Finally Revealing my BIG SECRET - Corning Optical Thunderbolt 3

[ColinLTT]

It's time to finally show you the secret sauce that makes my home office possible - Corning's Optical Thunderbolt 3 Cables are ready for the masses after months of fine tuning and certification, and we're gonna put them to the test.
 

Buy Corning Thunderbolt 3 USB-C Optical Cable
On Amazon (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/jHBK8E

 

Buy AORUS RTX 3080 Gaming Box
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Buy Dell XPS 17 Laptop
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On Best Buy (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/GPnbF
On Newegg (PAID LINK): https://geni.us/K1Pz59y

 

[Flopalop2]

With the eGPU wouldn't the signal have equal bandwidth each way so performance wouldn't improve that much plugging a monitor into the source card. Looks like a general cable bandwidth or PCIE limitation.

[Egg-Roll]

What I thought when I saw "Finally Revealing my BIG SECRET":

 

Linus is finally coming out of the closet! Good for him.

[stanzin]

Hi Team,

 

would love to know the dock which was used in the video.

 

Thanks

[Grimlox]

i would like to know what dock linus is using at home cause id like to run a setup with a remote server room with all my hardware in it.

 

[Senzelian]

Yeah bought one of those almost a year ago. Maybe I should've done a video about it before him. 

 

[BLSmith2112]

Serious question, I apologize for being completely out of the loop on Thunderbolt (never used it or really understood it), but I have a question about a potential use for this cable.

 

So right now I have a new 5950x/3090/Gigabyte X570 AORUS Elite PC located in my bedroom (LG 27GL850-B monitor) and I have an old i7 6700 & GTX 970 PC in my living room 10M away acting as my VR PC. Is there some way to potentially sell the old living room PC, move my new PC into the living room so that all the VR Index cables can reach it and have a cable(s) get sent to my bedroom for my monitors, keyboard, mouse, and speakers? I tried buying 10M display port, USB, adapter etc for the VR but it didn't work and would really like to improve the VR performance without needing a second high end PC. 

[Senzelian]

1 hour ago, Grimlox said:

i would like to know what dock linus is using at home cause id like to run a setup with a remote server room with all my hardware in it.

 

 

1 hour ago, stanzin said:

Hi Team,

 

would love to know the dock which was used in the video.

 

Thanks

 

Not sure, but I looks like the Caldigit TS3 Plus.

 

 

 

16 minutes ago, BLSmith2112 said:

Serious question, I apologize for being completely out of the loop on Thunderbolt (never used it or really understood it), but I have a question about a potential use for this cable.

 

So right now I have a new 5950x/3090 PC located in my bedroom (LG 27GL850-B monitor) and I have an old i7 6700 & GTX 970 PC in my living room 10M away acting as my VR PC. Is there some way to potentially sell the old living room PC, move my new PC into the living room so that all the VR Index cables can reach it and have a cable(s) get sent to my bedroom for my monitors, keyboard, mouse, and speakers? I tried buying 10M display port, USB, adapter etc for the VR but it didn't work and would really like to improve the VR performance without needing a second high end PC. 

Yup, you can do that.

Your motherboard will either need an external Thunderbolt 3 or 4 header or you need an internal 5-pin Thunderbolt header, to which you can connect a PCI-e Thunderbolt 3 AIC. AsRock for example sells such a card. The only X570 boards that currently have an internal TB3 header are from AsRock and Gigabyte.

Then of course you need that cable and also a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 dock, to which you connect your peripherals. All of that will set you back around 700-800USD.

[Nystemy]

Working in electronics manufacturing and actually doing a fair bit of cable assembly. I usually end up surprised how cheap certain cables are, like USB and network cables are practically free compared to the work needed to construct them. Meanwhile, IDE cables are trivial to make and can be fully machine assembled since it is a ribbon pushed into an IDC connector. Though, machine assembly is in itself far from a trivial thing.

