Problems with Caldigit TS4 Thunderbolt 4 Dock

[katastropoulos]

Ok, I sent the device back and got a replacement one, the process was very quick.

I really think the old one was defective.

I connected the new Mini PC directly to my Caldigit TS4 dock, which is connected to two monitors, keyboard, mouse and a HDD.
I did not connect the power supply of the Mini PC but used the CalDigit TS4 dock which delivers up to 98 watts to power the pc and it started up and started the windows 11 setup, what a pleasant experience

Sadly the Windows 11 setup got stuck at the screen where I can enter a PIN for my account so I had to restart the setup multiple times and in the successful attempt I had to connect the Mini PC via a LAN cable to the internet which allowed the Windows 11 setup to download some updates and then I could continue and setup the system.

After upgrading the Windows 11 21H2 to 22H2 everything ran fine, no problems.

At the second day of working with the Mini PC, a new problem arose: the Mini PC does not connect correctly to my dock and the external monitors and devices, when I have the Mini PC power supply connected to the Mini PC!

Because I want to be able to switch between my Macbook Pro 2022 M2 and the Mini PC I can just unplug the thunderbolt 4 cable from Macbook Pro or Mini PC and plug it into the other machine and the coresponding machine then has all connections via the dock, great. But this only works if the Mini PC gets power from its power supply. When it gets power from the Thunderbolt 4 cable and I unplug this cable and connect it to my Macbook, the Mini PC is out of power and shuts off.

So: Mini PC getting power via the Thunderbolt 4 cable coming from the Caldigit TS4 dock is working fine, but as soon as I additionally plug in the Mini PC power supply and then start up the Mini PC, my monitors stay dark, I can reproduce this every time. When I later reboot with power supply coming from only the dock, I can see in the Windows 11 notifications that a problem with Displayport over USB-C is reported.

I updated the Intel Graphics drivers to the latest and the system is up to date.

What can I do to fix this? This is very annoying.

Short dscription: boot mini pc with power coming only over thunderbolt 4 cable connected to Caldigit TS4 dock => everything fine. Boot Mini Pc which is connected to the Mini Pc power supply and the Thunderbolt 4 cable to the dock => no display on external monitors!

This is very annoying and seems to be a problem in the thunderbolt firmware of the Mini PC. I had in total about 8 Laptops connected to my dock and it does not matter if these laptops get their power from the dock or from their corresponding power supply, it always works. But the Mini PC does not

Any ideas?

Greetings Janni

[dragonpoo]

Hi Janni,

I don't have experience with this dock, but I had a look at their website. The device appears to handle any number of systems (Mac, Windows, even ChromeOS). I wonder, are you able to connect a monitor directly to it? I wonder what appears on the Device Manager - are there broken connections, etc? Although most Windows systems are able to automatically connect to hardware, there's a possibility it's either not detecting it, not loading correct drivers, or maybe just disconnecting the screens that are available through the dock.