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Thunderbolt 3 on a AMD Motherboard?

runcoach
By runcoach
in CPUs, Motherboards, and Memory
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Posted

Hello,

 

Newbie here.  Be gentle please.  I purchased a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 add-in card not realizing the motherboard had to have a compatible Thunderbolt 3 header on it to support it.  Oh well.  This was to support a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU that I have.

 

I am considering building my own PC and like the AMD Threadripper 2950X.  I have been unable to find a motherboard that supports both.  I know I could live without the add-in card and eGPU but do not want $1000Cdn in tech to sit collecting dust.  I could just go with an Intel setup but an Intel CPU with similar benchmarking is about $1400Cdn more.

 

Thank you in advance.

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Posted
14 minutes ago, runcoach said:

Hello,

 

Newbie here.  Be gentle please.  I purchased a Gigabyte GC-Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 add-in card not realizing the motherboard had to have a compatible Thunderbolt 3 header on it to support it.  Oh well.  This was to support a Thunderbolt 3 eGPU that I have.

 

I am considering building my own PC and like the AMD Threadripper 2950X.  I have been unable to find a motherboard that supports both.  I know I could live without the add-in card and eGPU but do not want $1000Cdn in tech to sit collecting dust.  I could just go with an Intel setup but an Intel CPU with similar benchmarking is about $1400Cdn more.

 

Thank you in advance.

From what I can see in the product page, it doesn't plug into a Thunderbolt 3 header, it plugs into PCIe.

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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Posted

Nevermind, it plugs into PCIe but needs a thunderbolt 3 header, so that sucks.

No, there are not any motherboards that support thunderbolt 3 on AMD.

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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9 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

No, there are not any motherboards that support thunderbolt 3 on AMD.

Why not?

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Just now, Billy Pilgrim said:

Why not?

Because Thunderbolt 3 is closed-source and made by Intel (AMD's main competitor).

That should tell you why

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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1 minute ago, NunoLava1998 said:

Because Thunderbolt 3 is closed-source and made by Intel (AMD's main competitor).

That should tell you why

ah ok, so all of the usb-c ports on and AMD Motherboard support usb 3.1 gen2?

It seems that some AMD boards have intel LAN chips.

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2 minutes ago, Billy Pilgrim said:

ah ok, so all of the usb-c ports on and AMD Motherboard support usb 3.1 gen2?

It seems that some AMD boards have intel LAN chips.

You'll need to go into the motherboard specifications for that.

Looking at a X399 board like the X399 Aorus Pro, there is one (and only one) on the back panel:

  1. 1 x USB Type-C™ port on the back panel, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support

There's also a USB Type-C port that is Gen 1 however, so yea

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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Most X399 motherboards should have USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C ports (although only one and on the back panel).

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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What eGPU is that? Most of the time it's just a dGPU in a life supporting box, taking it out and put into the PC is the easiest way to use it.

 

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Posted
40 minutes ago, NunoLava1998 said:

You'll need to go into the motherboard specifications for that.

Looking at a X399 board like the X399 Aorus Pro, there is one (and only one) on the back panel:

  1. 1 x USB Type-C™ port on the back panel, with USB 3.1 Gen 2 support

There's also a USB Type-C port that is Gen 1 however, so yea

I have gigabyte x470 gaming 5 wifi and according to the website it has

"Intel® GbE LAN chip (10/100/1000 Mbit)"

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  • 8 months later...
Posted
On 12/24/2018 at 4:54 AM, NunoLava1998 said:

Nevermind, it plugs into PCIe but needs a thunderbolt 3 header, so that sucks.

No, there are not any motherboards that support thunderbolt 3 on AMD.

The asrock X570 Creator has 2 Thunderbolt ports , its also $499 USD.

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2 hours ago, TheNerdCorner said:

The asrock X570 Creator has 2 Thunderbolt ports , its also $499 USD.

Dude... This post is from 10 months ago.

Ryzen 7 3700X / 16GB RAM / Optane SSD / GTX 1650 / Solus Linux

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  • 2 months later...
Posted
On 12/24/2018 at 6:04 PM, NunoLava1998 said:

Because Thunderbolt 3 is closed-source and made by Intel (AMD's main competitor).

That should tell you why

Sorry to wake a year old thread but I have some interesting (but not practically useful) insight there. I have an Asus Sabertooth 990FX R2.0 (AM3+) and it has a Thunderbolt gen 1 header. And this board has been shown working (by others) with Asus's first ThunderboltEX card.

 

However. I haven't been able to buy one of those compatible cards. Asus's support page for the original card has been memory-holed. The official story seems to be that Asus's implementation (not mentioning AMD specifically) went against Intel's certification rules. Then the hardware seemed to just no longer exist.

 

In theory any thunderbolt card can run with any mainboard if you add the right UEFI module and push the firmware to the card. The cards ship without firmware and have to be flashed before first use. This is supposed to be done by the driver installer but could be done manually.  I'm sure doing so somehow violates Intel's EULAs though.

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