1

The proposed setup in the following is most probably not best practice, but will it work?

Background/motivation

We have recently upgraded all the laptops in our household, both work machines and private and I have realized that they all have TB3 ports. So I want to make our shared family PC desk modular with a TB3 dock so that we quickly can switch between machines at the dual (hopefully triple soon) screen setup with printer and other peripherals. The idea is of course that we just need to plug/unplug a single cable.

Up until now we have used my elderly desktop PC (connected directly to screens and peripherals) with a multi user setup. I want to still be able to connect the desktop to the setup, and I would like this to be easy (i.e. single cable).

Question

Is it possible to use a USB-C PCIe card to connect the desktop PC to a docking station and still get a decent graphics performance in a multi display setup?

Will the USB-C port even be able to carry a graphics signal? And if so will the system use the graphics card or the integrated graphics in the CPU?

Bonus questions

If this is the wrong way to do it, is there another way to achieve the above that does not require a big investment (the PCIe card is cheap)?

Would it for example work if I instead of adding the PCIe card replaced the graphics card with a newer model with a native USB-C port?

Details

I consider acquiring this hardware setup:

Dock: https://i-tec.cz/en/produkt/c31tripledockpd-2/
PCIe card: https://www.asus.com/dk/Motherboard-Accessories/USB_31_TYPEC_CARD/

My existing desktop machine:

CPU: i5 2500
Graphics: GTX660

Improve this question

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

This particular card will not. It’s not even a Thunderbolt card.

Of course, there are cards that support this, which is basically all Thunderbolt add-in cards. They only work on specific supported motherboards. Your CPU however indicates that your particular machine is way too old for that.

Currently, the following manufacturers offer add-in cards for select motherboards:

  • ASRock
  • ASUS
  • Gigabyte
  • HP

These cards make their support quite obvious: They have a DisplayPort input connector. You connect them to your graphics card, outside the PC case. No magic involved.

Improve this answer
6
  • Thanks Daniel. So is TB the only way to go? The docking station states that it accepts input from USB-C with a DP signal in alt mode.
    – glaux
    Commented Aug 11, 2020 at 13:51
  • There are simply no add-in cards with DisplayPort Alt Mode.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Aug 11, 2020 at 15:05
  • Further research led me to this card: delock.com/produkte/G_89582/technische_details.html. Would this be compatible with my setup? I found it in a comment by chx on this answer: superuser.com/a/1046230.
    – glaux
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 3:17
  • Ah, nice. It was miscategorized in Geizhals, so I didn’t find it. Yes, that should do it. However, you may get limited USB performance because it only has PCIe x1, which is not enough with PCIe 2.0.
    – Daniel B
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 7:23
  • I see. I guess it should be fine if I only use it for input, printers and audio and plug the occasional hard drives directly into the native ports on the MB. I am a bit worried about graphics performance when placing two adapters (this card and the dock) in between the GPU and the monitor, but looking at the specs it seems like it should work. I guess I have to try. Thanks for the help, if you edit this solution into your answer I'll hit the checkmark.
    – glaux
    Commented Aug 12, 2020 at 8:08

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .