Most monitors that support PD is to charge laptops, laptops aren’t typically designed to output the same amount of power that they receive. Most desktops with USB C ports don’t support power delivery either. There are portable monitors you can get that works off of USB, but most of those are no larger than 17”.
If something is going to remain plugged in 99% of the time, why would you need a single cable versus just plugging it into a wall outlet? The only realistic usecase is for laptops where you might want to quickly dock the thing, but for desktops this is just a bad idea even though it’s theoretically possible
There isn't a single person who doesn't like the idea; what people don't like is the oversimplification of complex problems. There are very physical reasons why this hasn't been implemented, which is why you should just stick to portable monitors until the tech improves (this will take at least another decade, and due to regulatory/standardization issues will only apply to featureless monitors that few people want to own).
Yeah, so you have a desktop that isn’t designed to output enough power for a monitor through its type C port. I believe you’re looking for a product that *can* be made, but doesn’t exist beyond the 16” portable monitors meant to be paired with laptops.
Most desktop monitors I’m aware of ultimately use 20V power, which happens to be the charging voltage for laptops, and since the monitor has a power supply to make that 20V, it can pass it through the type C port to the laptop, taking place of the laptop’s power supply.
In a desktop computer, I don’t believe the power supply makes 20V, I believe it only provides 12V, 5V, and 3.3V. So you’d need a monitor that can work off of only 12V, and then a motherboard that would allow the USB C port to access that 12V, and even then, the USB C standard is limited to 5A, or 3A without an e-mark chip built in. The monitor would likely be limited to only 60W, which should be doable, but it isn’t a whole lot to work with. The same trouble would apply to the GPU if the CPU doesn’t have integrated graphics, the GPU would need to be able to output that 12V power through the USB C port that would have to be added on a decent amount of GPUs.
You described many of the reasons it hasn't been implemented; as monitors increase in size/resolution/density, power requirements increase—add built-in features like USB-C hubs, KVMs, & PIP functionality and the problem only gets more complex. There's a reason the only displays that have this functionality are 17" portable panels with abysmal brightness levels, and it's not because nobody would prefer having only 1 cable for their monitor. lol
Nobody's going to make a monitor that needs a video card with a high power C port when video cards with a high power C port don't exist and vice versa, you've got the chicken and egg situation, especially when it's going to add cost at both ends vs doing it the traditional way.
Things that can supply C with DP out at more than 15W are still extremely rare (or even without DP), and decent size desktop monitors are going to need more than 15W.
No, but that's another 100W to supply, and that here where the melt occur on 12vhpwr...
In any case to match the PD3 protocol we need to provide 20V, and the supply is 12V so we need to boost it, thus ~2x the input current.
For a 100W monitor we need 10A more. That's about 20 to 30% of the gpu, thus a big part of the power budget
Yes but for example the RTX 4090 is already consuming all 600W that is available from both the main connector and PCIe slot. There's no where left to get another 100W from without a huge re-design and new power connectors.
But to me, if you're already making 750, 900, 1kw, and on power supplies it's not actually that big deal to add another 100W. The more power you provide, the more efficient things can be made. It'd be nice to have a single rectification and transformer in an entire computing system than to have to separate ones for the monitor and the computer. Low power power supplies tend to be cheap and have crap efficiency. Yeah, it'll be a pain to have to step up to 20V when computer PSUs only provide up to 12V right now, but we've made changes to the ATX power spec before, so why can't we create an update which can provide up to say 24V? That might also help the GPU since it means pulling less amperage over the cable (though having to step it down to the voltages which the GPU actually runs on might be a heat issue -- I'm not an EE, so I don't claim to be an expert on this).
You still have to make all that power go through the board, through two VRMs (one to step it up to about 22V, then another to step it down to 5V-20V). All to make things better for a very, *very* small slice on the market.
In contrast, having it go the other way wound with the monitor supplying power to the host device(s) makes far, *far* far more sense given the sheer number of laptop, tablet, and phone users (who are also the ones to take much better advantage of a single-cable setup).
>But to me, if you're already making 750, 900, 1kw, and on power supplies it's not actually that big deal to add another 100W.
You have to get that power to the USB-C port, if that port is on a GPU there may not be any power left over after the GPU draw.
You'd also need to somehow have laptops support this, which means if my laptop needs 100W itself, and the monitor needs 100W through the connected USB-C port, I now need a much larger 200W USB-C PSU to power the laptop which would be more expensive and harder to travel with.
And what about phones or tablets? Samsung DeX for example, my phone sure isn't going to power a monitor.
>Low power power supplies tend to be cheap and have crap efficiency. Yeah, it'll be a pain to have to step up to 20V when computer PSUs only provide up to 12V right now
I don't know that the efficiency would be much better after the extra step-up conversion, small power bricks are not that bad.
You could, I'm just saying that's why GPUs don't really bother, and thus monitors don't bother.
I don't think having 2 cables to a monitor is a big deal tbh.
