docking station issues - cap, mouse/keyboard stutter, g-sync

Fulsor · December 24, 2020

Hi guys, some peripheral hardware issues here!

I recently picked up a Plugable USB-C/Thunderbolt Dock (TBT3-UDC1, Titan Ridge chipset) and am running into some issues. For context, I have a Lenovo Legion Y530-15ICH (laptop, I know... 1050ti, Windows 10, bios and drivers all updated though) with USB-C 3.1 plugged into the dock via thunderbolt cable (overkill). The dock has both mouse + keyboard receivers (1000hz pollrate, 2.4ghz wireless dongles x2), as well as my monitor (Alienware 2520HFL, 1080p 240hz) via displayport (1.2). The other monitor (1440p) and ethernet are plugged into the laptop directly (not by choice!). I'm pretty tech-savvy but figuring out and calculating bandwidths is about where I draw the line!

Issue 1: Monitor capped at 120 Hz. The 240 Hz option doesn't even come up. The 144 Hz option shows up but causes some vertical bars to appear. If I plug my other monitor in it runs at like 480p. I'm guessing there is some bandwidth limit I'm hitting so I'm stuck at 120 Hz. Can anyone confirm this? And if I'm running a 240 Hz monitor at 120 Hz is there some loss in monitor performance? My laptop overheats and dies running games at 240 Hz anyways so I'd like to cap it regardless lol.

Issue 2: Mouse + Keyboard stutter. If my ethernet is plugged into the dock it's terrible (like every 5 seconds it micro-hangs), but even with the ethernet plugged into the laptop it sometimes hangs for a few milliseconds. I don't know what kind of bandwidth a pair of wireless receivers with 1000 Hz polling rate and on two 2.4 GHz dongles take up. Maybe I'm just really close to the bandwidth limit and things are arbitrarily getting signal priority? Also, could it be that the ethernet is messing with the 2.4 GHz signal, perhaps due to lack of shielding?

Issue 3: G-Sync not showing up. This one I've got no clue at all. When my monitor is plugged into the dock the "set up G-Sync" doesn't appear at all in the NVIDIA Control Panel. G-Sync does work when I plug the monitor to the laptop directly via a displayport to usb-c cable (the laptop only ha 1 usb-c port and no displayports). NVIDIA GeForce Experience drivers all up to date.

Thanks so much!