock.  Once all of the video data has been delivered to the dock, that gets split across two separate DisplayPort outputs, and a DisplayPort output can handle up to a single 4K 60 Hz display or dual QHD even in HBR2 (DP 1.2) mode, so there isn't a bandwidth concern on that side because each output is only carrying half the data that came in from the system.  I seriously doubt that using an HBR2 display would force the link between the dock and the system down to HBR2 because the dock is operating as an active DisplayPort MST hub, not just a passthrough device, so it should be able to negotiate HBR3 on the input side from the system and HBR2 on the outputs.

All that said, given that the system comes standard with Thunderbolt 3, unless the WD19TB (Thunderbolt version) costs significantly more than the regular WD19, you might want to consider going with the WD19TB, just for futureproofing if nothing else.  The WD19TB dock is even backward compatible with regular USB-C systems if needed, at a functionality level equivalent to the regular WD19.  But otherwise, I believe the WD19 will be fine.  Again, I can't speak from personal testing here, but that is my educated guess, and if I were in your position I would have no hesitation buying a WD19 to run a dual QHD setup from that system.  Absolute worst case you can return it for a WD19TB of course, but I don't think that will be necessary at all.