USB C Hub / HDMI Glitches

I’m batch 20, BIOS and drivers fully updated, and I’m largely enjoying my FW16. I’ve had some glitches that feel unusual that I am sharing in case it helps someone else, or in case someone else can clarify what I’ve experienced.

I work docked and enjoy using an external monitor. I like using a single USB C hub for all peripherals which are mouse, keyboard, ethernet, webcam and monitor. (I’m letting go of power passthrough for now in the hope that I can do it later).

A USB C hub plugged into slot 6 did not work well. It supported mouse/keyboard. Ethernet was Linux only. No HDMI and adding the webcam crashed the OS.

Additionally, having an HDMI port on slot 1 led to a bug with choppy sound on the HDMI monitor. It took me a while to pin this down. I was on Linux/Wayland at first, and had to cycle through Linux/Xorg, Windows 11, and a new HDMI cable before I realized it was related to the port on the laptop itself.

I shifted the USB C hub to slot 4 and it seems to be functioning well, including HDMI through the hub.

I think the moral of the story is that the setup documentation gives you the impression that you can put a USB C port into any of the 6 slots, but there is more subtlety than that. And there may be a bug with the HDMI adapter cards.

Display out is not supported on port 6 which is why you had no HDMI using that port.