The Ultimate Macbook Setup: A Crazy Experiment

It's not yet clear if this will actually work, but I'm going to give it a shot. We're talking about building the ultimate 13-inch MacBook Pro setup, which includes a vertical dock for two laptops, a keyboard, and a whole lot of ports.

So, we have the vertical dock, which is essentially a laptop stand with multiple USB ports and a power connection. This thing is going to hold up both my MacBook Air and another laptop, because why not? We also have the Das Keyboard Ultimate, which will take advantage of some of the USB ports on the dock, but also provides a fully mechanical keyboard for Mac.

Next up is the Logitech MX Master 2S, which uses Bluetooth. It's getting closer to being useful, but we still need more ports. That's where the CalDigit TS3 Plus comes in – this is a Thunderbolt 3 dock that will give us extra functionality and even more ports than we can actually use.

I just thought it would be cool to have all these ports and think about how ridiculous it would be to try to use them all at once. So, we plug in the Thunderbolt 3 cable from the computer, into the dock, and then into the monitor. We also plug in the Thunderbolt 3 cable from the monitor, also into the dock.

Now that we have everything plugged in, let's see if it works. I close the MacBook Air up, and voilà! We should have everything on one display. It looks good. I set it right there, with my mouse and keyboard.

I recently did a video trying to game on a Mac, and I bought an external GPU from GIGABYTE – it's actually going to be really tiny, but it connects over Thunderbolt 3. We plug in the final Thunderbolt 3 cable, which will be plugged directly into the MacBook, and we get a full Radeon RX 580.

Now, let's test the ultimate performance of this setup with some games. I clicked on the video, promising you the ultimate Macbook experience, but what I've actually delivered is a really, really bad idea. But it's time to fully test the ultimate 13-inch MacBook Pro setup and see how it performs.

To get the ultimate performance, we also have a secondary display – this time a 1080p 144 hertz panel, which will be plugged directly into the GPU. Because you know of course, the last thing we want is some kind of performance bottleneck. It all technically works. Nothing has crashed, nothing has stopped working... yet.

Fortnite decided not to work on us, and instead of reinstalling the entire game and trying again, we move on to Rocket League. Which I will have you know works completely perfectly on the ultimate Macbook with no issues at all. Basic.

We're playing 1080p high, which shouldn't be a really big surprise with that RX 580 we have plenty of horsepower, even considering that we are running a dual-core CPU. And at the same time, even though it doesn't really matter, we also have a 5K monitor and... actually how many ports do we have? Nine, ten, eleven, twelve USB-A ports. Three, four, five, six, seven USB-C ports. One additional Thunderbolt port plus two more that are free on the Macbook, two HDMI ports, we have a DisplayPort, we have a mini DisplayPort, and then we also have three more DisplayPorts on our GPU, Ethernet, optical audio, headphone jack, and we have a 25,000 mAh battery and a 256 gig SSD. And for good measure, there are also three extra USB-C ports on the back of the Thunderbolt display, for a grand total of ten.

I hope you guys found building the ultimate Macbook Pro setup to be very informative, very useful with your own MacBook building projects – what, is it just me who does this?

WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: en- Hey guys, this is Austin,and today we are buildingthe ultimate 13-inch MacBook Pro.And huge shout-out to LastPassfor sponsoring this video.So you might be wondering whywe're using the 13-inchMacbook as opposed to a 15-inchwhen we're trying tobuild the ultimate laptop,but a lot of it actuallycomes down to this.So this is a LineDock, and inside,what we're finding here is notonly the additional battery,but additional storage, additional ports,that's all meant for the 13-inch.So this guy started out as an Indiegogo,and it's just starting to ship,but inside what we're going to findis something that actuallylooks a lot like a Macbook.So the idea here is to give youa bunch of the functionalitythat you would normallyexpect on, for example,older Macbooks, with, youknow, more than four ports.So there are gonna be a ton of portsthat are gonna be added, including USB-C,we've got two USB 3.0 onthe side, SD card reader.There's also on the otherside we've got HDMI,a mini DisplayPort, a third USB 3,as well as one more USB type C.So it's basically thesame size as a Macbook,so I sort of stack it on top.What I've got here is alittle bit of a sandwich.Actually, how does this connect. Oh, what.Oh, (laughs) for a second,I thought they forgot to putanything else in the box.I think they're taking a subtle hintat the lack of dongles neededwith this particular product.There's also an availableUSB-C magnetic module.So if we open this guy up,what we're going to find is,well, what looks like a USB adapter,but the whole thing isgoing to be magnetic.Now, supposedly this isgoing to support fullUSB-C capability, sostuff like data transfer,video and everything like that.But I've had some questionableluck with these in the past.So maybe I'll try one ofthe ports on the side.Oh, okay, maybe the backport just doesn't work.So we immediately get charging,and we also have a 256 gig SSD. Okay.So, there are different versionsof the Linedock available,say for example if youdon't want so much storage,but the idea here is thatif you've sort of gotthis giant dock thing thatgoes with the Macbook, you'regoing to be getting battery,extra ports, SSD, the whole sorta package.While this looks a littlebit goofy right now,inside what we're gettingis not only that SSD,which is optional, youcan go all the way up toa one terabyte SSD, ornot even opt for onein the first place, buton top of that all these,LineDocks have 25,000 mAhpower batteries inside.So it's going to be able tocharge at a full 100 watts,more than enough for any Macbook,and in theory it couldgive you basically doublethe battery life. Now theLineDock is going to essentiallydouble the thickness of our Macbook.And as we all know, thicker is betterwhen it comes to buildingthe ultimate stupid -I mean - ultimate Macbook.Not stupid. I meant ultimate.So that's where some protectionfor our Macbook comes in.One of the only real issuesI've noticed with the LineDockis that since it's not actuallyconnected to the Macbookbesides with a cable, itactually doesn't really matterwhat you actually do to it,just as long as you haveit connected via USB-C.So, that's where this comes in.A very important keyboard protector,that also very helpfully reminds youof all the wonderfulkeyboard shortcuts thatI totally don't know at all.But of course, protectionis incredibly important.You never know when a sudden gust of windcould blow your Macbook out a window,and you need to make sure it survives.Well that's where this comes in.This giant case that, supposedly helps.Is that really how it's supposed to go on,it just looks so weird.Oh, I needed to click it,until it did that noise.Now it looks much better.Okay, that looks a little more like it.If I pull it up- hey, there we go!We got some real protectionfor our ultimate Macbook.Excellent. 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If any of themget hacked or compromised,you're gonna deal withthe very real potentialof someone being ableto hack onto other sitesbased on just using the same passwordthat you used over andover and over again.LastPass takes security seriously.Not only do they do all the encryptionof your passwords on your deviceso you don't have to worry about thingsbeing unprotected sittingon their server somewhere,but on top of that, if youlose your password, that's it.LastPass has no ability tobe able to unlock your vaultor to do anything to sortof open up your passwords.Now that might sound like a bad thing,but in reality thatmeans not even LastPasscan get access to your data,and I think that is a very good thing.If you're not using a password managerto not only generate unique passwordsfor every single site you visit,but also to keep them all safe and securebehind a solid vault, then LastPassis