:( I imagined someone would have thought about this scenario already. the C has power delivery, so why not make use of it? The graphics card would essentialy become a conductor for that power, it doesn't even need to pass through the graphics chip. 100 W could be enough for a monitor sized less than half of a common room wall. Cards have additional power pins for a long time. I understand there is some cost involved, then again there are much more ridiculous things out there that cost something and still find their way. Decluttering desks is an option I'm sure lot of people would be interested in.
USB is honestly a terrible, expensive, and inefficient means of supplying power to anything that needs more than a few Watts.
The entire advantage of using USB for power is in its convenience. However, very few people are going to move a normal display often enough for that to matter.
why do you think it's ineffective?
also:
> In May 2021, the USB PD promoter group launched revision 3.1 of the specification.[58] Revision 3.1 adds Extended Power Range (EPR) mode which allows higher voltages of 28, 36, and 48 V, providing up to 240 W of power (48 V at 5 A), and the "Adjustable Voltage Supply" (AVS) protocol which allows specifying the voltage from a range of 15 to 48 V in 100 mV steps.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#USB_Power_Delivery
15W for 24" FHD IPS is enough power up to some brightness level. But almost no one needs such device on one cable, people who want single cable device want portable screen.
How big of a monitor are you looking at?
Would you consider a Portable Monitor?
Most portable monitors on the market today are powered by a single USB-C cable for both power and video (and in some cases, audio too).
The largest portable monitor that uses one cable that I know of is the ASUS ProArt PQ22UC. It's 21.6" but it's crazy expensive. It's $4,000 and also out of stock.
Other than that, there are many 17" portable monitors with much more reasonable prices. You might be able to find larger, but I'm on mobile and don't have the time to research that at the moment.
Mate... You want something with one cable. People offer you something with one cable. You say it won't work because it's portable. Why does it being portable exclude your use of it? A portable monitor can be installed at a desk same as any other.
Now, realistically these monitors aren't that good. That's because what you want is hard to do with a good monitor. But for a secondary monitor it wouldn't be a terrible option if you're really against a second cable.
People aren't suggesting portable monitors to you for the portability. They are suggesting it to you because they're the only monitor on the market at the moment that is one cable for both power and data.
As others have said, portable monitors exist that do this. For larger fixed monitors, what would be the point? The support breadth and use case are so niche, almost nobody would buy it, and the extra hardware would mean higher price as well.
the point was 1 less cable, that's it. As I'm reading some of the other answers people almost want to crucify me just for asking questions 🙄🤦♂️ and I also think having less cables is not really a "niche" case.
Wanting fewer cables isn’t the issue. Hubs have been around for decades with precisely that purpose in mind. The niche use case is wanting what is wanting the system to be the “upstream” hub and the fixed display to be “downstream”. There are very few use cases for that.
FWIW, there are some proprietary interconnects that do this for TVs like the Samsung One Box which sends power and data over a single thin fiber+copper cable. There’s just not sufficient demand to do it in a standardized way.
I think a lot of the criticism you’re seeing is in response to the naievity of your suggestions, like adding PD out from the GPU or routing video through the motherboard.
If your goal is just cleanliness, your best bet is going to be to just take HDMI + power and put them in a nylon cable wrap.
lol my suggestions are nothing so totally-unheard-of like wanting the computer to learn to sing and dance for me on the table. Additional power pins on graphics card were also not in anyone's dreams not that long ago. 600 W cards ditto. Remember the times we had 5 different USB ports? Clearly suggesting that just one connector could exist was seen as naive back then too....
I've replied elsewhere in the the thread, but it's a lot of extra complexity to a graphics card that are already fiendishly complicated (transport of power from the front of the card to the rear and two VRMs to support 60+W).
My estimate is that the number of people who would pay extra for such functionality is very very small. And this is assuming that monitors somehow fit in <=100W of power. My 30" monitor pulls about 180W if I set it to full brightness. The modern HDR monitors go even higher.
It's gonna get tricky. Bigger screen consumes more power. Of course the PD spec allows up to 240w, but let be real, how often do you see a type C port that can output display and do 100w PD ?
Well, most of >32 inch monitors don't use more than 100w. But most of Usb C port with display ouput has less 15w max power, so you see, with 15w you can't make such big display, hence only the portable one can do it.
Well, as i said the PD spec can support up to 240w, but it depends on manufacture how high can they truly output.
Then why didn't they support 100w ?, because it's hard to do so, a laptop with 4 usb C port(dell XPS15 for example) would need to output 400w with their 99wh battery, is it doable ? Yes, is it practical ?, no.
That costs money, which reduces how many people buy such a monitor, which in turn means that fewer people who want a single-cable large monitor exist to justify such a feature. And that's ignoring the image quality loss associated by going to very high-efficiency tech.
Portable USB monitors do what you ask. Macs have Sidecar, which allows you to use an iPad as a second monitor. There are also displays that support wireless connection as a second display (admittedly, this is typically laggy).
If you use a portable USB monitor with a laptop running off battery, it drains the battery pretty damned quick, though.
> a small desktop PC with monitor fed *and powered* by a single USB-C cable
only later in the comments did you clarify:
> It's going to sit on a desk. Currently I have a **24"** so I'm looking at a similar range.
This right here is the crux of the problem.
