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Thunderbolt PCIe Card for Dell Precision 3660 (10-pin header)

DiasCrimson

I bought two Dell Precision 3660 workstations with RTX A4000 cards and they are overkill for the video editing my team does (in-house at a hospital). As for "why didn't you just build yourself?" - we're forced to buy through contracts and have to have service/maintenance for "equipment" but can pretty much procure any "accessory" we need ad-hoc as long as it's through an approved vendor.

 

Our old workstations (HP Z840) had SAS out for an external LTO tape drive for archival.

As part of our upgrade path, I bought an OWC Thunderbolt 3 LTO drive because Dell's spec sheet states the 3660 accepts a Thunderbolt 4 add-in card (page 7 of https://www.delltechnologies.com/asset/en-us/products/workstations/technical-support/precision-3660-spec-sheet.pdf). There is a 10-pin TBT header on the motherboard (photo attached, I presume it's Thunderbolt).

 

However, I'm having trouble finding a thunderbolt card that works. We originally got ASUS TB4 cards only to learn they had a proprietary pin configuration.

 

I've searched Dell's website as well as B&H and Newegg looking for compatible cards, none are listed as compatible with the workstation and there is ZERO documentation or even a photos showing the pins on the cards. Dell's phone and online support has been of no assistance. Literally "what's your service tag?" followed by a full day of being directed back and forth between sales and support staff with none able to tell me if a single card they carry would work.

 

Anyone have a recommendation for a compatible add-in card? Or better yet, does anyone OWN a Dell TB PCIe card and can send photos of the pin layouts?

TBT pic.jpg

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  • 5 weeks later...

hi, did you find a way to get around with this? I have a similar setup and can’t bear go through this (after years of bad experience). In Europe you will have most time more sh… support from big companies than you experienced in US…

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