absolutely what you need.And of course, if youguys wanna check it outand help support the channel,the link will be in the description.There's free and paid versions,but regardless, protect yourself online,and download LastPass now. Of course,when it comes to buildingthe ultimate Macbook,a single display isnot going to be enough.So that's where the LG 5KUltrafine comes in.So with a single Thunderbolt 3 cable,we're gonna be able tonot only get that full 5k video signal,but we're also going to begetting three USB-C portson the monitor, andwe're going to be gettingan 87 watt charge from themonitor into the Macbook.Which is helpful, especiallywhen we have the LineDock,which can also charge the Macbook,so we should be good on power.Now this is starting to looka little bit ridiculous,however, it is by nomeans ultimate just yet.Which is where this comes in.A laptop vertical dock for two laptops.So with this, we can drop the Macbookas well as the LineDock at the same time.Next up, we have a keyboard.This is going to be theDas Keyboard Ultimate,which not only is going tobe able to take advantageof some of the USB ports on the LineDock,but is also going to give usa fully mechanical keyboardthat is meant to be used on Mac.We also have the Logitech MX Master 2S.So this guy's going to be using Bluetooth,and now, we're gettinga little bit closer.However even this is still not going to beanywhere near enough portsfor the Ultimate Macbook.Which is where theCalDigit TS3 Plus comes in.This is going to be aThunderbolt 3 dock,which is going to give usextra functionality and,well, to be totallyhonest, even more portsthat we're probably notgoing to actually use.Alright, that's actuallynot going to be too crazy.So what we're getting with this isnot only a bunch more USB ports,we're also going to be getting a secondThunderbolt 3 portso we can daisy chainwith the monitor, but we'realso going to be gettingsome other stuff that eventhe LineDock doesn't include,such as ethernet, another SD card reader,if we wanna do two at the same time.Look I just wanted this dockand I figured it'd be cool.Don't judge me. I just thought it would bereally ridiculous. So we're gonna plug inthe Thunderbolt 3cable from the computer,it's going to go into the dock,and then we're gonna plugthe Thunderbolt 3 cablefrom the monitor also into the dock,and then actually whatwe can do is we can plugthe LineDock into the USBtype C cable, on the dock.Oh hey wait, okay hangon. Okay that looks good.So if I close the Macbook up,we should have everythingon one display. There we go.And then, I set it righthere, have my mouse,have my keyboard. So youguys might have caughta little video I did recentlytrying to game on a Mac.And doing so, I bought thisexternal GPU from GIGABYTE,which is actually going to be really tiny,and yet does connectover Thunderbolt 3.So, if I get a couple morecables going here (laughs).So, with our finalThunderbolt 3 cable,which will be pluggeddirectly into the Macbook,we're going to have a full Radeon RX 580.Now, when you clicked on this video,I promised you the ultimate Macbook.What I've actually deliveredis a really, really bad idea.And so it is time to fully testthe ultimate 13-inch Macbook Pro.Now to get the ultimateperformance because,of course, this is the ultimate set-up,we also have a secondary display,this time a 1080p 144 hertz panel,which is going to be pluggeddirectly into the GPU.'Cause you know of coursethe last thing we wantis some kind of performance bottleneck.It all technically works.Nothing has crashed,nothing has stopped working. Yet.So, Fortnite decided to not work on us,and instead of reinstallingthe entire gameand trying again, next we have:Rocket League. Which I will have you know,works completely perfectlyon the ultimate Macbookwith no issues at all. Basically.Now, we're playing 1080p high,which shouldn't be a really big surprise,with that RX 580 we haveplenty of horsepower,even considering that weare running a dual-core CPU.And at the same time, eventhough it doesn't really matter,we also have a 5K monitor.And like...actually howmany ports do we have?Nine, ten, eleven, twelve USB-A ports.Three, four, five, six, seven USB-C ports,one additional Thunderboltport plus two morethat are free on the Macbook,two HDMI ports, we have a DisplayPort,we have a mini DisplayPort,and then we also have threemore DisplayPorts on our GPU,ethernet, optical audio, headphone jack,and we have a 25,000 mAh battery,and a 256 gig SSD, and afull RX 580 external GPU.Oh and I forgot to mention,there are also three extra USB-C portson the back of the Thunderbolt display,for a grand total of ten.So hopefully you guys found buildingthe ultimate Macbook Proto be very informative,very useful with your ownMacbook building projects-what, is it just me who does this?