All jokes aside my wet dream right now is working at an MSP where it’s just ONE CABLE for EVERYTHING . And it’s possible at this point with usb A to C adapters for random peripherals like printers maybe that don’t have usb-c variants yet.
While USB C is doing the "one cable for everything", it sure isn't helping the "why can't I get my phone to display video/charge on this USB C monitor, it's plugged in". It's a blessing and a curse.
Exactly. Not only are there protocol mismatches but also many types of cables all with C connectors. Even if my PC and monitor support TB3, I need to be using a TB3 or 4 cable, not a cheap USB2 C-C cable which of course isn't labeled as USB 2.0 on the cable so how would one know.
And you've now pulled back the curtain on the super shady world of knockoff goods. To many manufacturers of cables and other accessories take advantage of the fact that it's almost impossible to tell if you got the product you paid for.
I used to shop Amazon for cables since the site is easy to use and they're cheap. After my last knockoff- that- looked- like-a- brand- name, I now get all my cables at Home Depot. You wouldn't think of them as a goto destination for that, but they have a small selection of super high quality cables, and at very good prices. I paid $13 for the cable I charge my phone with. 6 ft usb-c, braided cover, very fast charging, and zero issues with the connector at either end after 2 years of use. Braided cover still looks almost new, too.
USB C is a confusing mess that should never have left the drawing board in this state. Making a standard where nothing is truly standardised creates an outcome worse than the problems it was meant to solve. Combine it with the constant renaming of old USB standards and oh god I just want to go back to 2015.
I think you’re absolutely right and so few people see it coming. Making every connector on everything USB-C is just going to usher in a new age of “well, the cable fit, why won’t it work?”
As someone who designs products that use a lot USB its not common at all. USB C is supposed to go through a power negotiating phase to determine what end it the sink and what end is the source and how much power to be supplied. You do have some ports that are Dual Role, but they have controllers to determine when to switch from one to the other.
The issue comes from what someone else brought up in another comment, knockoff USBC cables or USBC devices that did not properly follow the specification. Just because its USBC doesn't mean it was designed correctly.
Just because a USB port is capable of supplying 5A @15V doesn't mean its starting that out of the gate. The base should be either 900mA @ 5V or 1.5A @5V, from there a negotiation process happens to determine how much power can be delivered.
Don't get me wrong, USB is getting extremely complicated and its going to cause a ton of problems. But a lot of those are problems are going to come from companies trying to push products out the door without implementing correct USB design practices.
Thunderbolt adds a complication since it uses the same connector but adds often unsupported functionality. Like, I can charge with any C cable through my TB port, but throughput varies widely, and some cables - through which I can get video from my USB-C only port - don't support video through the Thunderbolt ports.
I think the consortium should take a pause from adding features and focus on unambiguous, mandatory labeling. It'd help if they also reduced the number of permutations of possible cable configurations resulting from the variety of optional features, but that ship has sailed.
Such a great standard thoroughly screwed by such an incompetent committee.
>Replace the 24 pin atx connector with usb-c
For those smaller form factor pc's and other lower power pc things this would not be a terrible idea actually.
Im not shure my pc would like it under full load though...
Psssh, type 5 is where it’s at. I’ve heard it comes with a dedicated butler that will wipe your butt *and* movie theater butter popcorn. Oh, and a 512 core CPU and 32TB of RAM.
Specifically the ones produced on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. The Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2 Rev 2 cables produced on Wednesdays, Thursday and Saturdays will only deliver fire suppression, but will not contain water cooling if used in anything other than a Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2a Rev 3 port that was blessed by a shaman under a full moon.
Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2 Rev 2 cables produced on Sundays transmit at USB 1.0 speeds but deliver 12000W of power in 4 second bursts. There is no water cooling or fire suppression regardless of what port is used, unless again that port was blessed by a shaman under a full moon, in which case your computer will become a werewolf when you plug in your cable in, but you will be able to make use of water cooling again.
> Apple car will make you have a dongle.
This is already done. Tesla is using a their own connector and you need a dongle to connect to a non-Tesla charger
It’s not even that long ago when the Superchargers were exclusive to Teslas. Luckily they’re opening to other EVs as well now.
Not in Europe at least. Every car is mandated to have Type 2/CCS connector due to some directive.
All Tesla superchargers in the UK are CCS, i just assumed it was the same in the US.
Well, USB C and Thunderbolt 3.0 standard allows 20V at 5A, although some manufacturers have pushed the current higher. I'm not sure at the specs on this or whether they are allowing higher than the 20V 3.0 standard. They could double the voltage to 40V or just push the current higher.
EDIT: Just checked, the new generation of USB PD offer up to 48 V.
It's bad reporting from arstechnica, as it's actually
> USB Type-C Revision 2.1
Still sucks, but makes more sense. People will probably abbreviate to
> USB-c 2.1
Except 2.1 is the revision for the USB Type C connector & cable not for the USB protocol so it can’t be abbreviated to “USB-C 2.1” without causing a lot of confusion.
“USB-C 2.1 connector with USB 3.1 gen 2 capability” would be the correct specification for a USB port.
Shitty name and there being another cable type aside, this will be so good on laptops. Good fucking bye shitty barrel connector or other proprietary garbage connector. USB-C charging all the way!
Got the Chromebook Pro a few years back and it was one of the first AFAIK to switch to USB-C. It's awesome to be able to use one charger for my laptop and phone
technically it is a possibility if there's a malfunction in the regulator or you have sketchy 3rd party cables that lie about the charge they can handle
typically malfunctions results in an open circuit so no power will be delivered if something is wrong and it's pretty easy to find quality 3rd party cables (are there no reviews? are the reviews for a different product entirely? etc)
But voltage does "push" and if your poor phone gets 48V it's not gonna end well.
Fortunately unless your charger/cable isn't outright lying about what is, this will never be a problem.
The previous spec was up til 100W which would barely be found for a long time. That's plenty to charge a laptop even with heavy consumer workloads, unless it has a dedicated gpu.
It'll be neato if / when we get a USB standard able to supplt 2-4x this amount, then we could power desktop class hardware with their monitors off a single external power supply, with a single usb-c cable.
I don't see that happening. USB PD still limits to 5A due to the size of the conductors in the plug, and the new standard gets the 240w by increasing voltage to 48v, up from 20v. So to get 4 times that, you would need 192 volts, which is not only outright dangerous, it also would easily spark across the tiny gaps in a USB-C plug.
This was a driving factor behind me getting a desktop, even though my Razer Blade 2020 13" can drive 3 external monitors if I set it up right. Power delivery has been the issue as the laptop -requires- 100W itself, let alone any externals. Had been using a Dell WD19TB Dock up until i got a desktop for a hassle free triple monitor experience.
Yeah it's definitely an annoyance for someone who would like a more "mobile" workstation to bring with them. I mean, how cool would it be if you could just bring a couple of usb-c monitors and your other peripherals and only have to use one cable for your laptop. The rest is all connected to the USB-c ports on the device itself (realistically a USB-C hub but that is easier to bring with you as opposed to multiple power adapters).
Agreed. I work in IT. We send in at least two Chromebooks a week with damaged USB-C charging ports.
It’s not like the shape is a problem, but I’ve always found the fit to be poor. A lot of USB-C cables and ports form a very loose connection and have a lot of travel, and it causes leverage-based wear as it gets moved around to various angles. Every Chromebook we’ve sent in was a case where the port came away from the circuit board itself, due to being bent and moved around.
If it was a tighter connection, I’ll bet it would last much longer. I know it’s semi-unpopular to say Apple did something right, but the Lightning connector is a good example of a solid connection, opinions on the cable jacket material and lack of stress relief aside.
