Custom PC Building

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Is it possible to use a Thunderbolt hub "in reverse"? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I have an LG-38WN95C monitor which has a single Thunderbolt 3 port, which I use for my work M1 Macbook Pro. It's really convenient to have a single cable running from my laptop to my monitor.

But is it possible to achieve something similar with a full desktop PC? My PC has discrete graphics and a motherboard with no video-capable Thunderbolt output.

I was thinking of using a Thunderbolt hub, but most of them look like they are for use cases where the Thunderbolt cable plugs into the host machine, and then the monitor and peripherals branch off from the hub using DisplayPort / HDMI and USB.

But I want to do the reverse for the video signal. I want the hub's Thunderbolt cable plugged into my monitor, with the hub's DisplayPort link used as an input, not an output, which is passed to the monitor.

I feel like Thunderbolt's bi-directional-ness and daisy-chainability should mean this is possible, but I have little experience using Thunderbolt and I find it difficult to understand what hardware is capable of what behaviors. And with Thunderbolt hubs as expensive as they are, I am hesitant to drop significant money on a blind experiment.

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[–] habitualTartare 2 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Direction does matter for the cable and hubs. Cables need to be displayport out. Hubs need to support it.

The best solution I found was finding a motherboard or thunderbolt card that supported displayport in.

If you're trying to take a display port signal and USB and convert it to thunderbolt, it needs to be supported. I tried something similar with a portable monitor that took USB-C display and power. It was a bit expensive and I found a lot of leads in VR headset cables.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

The motherboard solution does seem to be the best I found as well. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few of them.

I'm still on the AMD AM4 platform and there are a few options there, but I haven't been able to find any for AM5. And I'm at the point in my computer's life cycle that if I were to spend money on a motherboard I might as well jump to AM5.

I was thinking that finding the right hub might allow me to get the same functionality for less money. But I'm not sure what to look for in the specs for a hub, everything seems so vague.

I'll go down the VR headset cable Rabbit Hole next.