> (I usually suggest that displays being connected over Thunderbolt not be combined on the same chain as storage devices to improve the reliability of your moun

> (I usually suggest that displays being connected over Thunderbolt not be combined on the same chain as storage devices to improve the reliability of your mounted volumes.) This is how you get cargo cults... Thunderbolt isn't a "lossy" channel; the real concern is ultimately what bandwidths you need. The most difficult factor in this is determining whether your storage is write-heavy, read-heavy or both. (If it's a SSD, that is - HDDs don't even get remotely near TB bandwidths.) The general rules are: - Displays: output bandwidth, and quite a lot of that - eGFX: mostly output (textures) + a reasonable amount of input - 10G/40G NICs: generally input bandwidth, somewhat use case dependent - Storage: no general rule, strongly use case dependent Also, the PCIe TB<>CPU connection needs to be considered, particularly in some older laptops it's only a PCIe 3.0×2 link, which caps out at 16GT/s. If anything, it'd be nice to get good per-device bandwidth counters somewhere; not sure if the PCIe bridges can provide that data somehow (through QoS/AER features maybe?)