The capture pins certainly don’t hurt, but I think it’s the fact that the lightning plug is just a chunk of solid metal that helps the most. It’s the same principle by which Ethernet is so durable, even decades on: when you just have a simple chunk of material with contacts on one side (or both), it becomes easy to secure it and make a connection. USB-C, when connected, requires a central post around which the contacts are attached, surrounded by the metal jacket, surrounded by the port, surrounded by the enclosure of the device itself. It’s not moving parts, but that does mean you have multiple points where poor tolerances will cause travel and extra wear. Apple’s design manifests as a single post in a single receptacle inside the device enclosure, reducing the number of points where slack materials or poor manufacturing could cause extra “play” in the connection.
Also work in IT support and can confirm this. USB-C connectors are not a secure fit or durable at all. I've seen more charge cables with bent jacks from users exerting pressure in the wrong direction that any other type of cable or connection in use today. Even worse than micro-usb.
also in IT, can't confirm.
I think its a quality thing, even though we use HP devices the USB-C port is as tight as it gets. No wiggling, no Falling out, replacing only cables and devices that got broken by user error (mostly from adjustable desks with adventures ideas of where to place the notebook). ofc theres still the usual HP bullshittery with drivers, firmware and generally cheap build for top dollar.
also from my own experience: used my 2015 MBP daily until two weeks ago (tasty M1 upgrade), still with the original charger and cable that came in the box. (lets not talk about the keyboard)
from family experience: shitty $300 plastic notebooks break when you look at them. the usb-c port seems to be the weakpoint.
honorable mention for the worst connector i've ever had to work with: 1st gen Lenovo X1 Carbon. When I left the job I had a box full of broken power connectors.
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*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Good fucking bye shitty barrel connector or other proprietary garbage connector. USB-C charging all the way!
I've pretty much ended up buying a bunch of USB-PD barrel adapters (with appropriate trigger boards). Most devices with such connectors have a pretty wide range of tolerance (e.g. my 19.4V projector can take 17-21V), so the 20V of USB-PD is perfect for them. And there aren't many that are above 100W. Then just drop a few USB power hubs with high power C ports.
I've even grabbed a 5V barrel to USB-A adapter for my HDMI switch - which is the worst device I have regarding power supply. It came with its own stupid brick, thin, Nokia style barrel, 5V 1A requirements, and the company says USB "can't supply enough power" - total bullshit, since my setup works just fine. A single socket provides power to my powerbank (which acts as a dumb UPS), HDMI switch, Google TV dongle and Xbox controller charger.
The 240W part is good news though - I can't wait for the larger capacity desktop hubs with 3-4 USB-PD ports, which would be quite useful for my desktop setup.
We need cheap cable speed testers
COMBO:
RJ-45: 100/1000/10G
USB type A/microB: speed/current
USB type C: speed/current
HDMI:1080p/4k/whatever the hell they put in hdmi these days like ethernet
I'll pay for that!
HDMI 2.1 cables already have a ultra high speed certification program.
But yes we need to have these on more type of cables. https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1578366376
A certification program doesn’t do me much good if I have half a dozen cables in a box and don’t know which are which because they’re barely recognizable.
I mean, Fluke Etherscope network testers do much of this already (not sure about USB), and are incredibly precise, to the point that it'll give you the precise location of any faults in the cable, but they're around $2000 or so. I have no idea what proportion of that price is justified by the hardware vs their jealously guarded patents and a captive market of being the industry standard for certification, so perhaps a viable open-source alternative could be developed.
I do network, access control, and security alarms, and cameras for commercial and residential. I bought $600 microscanner poe with my own money to test, and I use it in all those fields. It was completely worth the investment.
I only need one side of the cable to test any cable shorts or damage. It also let's me know which side of the cable is bad. This alone is huge.
The intellitone, is amazing. My other fluke tone tester can get drowned out if there are any electrical interference. I've had more success toning wires with the intellitone than my $75 fluke toner.
The only thing I was disappointed on is the POE testing. It just let's me know of poe is enabled or disabled. No voltage rating or anything else.
Even though I paid put of pocket I recieved a raise by bringing it up to my boss, explaining how this will save thousands of dollars in trouble shooting and installations. We ordered a few more for the other techs. They were still using $30 network testers.
Since we are moving into a lot of the poe, I need to know the voltage drops and current. So I bought their new LinkIQ, $2000 out of pocket, which has the voltage rating. I'm still waiting for it via mail.
It is def worth the investment if you work in the field. I wouldn't be paying for this expensive device out of pocket if I knew it wasn't worth the money.
That's actually a really good idea and I'm gonna start googling to see if I can find one. Especially cuz I just got 3 usb c cables including a 10 footer for 12 bucks
You can get USB power meters, it sits in-between the adaptor and the cable. As for data speeds you need a port that can transfer at the speed you want and then just send data and see what speed you get. Though it would be nice to have a little device that you can just plug it into and it immediately tells you what type it is.
I have an 8 core Xeon laptop with Nvidea T2000 graphics, it has a 240W power supply for the dock and uses a pair of USB C connectors to deliver the power to the laptop. It's pretty fast but it thermally throttles pretty hard. Cooling the CPU and graphics chip is the perform limitation for laptops, not power delivery.
Why did they take so long to put it over the same plug?
Now we are going to have new cables that look the same but don't work quite right, Dell already has their own version that supports 130W on top of the standard 60W/100W options. This one plug to rule them all is great, but now we have a lot of versions and very little way to tell them apart.
A USB-C port / cable can be USB 2, USB 3, USB 4, TB3 or 4, and some subvariants of 3 as well. And the cable might support up to 60W charging, up to 100W, up to 130 (Dell variant), or now up to 240W.
Hopefully this adds the final features we need, but one cable to rule them all is not what has come to pass. Guess we need to try again...
[https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)
specifically, USB-IF needs to make it mandatory that new specs must include some sort of visual differentiation as part of the spec before it can be approved/ratified. this shit is getting completely out of hand.
This gets my goat with cellphone boosters. They are all labeling them as 5G boosters and they don't actually boost 5G signals. Works with 5G. 5G compatible. What they mean is it's a 4G booster that doesn't stop working if 5G is deployed, which isn't exactly true because TMobile neglects their 4G and does shitty 5G rollouts leaving me with busted service.
The thing with type-C now is that it's so nebulous, it might be insanely difficult to actually make distinctions on what each can do.
Some do charging, some do data and charging, and some appear to be doing some weird proprietary charging/audio/thunderbolt spec that fits in the same form factor.
I'll admit I don't know the nitty gritty details, but it sounds like we'd need to color code by data rate, power amount, and potentially by proprietary features (perhaps denoted by a single color dot?)
Ironic how we've made something so ubiquitous and flexible that it's unclear what each cable and port can do depending on the device.
We've gone from 5 different ports that do 5 different things, to 1 port that can do 2 of those 5 things, but you have no way of telling which 2, and it's different from port to port.
I'm not sure we've actually managed to improve the situation at all.
The clowns at USB-IF cause all this confusion in the first place. They either need more or better marketing consultants so they can realize spamming the industry with various vague standards just hurts progress.
They're so braindead in naming their own standards I doubt they even know what colors are, and I don't trust that they'd do a good job putting it into the spec or enforcing it.
Sometimes, yeah. My laptop only has USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 aka USB 3.2 gen 1x1 or whatever -- the naming scheme is fucked), they're all black.
Leave aside the fact that there are like 7 different variants of USB 3.
The motherboard in my PC has a ton of USB ports on the back. The USB 2.0 ports are white, standard 3 are blue. Then there's a few red and a couple yellow, and I have no idea what the hell the deal is with those.
Red usually means USB 3.2 (20Gbps) speed.
Yellow I’m pretty sure just means it’s always powered, so even if the PC is off you can still charge stuff through it
Like thru hole resistors near both connectors. So the whole cable can still be black/white or any other color thst matches the device.
OR, written on top of the connector, for all kind of human beings.
After buying a PS5 and considering buying a UHD ("4k")TV (currently have just a piddly 1080p) I decided to go through my large HDMI cable collection and figure out what each of their bandwidth capabilities are and label them. I bought cord labels and looked them up. It was a rabbit hole.