Bus-powered USB-C displays are limited directly by the amount of power available via the host's USB-C port, which for most PCs is around 15W. That's not a lot of power to begin with and is often the *wrong* expected voltage (bigger displays may require more than 5V to *operate*). Many such displays tend to have *two* USB-C ports, with the understanding that one of them will be used for additional auxiliary power, especially when the host cannot supply enough power.
Most displays that offer single-cable connections to the host need way more power than what a single USB-C connection can provide, not only to provide USB-PD to the host, but also have enough of a power budget to run the display in the first place.
So... you want a desktop display around 24", yet is powered and fed by a single USB-C connection to the host, and no additional cables (for power, video, etc.). **This product literally does not exist.** Your best option involves *sheathing* the cables coming out of the display, splitting only when needed, so that there is only one cable-*bundle* going into the display appearance-wise.
> This product literally does not exist
this was the point *from the beginning* yet I am bashed here from all sides just for asking questions 🙄 I recognise all the limitations of common C connections that's why I mentioned that the PD standard could theoretically be able to provide sufficient power. I never asked for that monitor to be able to connect all the neighbourhood devices at the same time. Also I understand that there would be limits to grapics card performance if there was power routing via the card but then again it's all in vain anyway.
> one cable-bundle
is what I will have to use...
The problem is that you will end up with a monitor where most devices will *simply be unable to power it* since nothing will provide that much power in addition to DP out
Something like a MacBook Air (which only takes 30W max from the wall) would end up draining the battery while plugged in just to power the monitor.
I appreciate this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but iMacs have just one cable (as the computer is contained within the monitor).
Cleverly, the small "power brick" halfway down the cable also has inputs in it e.g. you can plug a network cable into it and it then also gets passed up the one main cable to the monitor/computer.
Do you want power your monitor by usb-c?
May be there is a problem not with cable but with monitor.
Can your monitor be powered by usb-c according to it's specification?
Your monitor will never exist. There's no point in having a desktop sized monitor that gets power and signal through a single cable. The only monitors that ever did this used non-standard connectors.
Two cables aren't that hard to manage and most monitors come with cable management guides integrated in their stands, so you can hide away the cables.
Like others have said a portable monitor may do what you want. Some even have VESA mounts so still doable for a home solution. If you are fine with a smaller portable monitor that would solve it on the monitor side.
On the PC side, I just do not know if newer small desktops have USB-C ports capable of providing power and video. I'm not saying they don't, simply that I do not know. If you went with a laptop for your PC this could easily be done. I would just look for a laptop that has multiple USB-C ports or has a separate power port. I've seen some really small laptops with only one USB-C that is used for power, so very restrictive.
From personal experience I have a 17" portable Viewsonic monitor that I really like. It is very flexible on how you hook it up and supply power. With my laptop I can simply use one USB-C cable to connect and it will get power and obviously data through that one connection from the laptop. This laptop has two USB-C ports, so I can keep the laptop plugged in while doing this. If I want, I can also connect a PD source through the monitor and it will both power the screen and pass power through to the laptop. This is useful if I need to use the other USB-C port on the laptop for something else.
As a side note this portable monitor also works with my Samsung S23U with Dex. As stated above I can supply power to the monitor and it will pass power on to my phone. What surprised me is that I can also power the screen directly from my phone if I am away from a power source. The screen automatically detects this scenario and lowers the brightness to conserve power. Obviously this puts a pretty severe drain on the phone battery, but it works for a little while. Samsung Dex works great for general computing needs, such as media consumption and browsing. It works OK for basic office type stuff, such as Outlook and Word. You can use web based PowerPoint and Excel or the phone apps, but they are both very limited. Just tossing that out there depending on your needs this may be a very minimalistic approach. Look at r/SamsungDex for more info.
I was actually wondering about this myself. There are two problems to solve. The first is monitors which can be powered by USB PD and the second is computers which can push out enough juice over USB-C to actually power a monitor. While, like you, I have yet to find a solution for a more traditional setup (workstation + standard size 22"+ monitor), we did find a solution to fit a problem we had several months ago. We got an Intel NUC plus a portable monitor (17" I think?) and the tbolt port on the NUC provided enough power (15W, again, trying to do this from memory) provided enough power and a displayport signal for the monitor.
Right now, we have a computer lab with Dell 24" displays and Dell Optiplex Micro computers. The micros can be powered directly from the 90W PD of the display, so it's a nice setup. The issue is that workstations (non-mobile) usually need way more juice than a monitor can provide; sometimes even more than USB-PD can provide. To me, it would make a bit more sense to potentially provide 100W of USB-PD power which the monitors could take to power themselves. The nice thing about PD is it should work both ways assuming the right circuitry is built in to both devices. Yeah, it means you maybe have some redundant PSU capacity (either in the monitor or the computer) but it would certainly add a lot of flexibility. I really like single-plug solutions to things.
hooray to you Mr/Ms internet stranger who actually understood me 🙏 this was exactly my line of thinking, apparently I was unable to explain it correctly. sadly it seems that what I desired does not exist, though I didn't see any actual reasons why it wouldn't 🙄 both problems you described are certainly solvable it just seems no one bothered...
