Enclosure Recommendation to replace Razer Core X Chroma due to poor Mac support  

I've have been reliably using a cheap Thunderbolt 3 to USB3 & Ethernet adaptor with my 2018 MBP 15" as the Chroma X had been a flakey heap of disappointment  up until now! 

This morning I've downloaded the latest Asix 2.15 drivers for MacOS Catalina (Nov 2019) and have plugged the Ethernet cable and my Behringer audio interface and a USB 3 hub (with various hard drives connected) to see if the dropouts have disappeared. I uninstalled the old drivers first. I also replaced the Razer supplied TB3 cable with a genuine Apple one that I purchased yesterday as I know these things can affect performance sometimes.

I was still seeing ethernet drops after upgrading to Asix 2.15. I'd run a speed test and the download speeds would drop and then the upload test would fail as the USB ethernet went toes-up . I tried a couple of things and seem to have a solution by setting the network adapter to use 1000baseT, full-duplex, flow control in MacOS network settings. I'm getting ~1GB download speeds and 40GB up now with no hangs so far!

EDIT: Strike that. After testing, it still fails after a period of time. 🙁 

After a week of using driver 2.15, I haven't had any ethernet dropouts though unlike others here I am only hardwired to an internet router - I don't have a computer network.

I did notice that sometimes when I shut down my MacBook for a while, on restarting the USB audio adapter is not working and MacOS has reverted to the internal speakers at full power! I have to select my audio adaptor in Sound settings to restore. I didn't have this issue before. I can live with it but its not perfect.

I haven't had any hard drive disconnects and I think this might be because I have a separate 8 port powered USB3 hub between the hard drives and the CoreX. Previously I had a couple of backup hard drives plugged directly into the CoreX USB3 ports.

All-in-all things seem more stable with driver 2.15, however it could also be the new Apple Thunderbolt 3 cable I purchased to replace the Razer supplied one.

@drew_curran Are you running a gig ethernet connection or is your router 100 mb?

@greg_saiz

I just checked, its a Virgin router and is Gigabyte capable, however the switch I am using is not. I will run a cable direct to the router and see if it can sustain Gigabyte speeds.

@swisher-sweet, not sure if this is really but you're looking for but FWIW I have a Thunderbolt dock plugged into the downstream TB3 port on my AKiTiO Node Pro and I've had no issues. USB for peripherals and external storage, Gbit ethernet, and audio running through the dock which in turn is run through the Node Pro. Works on both Windows and MacOS with an RX580.

Doesn't provide a full 85W AFAIK (but I've never actually looked into it since I have a 13"). 

I was worried about getting the Node Pro b/c of the lack of eGFX cert, but it's really turned out to be the one-cable setup I have been dreaming of. 

How were you guys able to get the USB ports/hub to recognize in windows 10? Mine show a yellow exclamation point like it needs drivers. 

@datahawk, Mine show the same issue....

Did you ever figure it out?

Only the main 306 module shows as connected and working.

Update to anyone else with ethernet issues. New ASIX drivers (2.18.0) were released in August. I have been running this for the past few days without connectivity issues, although I note my (Australian) speeds can't test gigabit ranges.

Posted by: @prototofu

Update to anyone else with ethernet issues. New ASIX drivers (2.18.0) were released in August. I have been running this for the past few days without connectivity issues, although I note my (Australian) speeds can't test gigabit ranges.

Awesome, thanks!

For anyone wondering- on the website you need to select USB Ethernet devices and look for the AX88179 chipset drivers.