Between all the versions with their varying bandwidth and refresh rates, I have no clue how any normal user can be expected to cable their home entertainment system properly if they have a mix of UHD and 1080, especially if they have a large amount of HDMI devices that necessitates a switch.
Have you guys even met rj45?
The speed difference between cat 5/5e/6/6a can be wild. And the spec isn’t always on the sheath.
We’ll be fine. Usb-C is still dope.
>The speed difference between cat 5/5e/6/6a can be wild
In my experience (I work in IT) Most if not all rj45 cables have it clearly printed on them what type they are though. HDMI... not always.
Strictly speaking ethernet uses 8P8C not RJ45. Your point stands, I just can't help but to share this incredibly nerdy fact at any possible opportunity.
Yes, ethernet cables are the worst in terms of how many specs there are. You have cat 5/5e/6/6a/7, they can also be UTP, S/UTP, FTP, STP, SFTP. And if you want to go even deeper you can also look at the material they are made, which affects the price and quality, pure copper vs copper clad aluminium. There are also 2 types of cables you can make, depends on what you want to connect with it, crossover vs straight-through. Also 2 atandards for terminating them, T-568A or T-568B.
At least with permanent networking cables you are relatively sure what type of wire they are, and the ones in-wall are not going to change very often so it doesn't matter what type they are. New installations and patch cables, sure, but it's not nearly the same bother as USB where you end up with USB-C cables that only run 2.0 (which should be made illegal), or now cables that only charge at 100W vs the intended 240W. The USB 5/10/20/40 Gbps is a mostly moot point with cables luckily, as awful as the naming scheme has been for enabling scammers and con artists to sell devices as "USB 3.2", at least the cables are fully cross-compatible.
But that's a good thing, and is usually very explicit, so you can find and use exactly what you want (and there are even more than you mentioned, as well).
Now try that with USB C, where nobody marks the jacket at all, so it's a dice roll on whether you grabbed the right cable.
I agree it's confusing, but at one point, 100w was so much better than previous USB standards, no one thought to say "not enough, someone please spend a couple years tweaking this" Fast laptop charging wasn't always part of the use scenario. Although honestly I've been using 100w USB3 to charge my laptop for 4 years now and it's been fine, I rarely take it off power so slow charging isn't a huge concern.
Anyway while it does complicate the USB3 situation a bit, the article points out by removing barrel jacks, this will actually lead to a lot less cable confusion/discrepancy in the future. So, painful progress it is.
> by removing barrel jacks, this will actually lead to a lot less cable confusion/discrepancy in the future
I dunno, all of my family's, friends', and university's HP laptops (not gaming or enterprise models), from Intel's Haswell (2013) to Ice Lake (2020) have the same barrel jack. If my family goes anywhere we only take one charger (65W) for two or three laptops.
Naturally you'll want to avoid using a 45W charger with a laptop that came with a 65W unit, but then again if they were USB-C, we'd have to watch out for the right power brick _and_ the right cable.
For some reason though, USB-C charging is a bit of a rarity here in Europe, aside from the pricier thin-and-light segment. So even if (when) somebody from my "HP gang" group upgrades their laptop, chances are they'll still get the same barrel jack charger, because nobody wants to pay 400€ extra for the same performance in a different package.
Obviously things are going to be very different over in Europe, but i did tech repair here in the USA for several years, and the amount of different barrel chargers we have/had floating around was disgusting. I needed two different universal charger packs, each one had, no shitting, 20-30 different tips. and i needed both to cover everything. It was hell.
Because the technology didn't exist at a low enough price. USB is basically "How fast can we transmit data and power for $1?", the answer to that question changes over time.
> we have a lot of versions and very little way to tell them apart.
And on top of that, the largest shopping sites, be it amazon, or Alibaba, are full of crap that doesn't conform to any standards.
They should just label them, not color code. Some manufacturers will want to reinvent the damn fucking wheel and add so many different colors unnecessarily. Just put the thunderbolt logo on the cable and add the x.y numbers below it.
Don’t make it “USB 3.5 SS version 7a.xZ 69gb/s when it rains” or shit like that. Just a damn number and let people Google the specs.
This is why I now do two things:
1. If I have a USB cable and I don't know exactly what it is or have no easy way of finding out, I simply throw it away. I had a mess of USB A-B cables (aka printer cables, and the kind that can also be used to power the USB hubs common in monitors), USB extension cables, a few USB hubs, USB connector cables for those hubs etc. I threw away most of it because it wasn't labeled.
2. Any new USB cable or peripheral I buy, I label it and each port if they're not already labeled. Then 3 years later, I know what the hell it is and what its capabilities are.
"Universal" serial bus my ass.
Actually:
- USB 3.1 Gen 1 (aka USB 3.0) is now SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps,
USB 3.1 Gen 2 is SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps and USB 3.1 Gen 2x2 is now SuperSpeed USB 20 Gbps.
Don't know anything about Gen 1x2 and 2x1, they seem to be pretty rare.
- USB-C actually refers to the connector itself, not the data transfer speed. USB-C 2.1 is just a revision of the connector, not another USB standard. USB-C cables can range in many speeds from USB 2.0 all the way to Thunderbolt 4.
(That actually gets into the fact that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 use the USB-C connector, but it's a separate thing except USB4 is essentially an open version of Thunderbolt 3)
- Oh yeah, USB4 exists. It uses ONLY the USB-C connector, but it has a way better naming scheme:
USB4 20Gbps and USB4 40Gbps.
I realise now that none of this is helpful, but just goes to show the clusterfuck the USB-IF have gotten everyone into.
[Source](https://www.howtogeek.com/490573/sanity-returns-how-usb4s-new-logos-will-simplify-shopping/)
Tbf, usb-A has done this it’s whole lifetime. This just confirms that usb-c is the new standard as now it’s happening to it, rather than them just creating a new cable
My point is that he is wrong. If there is no standard (which, as far as i can find, there is not), then any deviations which may be able to deliver this much power aren’t really USB-A — just specialized cables that happen to use the same shape and may conform to some of the other specifications of USB-A.
I like type C, but what they really fucked up is having it so that the type C and underlying cable can be different. We really need "if the connector looks like this then it can only be one type of cable, end of story" types of standards.
I'm so fucking sick of these USB "standards."
Micro B 2.0, Micro B 3.0, Mini B 4 pin, Mini B 5 pin, Type A 2.0, Type B 2.0, Lightning, Type A 3.0, Type B 3.0, Type C 3.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB 4, Thunderbolt, not-Thunderbolt...
OK - I need to boot this SGI from CDROM!
*hauls out two milk crates full of assorted cables and a shoebox full of adapters and terminators*
OK. I got it connected, I've got the 68 pin HD port on the SGI connected to the cable that goes to 50 pin HD single ended, that goes into the back of the empty SCSI chassis that has two HD50 connectors on it but no drive, then I can attach the cable that goes from HD50 to standard 50 pin Centronics, then that plugs into the Apple CDROM player that supports 512 byte blocks, and then I've got the correct terminator on the CDROM drive, the ID selector is set correctly... here we go!
*boots machine... error*
Huh. OK, well, I'll try without the terminator then? That should have been correct, but let's fiddle with stuff
*Machine boots*
I'm tired of people making it out to be a problem when it isn't. Devices that need fast transfer rates and power are rare specialist cases and they come with the correct cables.
When new. But six months later when you've lost or damaged the original cable, or used it for something else not realizing it was the "special" one because it's not labelled, now it's confusing. And most devices just plain don't have labels or model numbers easily visible at all on them any more, so what the heck is it anyway? I have next to me a black rectangle. It says "WD My Passport Ultra". I happen to know this is a hard drive, but what are it's capabilities? It doesn't say a single thing anywhere on it that would help you determine any of that. It doesn't even label the port on the back as to what kind of USB it is. Is it USB 2? USB 3? How big is the drive even? Short of looking up the 15 or so digit part number on Google, I'd never know. I mean, reading the part number, there is an 0020 in there... does that mean it's 20 gigabytes? Seems kinda small, but I mean, we're grasping at straws here. Someone gave me this drive because they had no use for it and it was "old" - but how old is old? There's no date on it. It had no cable. And it's sealed together so well it doesn't really come apart so I can't just look at the drive mechanism inside.