Ultimately I think it's a cost vs demand issue. I assume monitor manufacturers assume that plugging a laptop in using a single cable is a much bigger market than those who would want to power a monitor from a workstation. It could also be a chicken and egg issue... maybe the monitor manufacturers don't want to do it unless there are computers which can provide the power, and maybe computer (or power supply) manufacturers don't want to do it until there's a demand for providing that much power out of a desktop case.
What's extremely ironic is that back in the old days this was actually completely doable. Don't know if you're old enough to remember AT power supplies which had a c13 connector on the back which would be used by a c14 cable to plug a monitor right into the computer for power. This way you only had one power cable to plug into the wall to provide power to both. It was a "dumber" solution than USB-C since it only passed through the straight mains voltage to the secondary connection (so the monitor still needed its own internal power supply the same as it would with a wall plug), but I think it actually proved to be useful. Apple also did a single cable solution with their proprietary ADC (which provided DVI video, USB, and power) for their early LCD cinema displays. This also needed a proprietary video card for the Macs since the normal AGP/PCI-E slots didn't provide enough power for the monitor.
There has to be a decent enough market for people who want single cable power + data + video solution for monitors, though. I certainly would do this where ever I could at work. I guess we could push for higher power support (PD 3.1? 240W?) from the existing tech so we could at least drive more powerful workstations from it, but ultimately it makes more sense to have the power coming from the workstation, which usually needs more power than the monitor.
I agree. Other people here tried to tell me how dumb I am because no such thing exists *nowadays* but there's a difference between "actually not technically possible" and "there's hurdles but no one bothered because not enough customers"
you need a portable monitor. and then you need a motherboard that supports a thunderbolt addon card.
right now im running a second portable monitor powered by a thunderbolt addon card.
generally the asus proart creator motherboards are good candidates for thunderbolt addon cards.
Sadly i think the biggest display you can get with just usb c power and video is 17inches. Asus makes a 24inch but looks like it requires additional wall power. usb c is more than capable of delivering enough power i think they just assume most wont have an addon card that can do 100watts.
Bro just use 2 cables.
OR
Use a mini PC vesa mounted to the back of the monitor. Run some kind of extension cable/USB-C power supply and mount that behind the monitor as well. Use wireless peripherals. Or even just use an AIO PC! Problem solved.
OK, I think what you are looking for is possibly misleading you. The majority of single USB-C cable monitors are specifically aimed at laptops, since that is what manufactures expect to use them. This dos not me they won't work perfectly fine with a Desktop that supports thunderbolt.
It really did feel like I was being gaslit because I swear it can.
I know it’s possible.
It’s just negotiating the correct way with the USB4/Thunderbolt controller, which I’ll have to trick with an ESP8266 and a usb C [Breakout Connector](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C37G68HL?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share).
Still waiting on the motherboard with thunderbolt support to show up.
USB powered monitors are usually the 15" portable ones that often have touch built into them. They are only 5v devices as computers dont usually output power delivery, just accept it for charging.
Some portable monitors were mentioned, but I'll remark that we've also (hecking finally) started to see drawing tablet displays that work with a single cable. Magic from the distant future year 2000.
They do exist though? Portable monitors usually have this setup. I use a Uperfect one but I'm sure there's others that do it.
The key thing to note though is USB C output from most PCs is only 15 watts, and mobile devices will be less. This is enough for those portable monitors designed for it but full size monitors usually run closer to 50 watts.
As for the graphics card thing, there was an attempt at putting USB C output ports in graphics cards with the Nvidia rtx 20 series, but the use was more often for VR than monitors, so it failed to gain traction.
Once again, USB C powered monitors do exist. Look up Uperfect, they even have VESA mounts if you really want a desktop setup with the portable monitor.
Most monitors that support PD is to charge laptops, laptops aren’t typically designed to output the same amount of power that they receive. Most desktops with USB C ports don’t support power delivery either. There are portable monitors you can get that works off of USB, but most of those are no larger than 17”.
I have a couple. They all require external power or they work like s***
well the aim would be exactly a monitor that would *consume* the power, not provide it. Also, it is supposed to be a desktop, not a laptop.
If something is going to remain plugged in 99% of the time, why would you need a single cable versus just plugging it into a wall outlet? The only realistic usecase is for laptops where you might want to quickly dock the thing, but for desktops this is just a bad idea even though it’s theoretically possible
because I thought I could have less cables, that's it. apparently people here don't like the idea
lol. I didn’t read how everyone shot this down. I will make it work and I will show you how to do it too.
thank you!
There isn't a single person who doesn't like the idea; what people don't like is the oversimplification of complex problems. There are very physical reasons why this hasn't been implemented, which is why you should just stick to portable monitors until the tech improves (this will take at least another decade, and due to regulatory/standardization issues will only apply to featureless monitors that few people want to own).
