M1 Max + LG Ultrafine 5k Issues

After a new OWC Dock to replace my Elgato, 2 main board replacements in the LG, a logic board in the M1 Air, as I reported the LG failed again in my office but worked upstairs in the house.  I concluded there must be some kind of interference in the office, where I’ve got “command central” with wireless wifi hvac and security control centers, Time Machine, OWC Thunderbolt dock/ac-dc power supply, printer, ethernet switch modem/gateway, Panasonic cordless Bluetooth base station, UPS powered USB connected wireless KEF powered speakers (connected with usb), wireless garage door entry, a rechargeable portable weather radio, a wireless motion alert, an iphone magnetic charging stand and I think that covers it. 

To try and cut down on visually on all the wire nest clutter I used white cables wherever I could and if that was not possible I covered them in white split loom cable covers.  Extra cable was coiled and zip tied and I gathered different cables together and held them together with Velcro ties.

I did extensive research on what the interference could be and discovered it could be RF (radio frequency), Bluetooth or other

things.  I purchased Faraday fabric and tape for the RF to use as an RF shield, but so far haven’t used them.

Finding what exactly is interfering with the monitor is a process of elimination. Here's what I did so far.

1.    Unplugged the Bluetooth cordless phone base station and moved the laptop further from the monitor (Bluetooth can cause interference, but the wireless keyboard and trackpad are still in use)

2.  Installed ferrite chokes on all both ends of power cords that did not have them; these are RF traps

3.  Added surge protectors on all power outlets that did not have them where things were plugged in but not plugged into my Cyberpower 1500VA UPS (surge protectors have RF filters but not all power strips do)

 4.  Moved the weather radio and wireless motion alerts about 15 ft. away (discovered both of these use the 900mhz frequency and while I did not read that this band is a problem, since I could do this and unclutter my desktop at the same time, I did so)

5.    Moved the Apple Time Machine further from the monitor, but still about 3 ft. That's what LG said to do initially in 2017 when they found the monitor did not have proper (or any, they never said) rf shielding inside (apparently it's a plate that covers the main board)

 6.    Unclipped the zip ties from any coiled cables (coiled cable can pick up RF) and removed Velcro ties from cables bundled

together

I had the monitor connected directly to my Macbook Air M1 and the monitor worked!  That is, for about an hour before I had my first crash, with the same 35 second timer error message yet again with the same 35 second issue. My KEF powered speakers had knipshins since only the wireless connection was available. I had the speakers wired connection plugged into the OWC Dock which since I did not have the LG monitor connected to the dock could not work via wired USB. I tried connecting the speakers that way, which I had for years with my Elgato Dock, and they went crazy, switching randomly from wired to wireless.

Now what I am going to do is to move the OWC Dock further away and try it as it is intended to be used, which will be less convenient and in fact require longer cabling. Or I may try it covered with some Faraday shielding fabric. Or get rid of it and go back to a non-powered hub. Or relocate it under my desk (which is a 1 inch piece of quartz Silestone, but shielded with the RF fabric.

And, there's a great article here: https://www.signalboosters.com/blog/wifi6-the-next-generation-of-wifi/ on Wifi 6 and I'm going to get ATT to upgrade me to their new Wifi 6 modem/gateway whatever it takes, since the Macbook Air M1 and iphone 12 has wifi 6. What I learned from this article is that Wifi 6 is not just about speed, but it's as much about less interference from wifi signals, including from neighbors and especially if in close proximity, and a better focused signal, which also lessens signal interference.

I'm encouraged so far that I may, and I say may, have found the source of the problem. I'll keep posting and I hope this helps. I hope that the new Apple Studio Monitor released this week doesn't suffer the same fate as the LG Ultrafine 5k. I'm assuming at least part of the monitor was made by LG. Given inflation over the last 5 years, it would be priced at $1500 vs. the LG Ultrafine 5k's $1300 original price. With the Studio's improvements, it's a good value in comparison.

Same here. Tried multiple cables. But the repair center reported that after replacing the motherboard they let the computers run for 24 hours, and there were no issues. Unless the Apple cable has some kind of fairy dust the Belkin cable I purchased does not, I'm not throwing more money away on cables. I'll wait for OS12.2 to see if that does anything before returning the unit to the repair center, which was their recommendation. They said ever since OS12.1 there have been problems.

Moving my OWC Thunderbolt dock away from the monitor, where it was directly under the screen, so far has worked. No crashes for a full day yesterday. It's very possible that when LG shielded the main board in the display, the plate they put over the board did not wrap around the bottom edge of the display, so RF was going directly up and into the electronics. I am now going to mount it further away and found there are all kinds of mounts designed for these docks. I found a nice 3D printed underdesk mount on Etsy. It just means getting longer cables. If you have a dock, read the manual for the FCC and RF radio frequency statements. OWC states to not put the dock near a television. "Near", of course, would include directly underneath the monitor.

Since I moved the OWC dock away from under my Ultrafine, and both before and after installing 12.3, my crashes stopped. I'm betting the problem was simply radio frequency or electromagnetic interference. The LG shielding covers the main board but may not wrap around it, so the bottom of the monitor is not shielded. And OWC says specifically to not put the dock close to a television. However, running an accessory USB-C cable from an accessory port on the Ultrafine to the dock was causing me to lose internet connectivity, which was restored when I disconnected the cable. I was also trying to connect my KEF speakers, which can be used either wireless or USB wired, through the dock, as I had done so previously with my Elgato dock. They just don't work, switching back and forth between the LG's speakers and the KEF's. Same thing when I tried to connect the speakers to the LG's accessory ports. So I can use them wireless or direct into the Macbook Air. They're older tech now, so I chalked that issue up to that. When I looked at my OWC dock and what I really needed, I decided in addition to the interference issue it was also possibly defective or poorly engineered, and in any case that I could live without it and just use a hub if I needed more connectivity, so I just took it out of my setup.