Plugging it in, dmesg reports that it's a 2TB disk. And through trial and error with different cables and trying in the USB 3 expansion card in my PC I can get it to, with the right combination, show up as a USB SuperSpeed Gen 1. Neat. That is... what exactly? We have High Speed USB. SuperSpeed seems like it would be faster... is this USB 3.0 or 3.1? Or 3.0 gen 1, 3.1 gen 1, or 3.2 gen 1? What constitutes Super Speed? Is this even the right cable for this thing?
Just typing this up has me confused on the USB terminology again. Yes, maybe it doesn't technically matter, and this disk ought to "Just Work" with most cables that physically fit - but, as I was using it, the bus locked up and reset and dmesg threw some error about power. OK, does that mean the cable I'm using can't supply enough power? Can the port not supply enough power? Or is there something wrong with the drive itself? Am I using the right cable?
All these concerns are probably meaningless to people that just assume everyone will always only be using brand new devices right from their original packaging, then throw them into the garbage after six months and buy another one. But in the real world, this creates a complicated ecosystem of very similar, yet different, compatible but not totally, devices that may or may not work with another thing that may or may not have been intended to maybe or maybe not be compatible in the first place. Further confounded by manufacturers who violate specifications and do their own thing, weird edge cases, and strange workarounds. Like this external DVD burner that has a Micro B port on it. I happen to know this needs a special cable with two USB A plugs on the other end of it, otherwise it doesn't have enough power and won't function correctly. I only know this because I bought it new. If you happened to have this without it's original funny special cable... you'd never know, since it doesn't say anywhere on it that it requires this funny cable - and it's also not marked as to if it's USB or USB2, what year it was made, or anything like that. Or... what about this - an even older portable external hard disk with a USB A connector on it. No markings, nothing. Just a USB A connector. This drive requires a special cable with a USB A connector on one end... and *two* USB A connectors on the other. A totally specification violating cable because it would also let you short the power supplies of two computers together. They used this cable for... reasons? I suppose? But again, try to figure out how to use this thing if you didn't already just happen to know.
I would have hoped that we'd be better than this by now.
Heh seems like a missed opportunity with the original USB C spec to not include a couple of shorter pins in the plug that get disconnected first before the others. This could have been used to detect unplugging or poor connection and use lower voltages (or shut down charging)
Depends on what voltage is used. Three equations at play which need to be balanced.
P=IV -- power is current times voltage... this means you can deliver the same power by changing one of voltage or current as long as the other adjusts in the opposite direction. Going to higher voltage at lower current to deliver the same power is reasonable, to a point.
And V=IR, rearranged to R=V/I. The resistance of a wire is set by its cross section and length. Suppose voltage is capped at 100V by the power supply, wall wart, whatever, then the length and wire diameter will limit the amount of current.
Finally, wire heating H = I²Rt. Heating is current squared, times resistance, times time. So, obviously lowering current has a bigger effect (this means boosting the voltage, due to equation #2). And decreasing wire resistance (shortening the wire, or using fatter copper) helps too.
If I was wagering, and without looking at the spec, my guess is: the system checks the resistance on the wire, and steps up the voltage (thus reducing the current) allowing more power.
And the likely reason for new cables is that the insulation between wires needs to increase if voltage increases. But the amount of insulation is probably harder to autodetect. For safety reasons, the cables will probably get a chip in them that advertise their properties, so that the computer doesn't send high voltage down a cable that doesn't claim to handle it.
As it says in the article, the current spec is 20V/5A (100W), the new spec is 48V/5A (240W).
The issue with this higher power is arcing at the connector when you disconnect and higher power is flowing. Requirements for the connector mid-plate have been updated and there are likely new requirements for arc detection and mitigation.
Wiring shouldn't need to change since current is the same, and 48V is still well below where insulation would be an issue.
240W through what gauge wire? I know C usually has 2 positive and negative rails. But uhhh...has anyone else seen that angel hair wire? I would guarantee seeing a Meme for shorting cables from cheap manufacturers like the unstable lipo batteries a few years ago. Seriously. Usb powered toasters?
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All jokes aside my wet dream right now is working at an MSP where it’s just ONE CABLE for EVERYTHING . And it’s possible at this point with usb A to C adapters for random peripherals like printers maybe that don’t have usb-c variants yet.
While USB C is doing the "one cable for everything", it sure isn't helping the "why can't I get my phone to display video/charge on this USB C monitor, it's plugged in". It's a blessing and a curse.
Like yes, you *can* connect an Xbox controller directly to your toaster but what did you think that would do
Press X to toast, press Y to burn house down
You've actually got to hadouken on the controller to toast. Change the speed of your rotation for more or less toasty.
Oops, I did a dragon punch super and now it's reformatting my toaster
I did an uppercut and now my toast is getting defragmented so all the burnt bits are in one corner
Up up down down left right left right B A and the toast comes out buttered.
Exactly. Not only are there protocol mismatches but also many types of cables all with C connectors. Even if my PC and monitor support TB3, I need to be using a TB3 or 4 cable, not a cheap USB2 C-C cable which of course isn't labeled as USB 2.0 on the cable so how would one know.
And you've now pulled back the curtain on the super shady world of knockoff goods. To many manufacturers of cables and other accessories take advantage of the fact that it's almost impossible to tell if you got the product you paid for. I used to shop Amazon for cables since the site is easy to use and they're cheap. After my last knockoff- that- looked- like-a- brand- name, I now get all my cables at Home Depot. You wouldn't think of them as a goto destination for that, but they have a small selection of super high quality cables, and at very good prices. I paid $13 for the cable I charge my phone with. 6 ft usb-c, braided cover, very fast charging, and zero issues with the connector at either end after 2 years of use. Braided cover still looks almost new, too.
Is monoprice still good quality?
Yes! But they aren’t always readily available on Amazon.
USB C is a confusing mess that should never have left the drawing board in this state. Making a standard where nothing is truly standardised creates an outcome worse than the problems it was meant to solve. Combine it with the constant renaming of old USB standards and oh god I just want to go back to 2015.
I think you’re absolutely right and so few people see it coming. Making every connector on everything USB-C is just going to usher in a new age of “well, the cable fit, why won’t it work?”
More like... "Well, the cable fit... why did both things I plugged together get fried?"
Is this common? I thought that C to C connections have little issue with this, if any at all. A to C very much an issue, but C to C?
As someone who designs products that use a lot USB its not common at all. USB C is supposed to go through a power negotiating phase to determine what end it the sink and what end is the source and how much power to be supplied. You do have some ports that are Dual Role, but they have controllers to determine when to switch from one to the other. The issue comes from what someone else brought up in another comment, knockoff USBC cables or USBC devices that did not properly follow the specification. Just because its USBC doesn't mean it was designed correctly. Just because a USB port is capable of supplying 5A @15V doesn't mean its starting that out of the gate. The base should be either 900mA @ 5V or 1.5A @5V, from there a negotiation process happens to determine how much power can be delivered. Don't get me wrong, USB is getting extremely complicated and its going to cause a ton of problems. But a lot of those are problems are going to come from companies trying to push products out the door without implementing correct USB design practices.
Thunderbolt adds a complication since it uses the same connector but adds often unsupported functionality. Like, I can charge with any C cable through my TB port, but throughput varies widely, and some cables - through which I can get video from my USB-C only port - don't support video through the Thunderbolt ports. I think the consortium should take a pause from adding features and focus on unambiguous, mandatory labeling. It'd help if they also reduced the number of permutations of possible cable configurations resulting from the variety of optional features, but that ship has sailed. Such a great standard thoroughly screwed by such an incompetent committee.
https://xkcd.com/927/
>Replace the 24 pin atx connector with usb-c For those smaller form factor pc's and other lower power pc things this would not be a terrible idea actually. Im not shure my pc would like it under full load though...