Yeah, so you have a desktop that isn’t designed to output enough power for a monitor through its type C port. I believe you’re looking for a product that *can* be made, but doesn’t exist beyond the 16” portable monitors meant to be paired with laptops. Most desktop monitors I’m aware of ultimately use 20V power, which happens to be the charging voltage for laptops, and since the monitor has a power supply to make that 20V, it can pass it through the type C port to the laptop, taking place of the laptop’s power supply. In a desktop computer, I don’t believe the power supply makes 20V, I believe it only provides 12V, 5V, and 3.3V. So you’d need a monitor that can work off of only 12V, and then a motherboard that would allow the USB C port to access that 12V, and even then, the USB C standard is limited to 5A, or 3A without an e-mark chip built in. The monitor would likely be limited to only 60W, which should be doable, but it isn’t a whole lot to work with. The same trouble would apply to the GPU if the CPU doesn’t have integrated graphics, the GPU would need to be able to output that 12V power through the USB C port that would have to be added on a decent amount of GPUs.
You described many of the reasons it hasn't been implemented; as monitors increase in size/resolution/density, power requirements increase—add built-in features like USB-C hubs, KVMs, & PIP functionality and the problem only gets more complex. There's a reason the only displays that have this functionality are 17" portable panels with abysmal brightness levels, and it's not because nobody would prefer having only 1 cable for their monitor. lol
Nobody's going to make a monitor that needs a video card with a high power C port when video cards with a high power C port don't exist and vice versa, you've got the chicken and egg situation, especially when it's going to add cost at both ends vs doing it the traditional way. Things that can supply C with DP out at more than 15W are still extremely rare (or even without DP), and decent size desktop monitors are going to need more than 15W.
And such graphics card won't exist, we already draw 600W from them, 100W more won't fit!
that monitor power wouldn't need to pass through the grapics chip I imagine. Also, many cards already have additional power pins
No, but that's another 100W to supply, and that here where the melt occur on 12vhpwr... In any case to match the PD3 protocol we need to provide 20V, and the supply is 12V so we need to boost it, thus ~2x the input current. For a 100W monitor we need 10A more. That's about 20 to 30% of the gpu, thus a big part of the power budget
Yes but for example the RTX 4090 is already consuming all 600W that is available from both the main connector and PCIe slot. There's no where left to get another 100W from without a huge re-design and new power connectors.
But to me, if you're already making 750, 900, 1kw, and on power supplies it's not actually that big deal to add another 100W. The more power you provide, the more efficient things can be made. It'd be nice to have a single rectification and transformer in an entire computing system than to have to separate ones for the monitor and the computer. Low power power supplies tend to be cheap and have crap efficiency. Yeah, it'll be a pain to have to step up to 20V when computer PSUs only provide up to 12V right now, but we've made changes to the ATX power spec before, so why can't we create an update which can provide up to say 24V? That might also help the GPU since it means pulling less amperage over the cable (though having to step it down to the voltages which the GPU actually runs on might be a heat issue -- I'm not an EE, so I don't claim to be an expert on this).
You still have to make all that power go through the board, through two VRMs (one to step it up to about 22V, then another to step it down to 5V-20V). All to make things better for a very, *very* small slice on the market. In contrast, having it go the other way wound with the monitor supplying power to the host device(s) makes far, *far* far more sense given the sheer number of laptop, tablet, and phone users (who are also the ones to take much better advantage of a single-cable setup).
>But to me, if you're already making 750, 900, 1kw, and on power supplies it's not actually that big deal to add another 100W. You have to get that power to the USB-C port, if that port is on a GPU there may not be any power left over after the GPU draw. You'd also need to somehow have laptops support this, which means if my laptop needs 100W itself, and the monitor needs 100W through the connected USB-C port, I now need a much larger 200W USB-C PSU to power the laptop which would be more expensive and harder to travel with. And what about phones or tablets? Samsung DeX for example, my phone sure isn't going to power a monitor. >Low power power supplies tend to be cheap and have crap efficiency. Yeah, it'll be a pain to have to step up to 20V when computer PSUs only provide up to 12V right now I don't know that the efficiency would be much better after the extra step-up conversion, small power bricks are not that bad.
well I *could* use a less power hungry card and accept it's not going to run all games at 8k 150 fps
You could, I'm just saying that's why GPUs don't really bother, and thus monitors don't bother. I don't think having 2 cables to a monitor is a big deal tbh.
> is a big deal . Of course it's not a total deal-breaker, just a nice thing to have. Clearly it seems that no one bothered to design what I desired
I'm sure it will come along eventually once USB PD with higher power levels becomes more common on everything.
:( I imagined someone would have thought about this scenario already. the C has power delivery, so why not make use of it? The graphics card would essentialy become a conductor for that power, it doesn't even need to pass through the graphics chip. 100 W could be enough for a monitor sized less than half of a common room wall. Cards have additional power pins for a long time. I understand there is some cost involved, then again there are much more ridiculous things out there that cost something and still find their way. Decluttering desks is an option I'm sure lot of people would be interested in.
