USB-C Dock for Gaming Laptop... Will it work?

Hi guys,

I have been looking far and wide for an answer to some questions and just have not been able to find them. So why not ask my helpful friends on notebookreview?

Here is my situation: I have an Aorus x7 v6 that I use primarily at home hooked up to 2 monitors. I love being able to disconnect the laptop and take it to a friends house for a night of gaming, which is why I have a laptop instead of a desktop. While this is convenient, the cord situation is not. What I really want is to have a dock that all my peripherals, including my 2 monitors, connects to so that I when I connect and disconnect the laptop I just need to plug or unplug one cable.

Now for my questions and concerns: First, I am concerned that if I have my monitors running from a usb-c dock that it wouldn't utilize the graphics card when outputting the signal since it's not running off the internal video ports. Am I way off on this? I just can't find any information on it one way or the other.

Second, if I can utilize this setup, will a USB 3.1 gen 1 port sans Thunderbolt (Aorus v6 machines don't have thunderbolt) be able to drive 2 1080 monitors?

TL;DR - Will a monitor connected to USB-C via a hub utilize the graphics card on a laptop? If so, can 1 USB-C gen 1 port drive 2 1080 monitors?

Thanks

 

As far as I understand, USB primarily relies on software and the CPU to drive external displays. It's fine for office and light work, but it won't work for gaming or even marginally demanding productivity. You're pretty much stuck with your current situation, I'm afraid.

 

Thank you. Really that's what I needed to know. I'm glad I didn't buy an expensive multidisplay hub that turned out to not work anyway. I'll just have to figure something else out with my cable situation, I'm sure it can be streamlined somehow.

Thanks again for the information.

 

You are correct. If you connect monitors to a laptop dock, then you completely bypass the internal graphics of your laptop (both the Intel iGPU, and the discrete nVidia GTX 1070). As far as your computer is concerned, an external dock is essentially an external graphics adapter that is connected via USB.

The only way to connect external displays is to connect directly to a graphics port like HDMI, DisplayPort, or Thunderbolt. If you connect via USB, then you bypass any kind of internal graphics adapter on your laptop.

A USB 3.1 Gen1 (which is the same as USB 3.0) does not have enough bandwidth to drive 2x 1080p60 monitors. It will work. But you'll either have to deal with running at 1080p30, or run at 1080p60 and deal with about 1.0 sec of on-screen lag. It's fine if you're connecting those monitors for office productivity work. But if you're running any kind of video, it won't be enough. And of course, any kind of gaming will be completely out of the question.

No, and no.

If you are doing anything with those external monitors except office productivity work, then you'll want to connect your two external monitors using the HDMI and (mini)DisplayPort ports on your laptop, and just deal with the inconvenience of dealing with multiple cables.

 

Thanks for the clarification, Kent. As I feared, a hub is not a viable solution, for the monitors at least.

So, from what I gathered, If the computer had a thunderbolt port, it would be able to utilize the graphics card and this setup would work?

 

Not always. It would also need the GPU output to be directed thru the thunderbolt port. Not every laptop with TB has it.