 

Though, in regards to copper cables, they could theoretically reach much further than 3 meters. To me that seems like the twisted pairs are somewhat poorly shielded and the SNR gets too large with distance. This could be fixed to a degree. Though, in my own regard, 3 meters is still a fairly decent distance, but I wouldn't be surprised if 4-5 is relatively easily doable. Considering how a simple cat.5 Ethernet cable can do 10 Gb/s up to about 30 meters. _{(though yes, there is a difference between 10 Gb/s and a thunderbolt 3 connection at 40 Gb/s. # meters though sounds really short, unless PCIe is really flaky in regards to bit errors. (Gigabit and above Ethernet has a fair bit of error correction))}

 

Sometimes I wonder about the practicalities of just making a PCIe card that takes the 16 lanes and drops them out onto 4 network ports, and then use cat.7 cables to go where ever one needs it. Simply send the data over that. Lane aggregation won't be too bad even if the cables are of slightly different lengths, since PCIe can account for lane length differences in the order of a couple of meters. _{(Though, would likely require some driver chips to be fair, since Ethernet jacks are galvanically isolated.)}

[NordLys]

Hi,

 

can anyone explain how Linus setup his comp with this? 

How he carry all video audio and peripheral?

knowing it will need more than 10Gb bandwidth to carry all those data

how to carry audio if the comp is using diff audio card and separate speaker setup.

[Stahlmann]

Why is this so insanely expensive?

There are optical fiber HDMI 2.1 cables that have to support 48Gbit/s and are a third of the price.

[Senzelian]

6 hours ago, NordLys said:

Hi,

 

can anyone explain how Linus setup his comp with this? 

How he carry all video audio and peripheral?

knowing it will need more than 10Gb bandwidth to carry all those data

how to carry audio if the comp is using diff audio card and separate speaker setup.

 

You simply use a Thunderbolt 3 dock and connect everything to that dock.

It's not rocket science.

 

You can do the same with USB, doesn't even need to be USB 3.2:

 

At work I use a USB A 3.0 dock for my displays, keyboard and mouse. The 5Gbit/s link does just fine with 1080p displays.

 

 

1 hour ago, Stahlmann said:

Why is this so insanely expensive?

There are optical fiber HDMI 2.1 cables that have to support 48Gbit/s and are a third of the price.

 

Optical display cables are directional.

There's only one transmitter and one receiver on each end and of course you have a lot more space in the connctor end to work with.

 

Linus mentioned heat output of the connector being an issue. That alone requires a lot of R&D, but not only because of the heat the electronics inside the connector end produce, but also because Thunderbolt docks and AICs transmit heat through their Type C connector into the cable. This results in those cable ends exceeding temps of 30°C or even 40°C.

 

And then of course you have to realise, that this is an incredibly niche product. Optical display cables are much more common than optical thunderbolt cables. So far I've only seen them being used in enthusiast settings such as Linus' or my own, or for 20Gbit/s networking for Apple Macs. You can also do some fun stuff with Thunderbolt equipped Windows laptops:

 

[stevenemersonuk]

Such a cool cable.

 

Would there be anyway to simply put display port down this cable? Maybe a conversion / adapter at each end?

5950x here with an MSI Godlike x570, so thunderbolt isn't possible

 

I have an office conversion project happening and my work has workstations with multiple GPUs pinned at 100% (3D Designer - Octane & Redshift), so loud and annoying, it would be great to have them about 10m away in the corner, sound proof room with the other servers.

 

My only other solution I can think, so I can have high end displays, is to put the workstations into a trapdoor / "grave" directly below the desk location and use 4m max traditional displayport cables. Of course the workstations will be fed airflow and heat extracted via conduits.

[JackMenta]

Hello Techies

 

So one thing I have been looking for and not being able to find.

 

As seen in the video you connect the GPU or Onboard graphicscard to the DP or miniDP in.

This gives you the video signal to pass through the ThunderBolt cable.

 

My first question is:

Multiple docks now comes with multiple HDMI or DP and say they support 2x 4k Monitors @ 60hz

can that be run from a single cable from the GPU or do you have to connect a cable from the GPU

for every monitor you want to pass thorugh?