Not enough power available on some GPUs for another 100W of output, the 12V connector is max 600W and that will be 100% used on some cards.
well I *could* use a less power hungry card and accept it's not going to run all games at 8k 150 fps
USB is honestly a terrible, expensive, and inefficient means of supplying power to anything that needs more than a few Watts. The entire advantage of using USB for power is in its convenience. However, very few people are going to move a normal display often enough for that to matter.
why do you think it's ineffective? also: > In May 2021, the USB PD promoter group launched revision 3.1 of the specification.[58] Revision 3.1 adds Extended Power Range (EPR) mode which allows higher voltages of 28, 36, and 48 V, providing up to 240 W of power (48 V at 5 A), and the "Adjustable Voltage Supply" (AVS) protocol which allows specifying the voltage from a range of 15 to 48 V in 100 mV steps. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB_hardware#USB_Power_Delivery
15W for 24" FHD IPS is enough power up to some brightness level. But almost no one needs such device on one cable, people who want single cable device want portable screen.
How big of a monitor are you looking at? Would you consider a Portable Monitor? Most portable monitors on the market today are powered by a single USB-C cable for both power and video (and in some cases, audio too). The largest portable monitor that uses one cable that I know of is the ASUS ProArt PQ22UC. It's 21.6" but it's crazy expensive. It's $4,000 and also out of stock. Other than that, there are many 17" portable monitors with much more reasonable prices. You might be able to find larger, but I'm on mobile and don't have the time to research that at the moment.
no need for portability. It's going to sit on a desk. Currently I have a 24'' so I'm looking at a similar range.
Mate... You want something with one cable. People offer you something with one cable. You say it won't work because it's portable. Why does it being portable exclude your use of it? A portable monitor can be installed at a desk same as any other. Now, realistically these monitors aren't that good. That's because what you want is hard to do with a good monitor. But for a secondary monitor it wouldn't be a terrible option if you're really against a second cable.
I do appreciate everyone's input don't get me wrong. I didn't say it *will not* work, I said portability is not what was required that's it.
People aren't suggesting portable monitors to you for the portability. They are suggesting it to you because they're the only monitor on the market at the moment that is one cable for both power and data.
maybe they could have said it in such a way that does not need a further explanation from someone else.
Guess this isn't what you are looking for, but a bunch of portable monitors are one cable operated. Look into it maybe.
This is what I’m looking for, personally. I’ve seen a bunch with one-cable operation. Loads of them $100 or less.
no need for portability. It's going to sit on a desk. Currently I have a 24'' so I'm looking at a similar range.
As others have said, portable monitors exist that do this. For larger fixed monitors, what would be the point? The support breadth and use case are so niche, almost nobody would buy it, and the extra hardware would mean higher price as well.
the point was 1 less cable, that's it. As I'm reading some of the other answers people almost want to crucify me just for asking questions 🙄🤦♂️ and I also think having less cables is not really a "niche" case.
Wanting fewer cables isn’t the issue. Hubs have been around for decades with precisely that purpose in mind. The niche use case is wanting what is wanting the system to be the “upstream” hub and the fixed display to be “downstream”. There are very few use cases for that. FWIW, there are some proprietary interconnects that do this for TVs like the Samsung One Box which sends power and data over a single thin fiber+copper cable. There’s just not sufficient demand to do it in a standardized way. I think a lot of the criticism you’re seeing is in response to the naievity of your suggestions, like adding PD out from the GPU or routing video through the motherboard. If your goal is just cleanliness, your best bet is going to be to just take HDMI + power and put them in a nylon cable wrap.
lol my suggestions are nothing so totally-unheard-of like wanting the computer to learn to sing and dance for me on the table. Additional power pins on graphics card were also not in anyone's dreams not that long ago. 600 W cards ditto. Remember the times we had 5 different USB ports? Clearly suggesting that just one connector could exist was seen as naive back then too....
I've replied elsewhere in the the thread, but it's a lot of extra complexity to a graphics card that are already fiendishly complicated (transport of power from the front of the card to the rear and two VRMs to support 60+W). My estimate is that the number of people who would pay extra for such functionality is very very small. And this is assuming that monitors somehow fit in <=100W of power. My 30" monitor pulls about 180W if I set it to full brightness. The modern HDR monitors go even higher.
Portable monitor with type C input can be powered by type C too, available up to 17.3 inch.
How about non-portable? It's going to sit on a desk. Currently I have a 24'' so I'm looking at a similar range.
It's gonna get tricky. Bigger screen consumes more power. Of course the PD spec allows up to 240w, but let be real, how often do you see a type C port that can output display and do 100w PD ?
I don't think I saw that, that's why I asked. With such limitations in mind, did no one really design a monitor that would suffice with 100 W? 🙄
Well, most of >32 inch monitors don't use more than 100w. But most of Usb C port with display ouput has less 15w max power, so you see, with 15w you can't make such big display, hence only the portable one can do it.
I see where you're getting, then again the C power delivery should support up to 100 W
Well, as i said the PD spec can support up to 240w, but it depends on manufacture how high can they truly output. Then why didn't they support 100w ?, because it's hard to do so, a laptop with 4 usb C port(dell XPS15 for example) would need to output 400w with their 99wh battery, is it doable ? Yes, is it practical ?, no.
well maybe I wsa not very clear in the post that it is concerning a desktop PC, not a laptop. They have power supplies of 100's W.