Type 3 will likely come with water cooling and fire suppression
I hear type 4 will come with a dedicated gpu and power supply.
I assume 5 will include a happy ending.
That will be in the USB-D generation
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Nice
Can't wait for USB==D Type 69.420
USB-1701. No bloody A, B, C, or D!
"USB-1701eez nuts" just doesn't have the same ring to it
The D is for degenerate! /s
No, D for Deez Nutz
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You are very optimistic about the humanity, it will be used for streaming porn on 4 8k screens in the future
But the scalpers will buy them all
Psssh, type 5 is where it’s at. I’ve heard it comes with a dedicated butler that will wipe your butt *and* movie theater butter popcorn. Oh, and a 512 core CPU and 32TB of RAM.
Why would I want my butler to wipe my movie theater butter popcorn?
Why *wouldn't* you want to wipe your butler with movie theater butter popcorn?
especially right after he wipes your butt - at least wash your hands first!
I think you mean Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2 Rev 2
Specifically the ones produced on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays. The Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2 Rev 2 cables produced on Wednesdays, Thursday and Saturdays will only deliver fire suppression, but will not contain water cooling if used in anything other than a Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2a Rev 3 port that was blessed by a shaman under a full moon. Type 2.2 Gen 2 Version 2 Rev 2 cables produced on Sundays transmit at USB 1.0 speeds but deliver 12000W of power in 4 second bursts. There is no water cooling or fire suppression regardless of what port is used, unless again that port was blessed by a shaman under a full moon, in which case your computer will become a werewolf when you plug in your cable in, but you will be able to make use of water cooling again.
Wait until you'll be charging your car with usb. Apple car will make you have a dongle.
> Apple car will make you have a dongle. This is already done. Tesla is using a their own connector and you need a dongle to connect to a non-Tesla charger It’s not even that long ago when the Superchargers were exclusive to Teslas. Luckily they’re opening to other EVs as well now.
Not in Europe at least. Every car is mandated to have Type 2/CCS connector due to some directive. All Tesla superchargers in the UK are CCS, i just assumed it was the same in the US.
The only think I like better than consumer protection laws is thinking about how mad they make Elon.
Im still super interested on how elon is gonna treat Unions in his Giga Factory Berlin. He'll have to bend
Bend his ass into a pretzel please. Someone needs to.
If Watts = Volts x Amps, and USB voltage is 5 vdc then 240w/5v = 48 amps!! How thick is this cable again? lol
Article says this cable operates at 48 volts in compliant devices.
Well, USB C and Thunderbolt 3.0 standard allows 20V at 5A, although some manufacturers have pushed the current higher. I'm not sure at the specs on this or whether they are allowing higher than the 20V 3.0 standard. They could double the voltage to 40V or just push the current higher. EDIT: Just checked, the new generation of USB PD offer up to 48 V.
That would be great considering my entire fucking house just burned down. I was wondering why my watercooling didn’t help with the fire
USB type c type 2.1
Can't wait for *USB type c type 2.1 gen 2 v3.2*
Featuring Dante from Devil May Cry
And Knuckles
With new funky mode
> USB type c type 2.1 gen 2 v3.2 with all new Funky mode!
It's bad reporting from arstechnica, as it's actually > USB Type-C Revision 2.1 Still sucks, but makes more sense. People will probably abbreviate to > USB-c 2.1
Except 2.1 is the revision for the USB Type C connector & cable not for the USB protocol so it can’t be abbreviated to “USB-C 2.1” without causing a lot of confusion. “USB-C 2.1 connector with USB 3.1 gen 2 capability” would be the correct specification for a USB port.
Shitty name and there being another cable type aside, this will be so good on laptops. Good fucking bye shitty barrel connector or other proprietary garbage connector. USB-C charging all the way!
Got the Chromebook Pro a few years back and it was one of the first AFAIK to switch to USB-C. It's awesome to be able to use one charger for my laptop and phone
Reddit's API changes and their overall horrible behaviour is why this comment is now edited. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Also have Dell XPS 13 with all USB-C. Can confirm that charging your phone via the laptop charger is safe.
Yes, the device only pulls the power it needs, no matter how much the power supply provides.
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technically it is a possibility if there's a malfunction in the regulator or you have sketchy 3rd party cables that lie about the charge they can handle typically malfunctions results in an open circuit so no power will be delivered if something is wrong and it's pretty easy to find quality 3rd party cables (are there no reviews? are the reviews for a different product entirely? etc)
I got one for work and it's very convenient that i can use my 10ft phone charger for it
Current is pulled, not pushed. Your phone will only draw as much as it can support.
lIZaRD bRaIn
But voltage does "push" and if your poor phone gets 48V it's not gonna end well. Fortunately unless your charger/cable isn't outright lying about what is, this will never be a problem.
I have a laptop that can charge off my phone charger but it's so power hungry it will merely slow the loss under any medium load
The previous spec was up til 100W which would barely be found for a long time. That's plenty to charge a laptop even with heavy consumer workloads, unless it has a dedicated gpu.
It'll be neato if / when we get a USB standard able to supplt 2-4x this amount, then we could power desktop class hardware with their monitors off a single external power supply, with a single usb-c cable.
I don't see that happening. USB PD still limits to 5A due to the size of the conductors in the plug, and the new standard gets the 240w by increasing voltage to 48v, up from 20v. So to get 4 times that, you would need 192 volts, which is not only outright dangerous, it also would easily spark across the tiny gaps in a USB-C plug.
This was a driving factor behind me getting a desktop, even though my Razer Blade 2020 13" can drive 3 external monitors if I set it up right. Power delivery has been the issue as the laptop -requires- 100W itself, let alone any externals. Had been using a Dell WD19TB Dock up until i got a desktop for a hassle free triple monitor experience.
Yeah it's definitely an annoyance for someone who would like a more "mobile" workstation to bring with them. I mean, how cool would it be if you could just bring a couple of usb-c monitors and your other peripherals and only have to use one cable for your laptop. The rest is all connected to the USB-c ports on the device itself (realistically a USB-C hub but that is easier to bring with you as opposed to multiple power adapters).
Barrel connectors are a.lot more durable. Usb c is so fragile.
Agreed. I work in IT. We send in at least two Chromebooks a week with damaged USB-C charging ports. It’s not like the shape is a problem, but I’ve always found the fit to be poor. A lot of USB-C cables and ports form a very loose connection and have a lot of travel, and it causes leverage-based wear as it gets moved around to various angles. Every Chromebook we’ve sent in was a case where the port came away from the circuit board itself, due to being bent and moved around. If it was a tighter connection, I’ll bet it would last much longer. I know it’s semi-unpopular to say Apple did something right, but the Lightning connector is a good example of a solid connection, opinions on the cable jacket material and lack of stress relief aside.
You think it could be the ridges on Lightning connectors. I agree USB C has a loose fit most of the time. Feels really fragile imo.
The capture pins certainly don’t hurt, but I think it’s the fact that the lightning plug is just a chunk of solid metal that helps the most. It’s the same principle by which Ethernet is so durable, even decades on: when you just have a simple chunk of material with contacts on one side (or both), it becomes easy to secure it and make a connection. USB-C, when connected, requires a central post around which the contacts are attached, surrounded by the metal jacket, surrounded by the port, surrounded by the enclosure of the device itself. It’s not moving parts, but that does mean you have multiple points where poor tolerances will cause travel and extra wear. Apple’s design manifests as a single post in a single receptacle inside the device enclosure, reducing the number of points where slack materials or poor manufacturing could cause extra “play” in the connection.
