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Move your desktop to the basement and use optical cables to connect your monitor and all the peripherals located in your room. This is one of the common use cas

by NavinF 3y ago

Move your desktop to the basement and use optical cables to connect your monitor and all the peripherals located in your room. This is one of the common use cases and it was popularized by Linus from LTT. He has optical Thunderbolt (PCIe and USB) at his desk and optical DisplayPort in several rooms. The latter allows screen casting without the usual compression artifacts, input lag, and low refresh rate that you get from shoving a 32gbps signal down a 1gbps pipe

swores 3y ago
Thanks! At the moment I'm enjoying my gaming PC adding a little bit of warmth in my home office that anyway needs heating constantly during the winter anyway... but would be tempted to get the PC out of sight in the future. Any ideas of reputable brands for optical display port (and miniDP) cables? Did a quick search and the first version was £80 for 10m / £100 for 20m on Amazon from one of those shitty, random name Chinese "companies" (in this case called "ATZEBE), which wouldn't surprise me if it was actually just the cheapest DP cable of the right length they could find rather than the real deal. (Not that I'd trust buying any cable on Amazon, even one they claim is sold directly by a company like Apple, considering Amazon's co-mingling system leads to any time they claim "sold by x company" has for years actually meant "one or more of the stock we have for this item is sold by the company that its claiming to be made by, good luck hoping you get one of the legit ones".) And thinking about the two options that user michaelt linked in the comment I replied to just above you: > "Options start at ~$100 for 50m https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html and prices go up to [£450 / $570 USD for 50m at:] https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybrid-usb-3-0-cable-p9476 https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybr... To what extent is the expensive one the equivalent of an audiophile getting a placebo effect from using overpriced audio cables that make no difference in a blind test, vs. it being the price needed for a good quality 50m optical/hybrid USB cable while the cheap one linked on AliExpress might either perform worse, last less long, or be an outright scam like those fake USB storage sticks that are hacked to tell the OS that they have more capacity than they actually do?
- NavinF 3y ago
  AFAIK most optical cables are made in the same factory so it doesn't matter which one you buy. They also don't need controlled impedance like copper cables so it's pretty hard for an optical cable to not work
  - swores 3y ago
    So buying that second option (the Lindy link) is really just wasting hundreds of pounds with zero benefit, apart from shipping speed, compared to the cheap AliExpress option?
    - NavinF 3y ago
      FWIW, a 10m 5gbps optical USB cable is $70 in the US including 1-day shipping. Dunno why anyone would pay hundreds of pounds even with the euro/pound tax. Also compare to data center hardware. A 10m 10gbps active optical cable is only $31 retail: https://www.fs.com/products/30895.html https://www.fs.com/products/30895.html Normally you'd buy optics and fiber (which is cheaper than copper ethernet cables of the same length) separately for data center use and in larger volume, but my point is that there's no expensive tech involved in these cables.
      - swores 3y ago
        Cool, thanks for the reply

by NavinF 3y ago

swores 3y ago

Thanks! At the moment I'm enjoying my gaming PC adding a little bit of warmth in my home office that anyway needs heating constantly during the winter anyway... but would be tempted to get the PC out of sight in the future. Any ideas of reputable brands for optical display port (and miniDP) cables? Did a quick search and the first version was £80 for 10m / £100 for 20m on Amazon from one of those shitty, random name Chinese "companies" (in this case called "ATZEBE), which wouldn't surprise me if it was actually just the cheapest DP cable of the right length they could find rather than the real deal. (Not that I'd trust buying any cable on Amazon, even one they claim is sold directly by a company like Apple, considering Amazon's co-mingling system leads to any time they claim "sold by x company" has for years actually meant "one or more of the stock we have for this item is sold by the company that its claiming to be made by, good luck hoping you get one of the legit ones".) And thinking about the two options that user michaelt linked in the comment I replied to just above you: > "Options start at ~$100 for 50m https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004105594973.html and prices go up to [£450 / $570 USD for 50m at:] https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybrid-usb-3-0-cable-p9476 https://www.lindy.co.uk/cables-adapters-c1/usb-c449/50m-hybr... To what extent is the expensive one the equivalent of an audiophile getting a placebo effect from using overpriced audio cables that make no difference in a blind test, vs. it being the price needed for a good quality 50m optical/hybrid USB cable while the cheap one linked on AliExpress might either perform worse, last less long, or be an outright scam like those fake USB storage sticks that are hacked to tell the OS that they have more capacity than they actually do?

NavinF 3y ago
AFAIK most optical cables are made in the same factory so it doesn't matter which one you buy. They also don't need controlled impedance like copper cables so it's pretty hard for an optical cable to not work
- swores 3y ago
  So buying that second option (the Lindy link) is really just wasting hundreds of pounds with zero benefit, apart from shipping speed, compared to the cheap AliExpress option?
  - NavinF 3y ago
    FWIW, a 10m 5gbps optical USB cable is $70 in the US including 1-day shipping. Dunno why anyone would pay hundreds of pounds even with the euro/pound tax. Also compare to data center hardware. A 10m 10gbps active optical cable is only $31 retail: https://www.fs.com/products/30895.html https://www.fs.com/products/30895.html Normally you'd buy optics and fiber (which is cheaper than copper ethernet cables of the same length) separately for data center use and in larger volume, but my point is that there's no expensive tech involved in these cables.
    - swores 3y ago
      Cool, thanks for the reply