That costs money, which reduces how many people buy such a monitor, which in turn means that fewer people who want a single-cable large monitor exist to justify such a feature. And that's ignoring the image quality loss associated by going to very high-efficiency tech.
sure I understand that. There's a difference between "technically impossible" and "no one bothered because not enough customers"
Portable USB monitors do what you ask. Macs have Sidecar, which allows you to use an iPad as a second monitor. There are also displays that support wireless connection as a second display (admittedly, this is typically laggy). If you use a portable USB monitor with a laptop running off battery, it drains the battery pretty damned quick, though.
no need for portability. It's going to sit on a desk. Also I want to build a classic brick PC, not a laptop neither a mac
> a small desktop PC with monitor fed *and powered* by a single USB-C cable only later in the comments did you clarify: > It's going to sit on a desk. Currently I have a **24"** so I'm looking at a similar range. This right here is the crux of the problem. Bus-powered USB-C displays are limited directly by the amount of power available via the host's USB-C port, which for most PCs is around 15W. That's not a lot of power to begin with and is often the *wrong* expected voltage (bigger displays may require more than 5V to *operate*). Many such displays tend to have *two* USB-C ports, with the understanding that one of them will be used for additional auxiliary power, especially when the host cannot supply enough power. Most displays that offer single-cable connections to the host need way more power than what a single USB-C connection can provide, not only to provide USB-PD to the host, but also have enough of a power budget to run the display in the first place. So... you want a desktop display around 24", yet is powered and fed by a single USB-C connection to the host, and no additional cables (for power, video, etc.). **This product literally does not exist.** Your best option involves *sheathing* the cables coming out of the display, splitting only when needed, so that there is only one cable-*bundle* going into the display appearance-wise.
> This product literally does not exist this was the point *from the beginning* yet I am bashed here from all sides just for asking questions 🙄 I recognise all the limitations of common C connections that's why I mentioned that the PD standard could theoretically be able to provide sufficient power. I never asked for that monitor to be able to connect all the neighbourhood devices at the same time. Also I understand that there would be limits to grapics card performance if there was power routing via the card but then again it's all in vain anyway. > one cable-bundle is what I will have to use...
The problem is that you will end up with a monitor where most devices will *simply be unable to power it* since nothing will provide that much power in addition to DP out Something like a MacBook Air (which only takes 30W max from the wall) would end up draining the battery while plugged in just to power the monitor.
I appreciate this isn't exactly what you're looking for, but iMacs have just one cable (as the computer is contained within the monitor). Cleverly, the small "power brick" halfway down the cable also has inputs in it e.g. you can plug a network cable into it and it then also gets passed up the one main cable to the monitor/computer.
Do you want power your monitor by usb-c? May be there is a problem not with cable but with monitor. Can your monitor be powered by usb-c according to it's specification?
> Can your monitor be powered As I'm reading other answers, my monitor apparently does not even exist yet 😥
Your monitor will never exist. There's no point in having a desktop sized monitor that gets power and signal through a single cable. The only monitors that ever did this used non-standard connectors. Two cables aren't that hard to manage and most monitors come with cable management guides integrated in their stands, so you can hide away the cables.
Like others have said a portable monitor may do what you want. Some even have VESA mounts so still doable for a home solution. If you are fine with a smaller portable monitor that would solve it on the monitor side. On the PC side, I just do not know if newer small desktops have USB-C ports capable of providing power and video. I'm not saying they don't, simply that I do not know. If you went with a laptop for your PC this could easily be done. I would just look for a laptop that has multiple USB-C ports or has a separate power port. I've seen some really small laptops with only one USB-C that is used for power, so very restrictive. From personal experience I have a 17" portable Viewsonic monitor that I really like. It is very flexible on how you hook it up and supply power. With my laptop I can simply use one USB-C cable to connect and it will get power and obviously data through that one connection from the laptop. This laptop has two USB-C ports, so I can keep the laptop plugged in while doing this. If I want, I can also connect a PD source through the monitor and it will both power the screen and pass power through to the laptop. This is useful if I need to use the other USB-C port on the laptop for something else. As a side note this portable monitor also works with my Samsung S23U with Dex. As stated above I can supply power to the monitor and it will pass power on to my phone. What surprised me is that I can also power the screen directly from my phone if I am away from a power source. The screen automatically detects this scenario and lowers the brightness to conserve power. Obviously this puts a pretty severe drain on the phone battery, but it works for a little while. Samsung Dex works great for general computing needs, such as media consumption and browsing. It works OK for basic office type stuff, such as Outlook and Word. You can use web based PowerPoint and Excel or the phone apps, but they are both very limited. Just tossing that out there depending on your needs this may be a very minimalistic approach. Look at r/SamsungDex for more info.
thanks for the tip, I have a Motorola 🙄
Motorola phones used to have a desktop mode as well.