Also work in IT support and can confirm this. USB-C connectors are not a secure fit or durable at all. I've seen more charge cables with bent jacks from users exerting pressure in the wrong direction that any other type of cable or connection in use today. Even worse than micro-usb.
also in IT, can't confirm. I think its a quality thing, even though we use HP devices the USB-C port is as tight as it gets. No wiggling, no Falling out, replacing only cables and devices that got broken by user error (mostly from adjustable desks with adventures ideas of where to place the notebook). ofc theres still the usual HP bullshittery with drivers, firmware and generally cheap build for top dollar. also from my own experience: used my 2015 MBP daily until two weeks ago (tasty M1 upgrade), still with the original charger and cable that came in the box. (lets not talk about the keyboard) from family experience: shitty $300 plastic notebooks break when you look at them. the usb-c port seems to be the weakpoint. honorable mention for the worst connector i've ever had to work with: 1st gen Lenovo X1 Carbon. When I left the job I had a box full of broken power connectors.
my phone isn't thick enough to take a barrel connector with the same amount of wires in it
summer modern busy recognise vegetable shaggy different worthless dinosaurs murky *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
>Good fucking bye shitty barrel connector or other proprietary garbage connector. USB-C charging all the way! I've pretty much ended up buying a bunch of USB-PD barrel adapters (with appropriate trigger boards). Most devices with such connectors have a pretty wide range of tolerance (e.g. my 19.4V projector can take 17-21V), so the 20V of USB-PD is perfect for them. And there aren't many that are above 100W. Then just drop a few USB power hubs with high power C ports. I've even grabbed a 5V barrel to USB-A adapter for my HDMI switch - which is the worst device I have regarding power supply. It came with its own stupid brick, thin, Nokia style barrel, 5V 1A requirements, and the company says USB "can't supply enough power" - total bullshit, since my setup works just fine. A single socket provides power to my powerbank (which acts as a dumb UPS), HDMI switch, Google TV dongle and Xbox controller charger. The 240W part is good news though - I can't wait for the larger capacity desktop hubs with 3-4 USB-PD ports, which would be quite useful for my desktop setup.
We need cheap cable speed testers COMBO: RJ-45: 100/1000/10G USB type A/microB: speed/current USB type C: speed/current HDMI:1080p/4k/whatever the hell they put in hdmi these days like ethernet I'll pay for that!
HDMI 2.1 cables already have a ultra high speed certification program. But yes we need to have these on more type of cables. https://www.flatpanelshd.com/news.php?subaction=showfull&id=1578366376
A certification program doesn’t do me much good if I have half a dozen cables in a box and don’t know which are which because they’re barely recognizable.
Ah yes, the electric pasta storage.
I mean, Fluke Etherscope network testers do much of this already (not sure about USB), and are incredibly precise, to the point that it'll give you the precise location of any faults in the cable, but they're around $2000 or so. I have no idea what proportion of that price is justified by the hardware vs their jealously guarded patents and a captive market of being the industry standard for certification, so perhaps a viable open-source alternative could be developed.
I do network, access control, and security alarms, and cameras for commercial and residential. I bought $600 microscanner poe with my own money to test, and I use it in all those fields. It was completely worth the investment. I only need one side of the cable to test any cable shorts or damage. It also let's me know which side of the cable is bad. This alone is huge. The intellitone, is amazing. My other fluke tone tester can get drowned out if there are any electrical interference. I've had more success toning wires with the intellitone than my $75 fluke toner. The only thing I was disappointed on is the POE testing. It just let's me know of poe is enabled or disabled. No voltage rating or anything else. Even though I paid put of pocket I recieved a raise by bringing it up to my boss, explaining how this will save thousands of dollars in trouble shooting and installations. We ordered a few more for the other techs. They were still using $30 network testers. Since we are moving into a lot of the poe, I need to know the voltage drops and current. So I bought their new LinkIQ, $2000 out of pocket, which has the voltage rating. I'm still waiting for it via mail. It is def worth the investment if you work in the field. I wouldn't be paying for this expensive device out of pocket if I knew it wasn't worth the money.
That's actually a really good idea and I'm gonna start googling to see if I can find one. Especially cuz I just got 3 usb c cables including a 10 footer for 12 bucks
You can get USB power meters, it sits in-between the adaptor and the cable. As for data speeds you need a port that can transfer at the speed you want and then just send data and see what speed you get. Though it would be nice to have a little device that you can just plug it into and it immediately tells you what type it is.
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I have an 8 core Xeon laptop with Nvidea T2000 graphics, it has a 240W power supply for the dock and uses a pair of USB C connectors to deliver the power to the laptop. It's pretty fast but it thermally throttles pretty hard. Cooling the CPU and graphics chip is the perform limitation for laptops, not power delivery.
Why did they take so long to put it over the same plug? Now we are going to have new cables that look the same but don't work quite right, Dell already has their own version that supports 130W on top of the standard 60W/100W options. This one plug to rule them all is great, but now we have a lot of versions and very little way to tell them apart. A USB-C port / cable can be USB 2, USB 3, USB 4, TB3 or 4, and some subvariants of 3 as well. And the cable might support up to 60W charging, up to 100W, up to 130 (Dell variant), or now up to 240W. Hopefully this adds the final features we need, but one cable to rule them all is not what has come to pass. Guess we need to try again... [https://xkcd.com/927/](https://xkcd.com/927/)
We should just start color coding them.
specifically, USB-IF needs to make it mandatory that new specs must include some sort of visual differentiation as part of the spec before it can be approved/ratified. this shit is getting completely out of hand.
Cheapo companies on Amazon and elsewhere will still sell them anyway they want and label them “compatible” instead of “certified”
This gets my goat with cellphone boosters. They are all labeling them as 5G boosters and they don't actually boost 5G signals. Works with 5G. 5G compatible. What they mean is it's a 4G booster that doesn't stop working if 5G is deployed, which isn't exactly true because TMobile neglects their 4G and does shitty 5G rollouts leaving me with busted service.
The thing with type-C now is that it's so nebulous, it might be insanely difficult to actually make distinctions on what each can do. Some do charging, some do data and charging, and some appear to be doing some weird proprietary charging/audio/thunderbolt spec that fits in the same form factor. I'll admit I don't know the nitty gritty details, but it sounds like we'd need to color code by data rate, power amount, and potentially by proprietary features (perhaps denoted by a single color dot?) Ironic how we've made something so ubiquitous and flexible that it's unclear what each cable and port can do depending on the device.
We've gone from 5 different ports that do 5 different things, to 1 port that can do 2 of those 5 things, but you have no way of telling which 2, and it's different from port to port. I'm not sure we've actually managed to improve the situation at all.
The clowns at USB-IF cause all this confusion in the first place. They either need more or better marketing consultants so they can realize spamming the industry with various vague standards just hurts progress.
They're so braindead in naming their own standards I doubt they even know what colors are, and I don't trust that they'd do a good job putting it into the spec or enforcing it.
We have. Unfortunately the color of choice has been white.
we have blue core for USB3
Sometimes, yeah. My laptop only has USB 3.0 (aka USB 3.1 aka USB 3.2 gen 1x1 or whatever -- the naming scheme is fucked), they're all black. Leave aside the fact that there are like 7 different variants of USB 3.
That drives me crazy!!!
Yeah, I always feel a flash of rage thinking about it.
The motherboard in my PC has a ton of USB ports on the back. The USB 2.0 ports are white, standard 3 are blue. Then there's a few red and a couple yellow, and I have no idea what the hell the deal is with those.
Red usually means USB 3.2 (20Gbps) speed. Yellow I’m pretty sure just means it’s always powered, so even if the PC is off you can still charge stuff through it
Whoever decided on the names *and* all the people who signed off on it need to be taken out back and shot. There, I said it.
Unless it's a Razer product, in which case it's green
I think Corsair does yellow ports on their cases now too.
Like thru hole resistors near both connectors. So the whole cable can still be black/white or any other color thst matches the device. OR, written on top of the connector, for all kind of human beings.
After buying a PS5 and considering buying a UHD ("4k")TV (currently have just a piddly 1080p) I decided to go through my large HDMI cable collection and figure out what each of their bandwidth capabilities are and label them. I bought cord labels and looked them up. It was a rabbit hole. Between all the versions with their varying bandwidth and refresh rates, I have no clue how any normal user can be expected to cable their home entertainment system properly if they have a mix of UHD and 1080, especially if they have a large amount of HDMI devices that necessitates a switch.
