Desktop PC With One Cable

[Jake3231]

Hi!  With the launch of Thunderbolt 3 and USB-C I had an interesting idea — What if your entire desktop PC used a Thunderbolt 3 and power cable for all of the IO.  It would be awesome to connect just the display to one Thunderbolt cable, then have everything else either wireless or connected to the display through daisy chaining.  Cost aside, is there any reason that this wouldn't work?  It would be awesome to have a high end gaming desktop using just one cable for graphics, audio, and maybe USB mice and keyboards.

[Jake3231]

15 minutes ago, rrubberr said:

Wireless for highspeed transfer is a joke, and you'd need about 15 home routers to make this practical? It sounds like you're actually proposing heat-shrink tubing 20 cables together and calling it one.

Yeah. I get that it's difficult. But Thunderbolt 3 would handle display, audio, keyboard and mouse. I mean wireless would handle things like headsets.

[Jake3231]

1 minute ago, rrubberr said:

Bluetooth audio still makes me want to vomit quality wise, and a 5k display can saturate a 5.4 GB/S displayport, so...

Fair enough.  I wouldn't be going higher than 1440p, maybe 4K.  As for bluetooth audio, it's satisfactory for my needs.  I understand it's not great though.

[Jake3231]

2 minutes ago, rrubberr said:

The point is that that's such a weird demand for such a niche audience, and when you start putting all of those limits on it it starts falling apart. For example, I expect a 4k display, two 1080p displays, two external SATA 3 harddisks, and a 10 Gbit network connections to be handled, and I don't see that happening within 5 GB/S.

You're right. It is a weird request.  To be fair, Thunderbolt 3's 40Gbps seems adequate for what I'm doing.  I don't have more than a 1080p HDMI monitor, ethernet, 3.5mm audio, and a USB keyboard and mouse.

[Jake3231]

6 minutes ago, rrubberr said:

That's not to say I wouldn't be interested, but trying to put 1500 watts over a cable, in addition to 10 GB/S of data seems... Sketchy.

This is after removing 2/3 of the cables. Again, if this could be done, call me!

Okay.  This is all assuming that power is handled by the traditional PSU and monitor power cables, but just the I/O is done on Thunderbolt. I'll certainly let you know if this is done!