 

Second question:

Does anyone know, when the Docks say 2x 4k Monitors @ 60hz.

equally mean that you can run 2x 2k Monitors @ 120hz?

 

Thanks in advance and hope you can help.

[bluebarracuda225]

Hopefully we get to a point where this can be useful for 4k 144hz monitors because I've been waiting forever to finally throw my gaming PC on my server rack. Unfortunately, I can only find 4k 60hz or 1440p 144hz supported docks

[Wh0_Am_1]

Soooo if I understand correctly, this cable does not support USB 3.2 gen 2 with Displayport throughput.

[Patklze]

im trying to do the same setup at home but i cant seem to find a full dp1.4 dock that carry 4k 120hz hdr.

 

any clue what he's using ? so i could run my pc in an other room with only the dock in my gaming room ?

[minibois]

On 6/7/2021 at 5:22 PM, Patklze said:

im trying to do the same setup at home but i cant seem to find a full dp1.4 dock that carry 4k 120hz hdr.

 

any clue what he's using ? so i could run my pc in an other room with only the dock in my gaming room ?

At some point, Linus showed a couple different docks. Do you mean this one specifically? (screenshot from 6:59)

 

Looks like it's the CalDigit TS3Plus: https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

[Patklze]

1 minute ago, minibois said:

At some point, Linus showed a couple different docks. Do you mean this one specifically? (screenshot from 6:59)

 

Looks like it's the CalDigit TS3Plus: https://www.caldigit.com/ts3-plus/

well idk if this one specifictly , but id be very happy to know a dock model that can carry the full dp 1.4 signal with some usbs on it. this link seems to be dp 1.2 only

[Kilrah]

@PatklzeMerged to official video thread, answer's above.

[stevenemersonuk]

My workstation doesn't have thunderbolt.

 

How would this cable connect directly to a GPU? (3080, 3090 etc)

 

Is there a way to adapt Display Port to Thunderbolt directly from a GPU?

Perhaps a dock or the same DP to TB adapter at the monitor end?

[Kilrah]

Nope, TB is the only option.

[Gernsback]

ASUS recently released several AM4 mobos with Thunderbolt 4. Great news, really, BUT.

Will this cable work with Thunderbolt 4?
Theoretically it should. Bandwidth is the same, charging will not be supported anyways...

But this is theory, and I'm not ready to spend a lot of money on a theoretical solution that may or may not work.

I tried reaching out to Corning for an answer, but they did not grace me with one. So I'm turning to guys who led me to this solution... Please help?

Currently this setup of mine is built around an ASrock X570 Creator mobo, but it's track record is spotty - main m.2 slot just failed after a single year of use, and getting out of sleep mode works inconsistently.

[OctothorpAndrew]

On 12/19/2021 at 10:59 AM, Gernsback said:

ASUS recently released several AM4 mobos with Thunderbolt 4. Great news, really, BUT.

Will this cable work with Thunderbolt 4?
Theoretically it should. Bandwidth is the same, charging will not be supported anyways...

But this is theory, and I'm not ready to spend a lot of money on a theoretical solution that may or may not work.

I tried reaching out to Corning for an answer, but they did not grace me with one. So I'm turning to guys who led me to this solution... Please help?

Currently this setup of mine is built around an ASrock X570 Creator mobo, but it's track record is spotty - main m.2 slot just failed after a single year of use, and getting out of sleep mode works inconsistently.

Same question if anyone knows. Does Corning's current line of TB3 Optical cables provide full compatibility with TB4 (minus the charging obviously). Anyone have the inside scoop on when Corning would deliver a TB4-specific cable? Or do you all think they will jump straight to TB5 cables?

[Kilrah]

2 hours ago, OctothorpAndrew said:

Same question if anyone knows. Does Corning's current line of TB3 Optical cables provide full compatibility with TB4 (minus the charging obviously). Anyone have the inside scoop on when Corning would deliver a TB4-specific cable? Or do you all think they will jump straight to TB5 cables?

Since TB4 is just "TB3 with all features" that the cable already supported there's no reason something dedicated should be needed.