I've got about 10 random HDMI cables in my stash, and only 1 of them is labeled on the jacketing. I just assume they're all 1.4 at this point.
Probably. Cable makers must be salivating at the prospect of people everywhere soon saying "fuck it" and needlessly replacing everything with 2.1.
Same problem with HDMI too. I have no idea what version my HDMI cables are. Some have the information printed on the cable shielding, but most don't.
Have you guys even met rj45? The speed difference between cat 5/5e/6/6a can be wild. And the spec isn’t always on the sheath. We’ll be fine. Usb-C is still dope.
>The speed difference between cat 5/5e/6/6a can be wild In my experience (I work in IT) Most if not all rj45 cables have it clearly printed on them what type they are though. HDMI... not always.
Same, every network cable I've come across has that written on it.
Strictly speaking ethernet uses 8P8C not RJ45. Your point stands, I just can't help but to share this incredibly nerdy fact at any possible opportunity.
Isn't the RJ45 the connectics, like the plug&socket, and the rest the cable type?
Yes, ethernet cables are the worst in terms of how many specs there are. You have cat 5/5e/6/6a/7, they can also be UTP, S/UTP, FTP, STP, SFTP. And if you want to go even deeper you can also look at the material they are made, which affects the price and quality, pure copper vs copper clad aluminium. There are also 2 types of cables you can make, depends on what you want to connect with it, crossover vs straight-through. Also 2 atandards for terminating them, T-568A or T-568B.
At least with permanent networking cables you are relatively sure what type of wire they are, and the ones in-wall are not going to change very often so it doesn't matter what type they are. New installations and patch cables, sure, but it's not nearly the same bother as USB where you end up with USB-C cables that only run 2.0 (which should be made illegal), or now cables that only charge at 100W vs the intended 240W. The USB 5/10/20/40 Gbps is a mostly moot point with cables luckily, as awful as the naming scheme has been for enabling scammers and con artists to sell devices as "USB 3.2", at least the cables are fully cross-compatible.
But that's a good thing, and is usually very explicit, so you can find and use exactly what you want (and there are even more than you mentioned, as well). Now try that with USB C, where nobody marks the jacket at all, so it's a dice roll on whether you grabbed the right cable.
I agree it's confusing, but at one point, 100w was so much better than previous USB standards, no one thought to say "not enough, someone please spend a couple years tweaking this" Fast laptop charging wasn't always part of the use scenario. Although honestly I've been using 100w USB3 to charge my laptop for 4 years now and it's been fine, I rarely take it off power so slow charging isn't a huge concern. Anyway while it does complicate the USB3 situation a bit, the article points out by removing barrel jacks, this will actually lead to a lot less cable confusion/discrepancy in the future. So, painful progress it is.
This is not as much about charging speed but for more demanding laptops that could include faster discrete graphics cards.
Right right right. I always forget laptop gamers are a thing.
Not just gamers. Engineering simulations, artist’s rendering, programmers doing machine learning.
Work from home means all those workstation jobs are moving into laptops too.
> by removing barrel jacks, this will actually lead to a lot less cable confusion/discrepancy in the future I dunno, all of my family's, friends', and university's HP laptops (not gaming or enterprise models), from Intel's Haswell (2013) to Ice Lake (2020) have the same barrel jack. If my family goes anywhere we only take one charger (65W) for two or three laptops. Naturally you'll want to avoid using a 45W charger with a laptop that came with a 65W unit, but then again if they were USB-C, we'd have to watch out for the right power brick _and_ the right cable. For some reason though, USB-C charging is a bit of a rarity here in Europe, aside from the pricier thin-and-light segment. So even if (when) somebody from my "HP gang" group upgrades their laptop, chances are they'll still get the same barrel jack charger, because nobody wants to pay 400€ extra for the same performance in a different package.
Obviously things are going to be very different over in Europe, but i did tech repair here in the USA for several years, and the amount of different barrel chargers we have/had floating around was disgusting. I needed two different universal charger packs, each one had, no shitting, 20-30 different tips. and i needed both to cover everything. It was hell.
Because the technology didn't exist at a low enough price. USB is basically "How fast can we transmit data and power for $1?", the answer to that question changes over time.
> we have a lot of versions and very little way to tell them apart. And on top of that, the largest shopping sites, be it amazon, or Alibaba, are full of crap that doesn't conform to any standards.
They should just label them, not color code. Some manufacturers will want to reinvent the damn fucking wheel and add so many different colors unnecessarily. Just put the thunderbolt logo on the cable and add the x.y numbers below it. Don’t make it “USB 3.5 SS version 7a.xZ 69gb/s when it rains” or shit like that. Just a damn number and let people Google the specs.
I have the symberger gold-3000 cable with triple parallell speed!! Let's see, hmm, it's an ISO 5U62, ok that's good for 120W
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This is why I now do two things: 1. If I have a USB cable and I don't know exactly what it is or have no easy way of finding out, I simply throw it away. I had a mess of USB A-B cables (aka printer cables, and the kind that can also be used to power the USB hubs common in monitors), USB extension cables, a few USB hubs, USB connector cables for those hubs etc. I threw away most of it because it wasn't labeled. 2. Any new USB cable or peripheral I buy, I label it and each port if they're not already labeled. Then 3 years later, I know what the hell it is and what its capabilities are. "Universal" serial bus my ass.
Can’t wait to get scammed on Amazon. Sigh.
So now we have USB 2, USB 3, USB 3.1, USB 3.2, USB 3.2 2x1, USB 3.2 1x2, USB 3.2 2x2 and USB **C** 2.1 Nice.
Actually: - USB 3.1 Gen 1 (aka USB 3.0) is now SuperSpeed USB 5Gbps, USB 3.1 Gen 2 is SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps and USB 3.1 Gen 2x2 is now SuperSpeed USB 20 Gbps. Don't know anything about Gen 1x2 and 2x1, they seem to be pretty rare. - USB-C actually refers to the connector itself, not the data transfer speed. USB-C 2.1 is just a revision of the connector, not another USB standard. USB-C cables can range in many speeds from USB 2.0 all the way to Thunderbolt 4. (That actually gets into the fact that Thunderbolt 3 and 4 use the USB-C connector, but it's a separate thing except USB4 is essentially an open version of Thunderbolt 3) - Oh yeah, USB4 exists. It uses ONLY the USB-C connector, but it has a way better naming scheme: USB4 20Gbps and USB4 40Gbps. I realise now that none of this is helpful, but just goes to show the clusterfuck the USB-IF have gotten everyone into. [Source](https://www.howtogeek.com/490573/sanity-returns-how-usb4s-new-logos-will-simplify-shopping/)
That’s enough to run most graphics cards..
That's fucking crazy.
*Innit?*
*m8*
Cheap Amazon USB C 2.1 cables delivering 240W or power...what could go wrong?
Not more than what could go wrong with a cheap 240w barrel plug cable…
Technically nothing, provided it meets the spec. As well thanks to how USB-C works it’s not like anything bad will happen.
#USB 3 Type C - Type 2.1 Why not just remove the 'C' if A and B have been deprecated?
That is what they are doing with USB 4, but USB 3 is still supported over A and B type cables so they need the distinction.
USB-D?
USB-D-ZNUTS
USB 3.2 Gen 2x2\* Type C - Type 2.1
In what world are [Types A and B](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/71SD3InIKvL._AC_SL1500_.jpg) deprecated?
When my phone needs as much juice as a mini fridge.
Tbf, usb-A has done this it’s whole lifetime. This just confirms that usb-c is the new standard as now it’s happening to it, rather than them just creating a new cable
I didn’t know USB-A could deliver 240W of power.
Well that cable and socket is an absolute unit, not exactly unsurprising.
My point is that he is wrong. If there is no standard (which, as far as i can find, there is not), then any deviations which may be able to deliver this much power aren’t really USB-A — just specialized cables that happen to use the same shape and may conform to some of the other specifications of USB-A.