Updated from my comment on Jan 15, 2022 8:55 AM

• I moved my mechanical keyboard from the monitor hub and directly connected it to my 14" M1 Max.
• Disconnects and crashes have stopped

Seems like macOS 12.3 has fixed this issue, I have been using the USB hub on the UltraFine for half of the day, no sudden disconnection encountered.

OK, checked my Macbook Air M! with Apple and did a diagnostic and got a clean bill of health. Did troubleshooting with monitor technician and he suspects it is still a software issue. He said this has been an issue since OS 12.1 Monterey Three options: 1) start in recovery mode and change things (which I would not know how to do), 2) downgrade OS to Big Sur, also more involved than I care to do or 3) with OS 12.2 Beta out now, actual 12.2 will be out this month, so wait to see if that solves the bug. That's what I've decided to do. I have also queried LG Support to see if they are are aware of this issue and are releasing LG Screen Manager software newer than the current Version 2.9 to address this issue. If 12.2 does not fix this issue, then the monitor will have to go back to the repair place to see if there is another hardware issue, namely what was mentioned was bad wiring.

The issue started with Big Sur. Only an M1 issue. I think it's an LG driver issue which in my view belongs to APPLE AND LG TO FIX! Apple recommended and sold the monitor. There's an issue with M1 and the 5K.

I don't use the hub on the monitor which has solved the problem for me but it may be that my version of the monitor was the first iteration (A)

I had just purchased the MacBook Pro M1 and had the same issues with the Kernel Panic, screen constantly turning on and off etc.

I tried two things, both worked for me.

1. I have two Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapters, connected together by a short TB 2 cable. That worked with no issues on the monitor except it cannot charge the MacBook.
2. Given that a different cable to the one supplied with the monitor worked, I purchased a short (0.8m) Apple Thunderbolt 3 cable and tried that. It has since worked seamlessly with not turning on and off, no crashes etc.

I noted that the LG TB cable has quite a loose fit in the port on the monitor which possible could be a cause for the problem. The Apple TB cable is a very tight fit as were my TB 3 to TB 2 connectors.

OK, it's now March 23. On March 15 I upgraded to MacOS 12.3 and moved my OWC Thunderbolt dock away from being underneath the monitor. I am using - for the problematic monitor - 0.8m Apple Thunderbolt cables both from the laptop (14" M1 Max) to the OWC Thunderbolt dock as well as from the dock to the LG 5K monitor. My "non-problematic monitor" - also an LG 5K monitor (yes, I have 2 of them), uses the single, long LG-supplied Thunderbolt cable.

At this point, both monitors are working just fine. I have had zero issues since I did this - in other words, no random monitor shut downs, no blank displays, no suddenly not finding the camera or the speaker, no suddenly not being able to adjust the volume control on one of the displays, no suddenly not being able to adjust the brightness on one of the displays. In short, they're now both working flawlessly.

What exactly the problem was is still unknown to me, but it's got to be a combination of MacOS 12.3, the cables and moving the OWC Thunderbolt dock.

As I mentioned in a previous post, all the problems were resolved by just using the Apple Thunderbolt 3 cable. The cable that was supplied with the monitor did not work reliably on a new MacBook. The monitor supplied TB cable does however work with my 2017 iMac OK.

Just another update to perhaps help other people a little.

Since my last report, I had no real problems except for two times, both of which seem to be the result of interference with the LG monitor motherboard.

1. I had a router (802.11ac at first, switched to an 802.11ax 2 days ago). The router was sitting behind my monitors, and I had a Cat 5 ethernet cable going from the router to a combination of a thunderbolt adapter --> ethernet + USB --> thunderbolt adapter which was plugged into my OWC thunderbolt hub. If I moved the adapter too close to the rear of the monitor, the monitor would immediately go blank. Solution: move the cable further away from the monitor. I thought the problem was therefore solved. Things were stable for several weeks with no screen blackouts.
2. Turns out, however, that was not the root cause. Two days ago I moved to a new router - same position as the old router - but with an 802.11ax radio, and higher transmission power. Suddenly my monitor decided to start blanking out again. My first change was to substitute in a different one-piece USB --> ethernet adapter for the combo I had previously been using. That did not fix things. Thereafter, I moved the monitor further away from the router, which seemed to stop the screen blanking phenomenon. I then picked up the router and then brought it close to the back of the monitor, and BAM, just like the that monitor shut off, requiring me to unplug it and then plug it back in again to revive it.

So, to echo what others have said here, there is definitely a problem with interference with these monitors. Is it the only problem - probably unlikely. However, it's definitely a problem.

To summarize remedial actions:

1. Ensure you are using good quality TB cables.
2. Make sure you have a good quality TB hub if you are using one.
3. If you are using the old thunderbolt to ethernet adapter piggybacked with a thunderbolt to USB-C adapter, switch it out, because it seems like there's some RF interference there (both are Apple components).
4. If you have a WiFi router within 1m / 3ft of the back of your monitor, move it. If you need a longer ethernet cable because you want to wire it, then do so.
5. If you are not on MacOS 12.3.1 or later, update to it.

This has been my solution: bypass the hub. I'm hoping they eventually provide a patch...but I'm not holding my breath.