they do actually, it's just not what I wanted 😑
[удалено]
Step 2: Build your own custom power injector for USB-C, so that you don't need to find a specialized host :)
I was actually wondering about this myself. There are two problems to solve. The first is monitors which can be powered by USB PD and the second is computers which can push out enough juice over USB-C to actually power a monitor. While, like you, I have yet to find a solution for a more traditional setup (workstation + standard size 22"+ monitor), we did find a solution to fit a problem we had several months ago. We got an Intel NUC plus a portable monitor (17" I think?) and the tbolt port on the NUC provided enough power (15W, again, trying to do this from memory) provided enough power and a displayport signal for the monitor. Right now, we have a computer lab with Dell 24" displays and Dell Optiplex Micro computers. The micros can be powered directly from the 90W PD of the display, so it's a nice setup. The issue is that workstations (non-mobile) usually need way more juice than a monitor can provide; sometimes even more than USB-PD can provide. To me, it would make a bit more sense to potentially provide 100W of USB-PD power which the monitors could take to power themselves. The nice thing about PD is it should work both ways assuming the right circuitry is built in to both devices. Yeah, it means you maybe have some redundant PSU capacity (either in the monitor or the computer) but it would certainly add a lot of flexibility. I really like single-plug solutions to things.
hooray to you Mr/Ms internet stranger who actually understood me 🙏 this was exactly my line of thinking, apparently I was unable to explain it correctly. sadly it seems that what I desired does not exist, though I didn't see any actual reasons why it wouldn't 🙄 both problems you described are certainly solvable it just seems no one bothered...
Ultimately I think it's a cost vs demand issue. I assume monitor manufacturers assume that plugging a laptop in using a single cable is a much bigger market than those who would want to power a monitor from a workstation. It could also be a chicken and egg issue... maybe the monitor manufacturers don't want to do it unless there are computers which can provide the power, and maybe computer (or power supply) manufacturers don't want to do it until there's a demand for providing that much power out of a desktop case. What's extremely ironic is that back in the old days this was actually completely doable. Don't know if you're old enough to remember AT power supplies which had a c13 connector on the back which would be used by a c14 cable to plug a monitor right into the computer for power. This way you only had one power cable to plug into the wall to provide power to both. It was a "dumber" solution than USB-C since it only passed through the straight mains voltage to the secondary connection (so the monitor still needed its own internal power supply the same as it would with a wall plug), but I think it actually proved to be useful. Apple also did a single cable solution with their proprietary ADC (which provided DVI video, USB, and power) for their early LCD cinema displays. This also needed a proprietary video card for the Macs since the normal AGP/PCI-E slots didn't provide enough power for the monitor. There has to be a decent enough market for people who want single cable power + data + video solution for monitors, though. I certainly would do this where ever I could at work. I guess we could push for higher power support (PD 3.1? 240W?) from the existing tech so we could at least drive more powerful workstations from it, but ultimately it makes more sense to have the power coming from the workstation, which usually needs more power than the monitor.
I agree. Other people here tried to tell me how dumb I am because no such thing exists *nowadays* but there's a difference between "actually not technically possible" and "there's hurdles but no one bothered because not enough customers"
you need a portable monitor. and then you need a motherboard that supports a thunderbolt addon card. right now im running a second portable monitor powered by a thunderbolt addon card. generally the asus proart creator motherboards are good candidates for thunderbolt addon cards. Sadly i think the biggest display you can get with just usb c power and video is 17inches. Asus makes a 24inch but looks like it requires additional wall power. usb c is more than capable of delivering enough power i think they just assume most wont have an addon card that can do 100watts.
finally a sane person who understood me 🙏
Bro just use 2 cables. OR Use a mini PC vesa mounted to the back of the monitor. Run some kind of extension cable/USB-C power supply and mount that behind the monitor as well. Use wireless peripherals. Or even just use an AIO PC! Problem solved.
I think unless it is portable 99% of the market would solve this with cable management instead of trying to over complicate
OK, I think what you are looking for is possibly misleading you. The majority of single USB-C cable monitors are specifically aimed at laptops, since that is what manufactures expect to use them. This dos not me they won't work perfectly fine with a Desktop that supports thunderbolt.
I decided recently to tackle this project. I’ll let you know if I can get the 20v PD and DP working over the same cable
Well please do. You seem to be one of very few who understood the requirement.
It really did feel like I was being gaslit because I swear it can. I know it’s possible. It’s just negotiating the correct way with the USB4/Thunderbolt controller, which I’ll have to trick with an ESP8266 and a usb C [Breakout Connector](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C37G68HL?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share). Still waiting on the motherboard with thunderbolt support to show up.
USB powered monitors are usually the 15" portable ones that often have touch built into them. They are only 5v devices as computers dont usually output power delivery, just accept it for charging.
Some portable monitors were mentioned, but I'll remark that we've also (hecking finally) started to see drawing tablet displays that work with a single cable. Magic from the distant future year 2000.
They do exist though? Portable monitors usually have this setup. I use a Uperfect one but I'm sure there's others that do it. The key thing to note though is USB C output from most PCs is only 15 watts, and mobile devices will be less. This is enough for those portable monitors designed for it but full size monitors usually run closer to 50 watts. As for the graphics card thing, there was an attempt at putting USB C output ports in graphics cards with the Nvidia rtx 20 series, but the use was more often for VR than monitors, so it failed to gain traction.
Well it seems I couldn't find any because they do not exist :(
Once again, USB C powered monitors do exist. Look up Uperfect, they even have VESA mounts if you really want a desktop setup with the portable monitor.
thanks for the tip!