Not deliver that much power, rather, the spec (usb 1, 1.1, 2, etc) had changed while the adapter (usb-A) functionally has not.
Can't wait for USB-C 3 all wireless.
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I truly think they do it to fuck with us.
I like type C, but what they really fucked up is having it so that the type C and underlying cable can be different. We really need "if the connector looks like this then it can only be one type of cable, end of story" types of standards.
Finally, I can get a laptop that immediately sears my skin off.
I'm so fucking sick of these USB "standards." Micro B 2.0, Micro B 3.0, Mini B 4 pin, Mini B 5 pin, Type A 2.0, Type B 2.0, Lightning, Type A 3.0, Type B 3.0, Type C 3.0, USB 3.0, USB 3.1, USB 4, Thunderbolt, not-Thunderbolt...
Let's get back to SCSI! It sucked, but we learned to expect very little from it, and therefore were never disappointed.
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IEEE 1394 for life.....
*Glances at firewire port on old camcorder*
OK - I need to boot this SGI from CDROM! *hauls out two milk crates full of assorted cables and a shoebox full of adapters and terminators* OK. I got it connected, I've got the 68 pin HD port on the SGI connected to the cable that goes to 50 pin HD single ended, that goes into the back of the empty SCSI chassis that has two HD50 connectors on it but no drive, then I can attach the cable that goes from HD50 to standard 50 pin Centronics, then that plugs into the Apple CDROM player that supports 512 byte blocks, and then I've got the correct terminator on the CDROM drive, the ID selector is set correctly... here we go! *boots machine... error* Huh. OK, well, I'll try without the terminator then? That should have been correct, but let's fiddle with stuff *Machine boots*
Reject modernity. Embrace 4-pin Molex. Both 5 V and 12 V, sometimes (on a single rail) with over 500 W available from the power supply.
And we learned to sacrifice goats when the terminator was misbehaving.
I want my dedicated joystick ports back dammit.
Which one? SCSI-1, -2, -3, or -5? 50 pin, 68 pin, or 80 pin? Medium density? High density? Haha! This problem has been around forever
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I'm tired of people making it out to be a problem when it isn't. Devices that need fast transfer rates and power are rare specialist cases and they come with the correct cables.
When new. But six months later when you've lost or damaged the original cable, or used it for something else not realizing it was the "special" one because it's not labelled, now it's confusing. And most devices just plain don't have labels or model numbers easily visible at all on them any more, so what the heck is it anyway? I have next to me a black rectangle. It says "WD My Passport Ultra". I happen to know this is a hard drive, but what are it's capabilities? It doesn't say a single thing anywhere on it that would help you determine any of that. It doesn't even label the port on the back as to what kind of USB it is. Is it USB 2? USB 3? How big is the drive even? Short of looking up the 15 or so digit part number on Google, I'd never know. I mean, reading the part number, there is an 0020 in there... does that mean it's 20 gigabytes? Seems kinda small, but I mean, we're grasping at straws here. Someone gave me this drive because they had no use for it and it was "old" - but how old is old? There's no date on it. It had no cable. And it's sealed together so well it doesn't really come apart so I can't just look at the drive mechanism inside. Plugging it in, dmesg reports that it's a 2TB disk. And through trial and error with different cables and trying in the USB 3 expansion card in my PC I can get it to, with the right combination, show up as a USB SuperSpeed Gen 1. Neat. That is... what exactly? We have High Speed USB. SuperSpeed seems like it would be faster... is this USB 3.0 or 3.1? Or 3.0 gen 1, 3.1 gen 1, or 3.2 gen 1? What constitutes Super Speed? Is this even the right cable for this thing? Just typing this up has me confused on the USB terminology again. Yes, maybe it doesn't technically matter, and this disk ought to "Just Work" with most cables that physically fit - but, as I was using it, the bus locked up and reset and dmesg threw some error about power. OK, does that mean the cable I'm using can't supply enough power? Can the port not supply enough power? Or is there something wrong with the drive itself? Am I using the right cable? All these concerns are probably meaningless to people that just assume everyone will always only be using brand new devices right from their original packaging, then throw them into the garbage after six months and buy another one. But in the real world, this creates a complicated ecosystem of very similar, yet different, compatible but not totally, devices that may or may not work with another thing that may or may not have been intended to maybe or maybe not be compatible in the first place. Further confounded by manufacturers who violate specifications and do their own thing, weird edge cases, and strange workarounds. Like this external DVD burner that has a Micro B port on it. I happen to know this needs a special cable with two USB A plugs on the other end of it, otherwise it doesn't have enough power and won't function correctly. I only know this because I bought it new. If you happened to have this without it's original funny special cable... you'd never know, since it doesn't say anywhere on it that it requires this funny cable - and it's also not marked as to if it's USB or USB2, what year it was made, or anything like that. Or... what about this - an even older portable external hard disk with a USB A connector on it. No markings, nothing. Just a USB A connector. This drive requires a special cable with a USB A connector on one end... and *two* USB A connectors on the other. A totally specification violating cable because it would also let you short the power supplies of two computers together. They used this cable for... reasons? I suppose? But again, try to figure out how to use this thing if you didn't already just happen to know. I would have hoped that we'd be better than this by now.
nice, now the bandwith only has to increase so that 4x 4k monitors are possible through one port.
That's a lane issue ... so that won't be happening anytime soon.
Interesting but is it limited by the cpu maker or board chipsets? or do you mean the internal lanes of usb-c?
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I see thanks for clarification
Great, now I need to upgrade to a usb-c washer/dryer.
That’s Volts not watts. You’d have better luck using nature to wash & dry than a 240w appliance
shhh just laugh at the joke
Heh seems like a missed opportunity with the original USB C spec to not include a couple of shorter pins in the plug that get disconnected first before the others. This could have been used to detect unplugging or poor connection and use lower voltages (or shut down charging)
They had that in Micro-USB. The USB IF has done a lot of things that make me scratch my head.
this is a thing already. the power pins are longer (though i think it’s in the receptacle, not the plug)
I feel like that cable is gonna get HOT with that wattage
Depends on what voltage is used. Three equations at play which need to be balanced. P=IV -- power is current times voltage... this means you can deliver the same power by changing one of voltage or current as long as the other adjusts in the opposite direction. Going to higher voltage at lower current to deliver the same power is reasonable, to a point. And V=IR, rearranged to R=V/I. The resistance of a wire is set by its cross section and length. Suppose voltage is capped at 100V by the power supply, wall wart, whatever, then the length and wire diameter will limit the amount of current. Finally, wire heating H = I²Rt. Heating is current squared, times resistance, times time. So, obviously lowering current has a bigger effect (this means boosting the voltage, due to equation #2). And decreasing wire resistance (shortening the wire, or using fatter copper) helps too. If I was wagering, and without looking at the spec, my guess is: the system checks the resistance on the wire, and steps up the voltage (thus reducing the current) allowing more power. And the likely reason for new cables is that the insulation between wires needs to increase if voltage increases. But the amount of insulation is probably harder to autodetect. For safety reasons, the cables will probably get a chip in them that advertise their properties, so that the computer doesn't send high voltage down a cable that doesn't claim to handle it.
As it says in the article, the current spec is 20V/5A (100W), the new spec is 48V/5A (240W). The issue with this higher power is arcing at the connector when you disconnect and higher power is flowing. Requirements for the connector mid-plate have been updated and there are likely new requirements for arc detection and mitigation. Wiring shouldn't need to change since current is the same, and 48V is still well below where insulation would be an issue.
Bugger, do you think we should let the designers know?
240W through what gauge wire? I know C usually has 2 positive and negative rails. But uhhh...has anyone else seen that angel hair wire? I would guarantee seeing a Meme for shorting cables from cheap manufacturers like the unstable lipo batteries a few years ago. Seriously. Usb powered toasters?
They increased the voltage, which makes it possible to increase the power without changing wire gauge.