thunderbolt3 PCIe to Thunderbolt3 add on card for Motherboards without a Thunderbolt Header.

[colesdav]

Hello, 

 

Does anyone know if PCIe Thunderbolt3 Expansion Cards are available yet or planned? 

Also does anyone know if Thunderbolt 3 expansion cards will require a motherboard with a Thunderbolt Header? 

Finally does anyone know why the Thunderbolt Header is really necessary, and why whatever data from the Header could not be sent over PCIe? 

The requirement for a Thunderbolt Header on the Motherboard must be choking the uptake of Thunderbolt on PC's. 

 

Background. 

 

I have an ASUS Deluxe/Dual Z87 Motherboard which has two Thunderbolt 1 ports on the motherboard. 
I bought this board at the time, because it supported Thunderbolt 1. Unfortunately, this board does not include an 

additional Thunderbolt header on the board. Therefore when ASUS released the Thunderbolt2 expansion card with the Z97 Deluxe,
I was unable to use it on my Z87 board.   

Thanks. 

colesdav. 
 

[colesdav]

6 hours ago, colesdav said:

Hello, 

 

Does anyone know if PCIe Thunderbolt3 Expansion Cards are available yet or planned? 

Also does anyone know if Thunderbolt 3 expansion cards will require a motherboard with a Thunderbolt Header? 

Finally does anyone know why the Thunderbolt Header is really necessary, and why whatever data from the Header could not be sent over PCIe? 

The requirement for a Thunderbolt Header on the Motherboard must be choking the uptake of Thunderbolt on PC's. 

 

Background. 

 

I have an ASUS Deluxe/Dual Z87 Motherboard which has two Thunderbolt 1 ports on the motherboard. 
I bought this board at the time, because it supported Thunderbolt 1. Unfortunately, this board does not include an 

additional Thunderbolt header on the board. Therefore when ASUS released the Thunderbolt2 expansion card with the Z97 Deluxe,
I was unable to use it on my Z87 board.   

Thanks. 

colesdav. 
 

 

I will contact ASUS directly and see what I can find out. 

 

[gdoe]

I am wondering about the same thing. Any help is greatly appreciated

[colesdav]

On 28/01/2017 at 9:21 PM, gdoe said:

I am wondering about the same thing. Any help is greatly appreciated

Hi,

 

Just logged into this forum for first time since Christmas, sorry for the delay in response to you.

 

I contacted Asus about this. I only got though to the hotdesk support guys though.

 

For the Asus Z87 Deluxe Dual.

========================

The Answer was I could definitely not use their Thunderbolt 2 (or 3) addon card if I did not have a thunderbolt header available on the board. 

 

They did not state this explicitly but i think it might be the case that part of the reason for the header is to ensure  that thunderbolt cards can only be used on certain Intel Approved boards. I think the header partly performs a  "dongle" function. Not 100% sure. Not what Asus told me, just my impression from the overall discussion. I can see no other reason for doing it like this.

 

My fault for being one of the first to go for an Asus Deluxe Dual with Built In Thunderbolt 1 I guess. It was early days back then for Thunderbolt on PC. 
I had not done my research well enough / it was not advertised but the Z87 Deluxe Board (without built in Thunderbolt) actually does have a built in header!

So annoying! I could have spent less and had a more future proof motherboard!

It would have been good for Asus to have thought of this situation up front w,r,t, the Deluxe Dual. They really should have provided a Thunderbold Header and a way to turn off the built in Thunderbolt and use a PCie based card instead.

So as far as I know, for my Z87 Deluxe Dual I am completely stuck with the built in Thunderbolt 1 ports.
I have not found any other solution despite looking and asking around from the original posting date.
I could probably find get the required Header signals on some tracks on  the board and design a custom card and software to do it. i don't have time or the willpower.

 

One reason I was asking about this was I bought a Samsung 1TB Nvme SSD and I wanted it to be portable and work over Thunderbolt1/2.  

Good news however. I can use an Akitio Thunder 2 PCIe Expansion Box containing a Samsung 1TB Nvme SSD + Asus Hyper M2 X4 Gen 3.0 card o.k.
http://rog.asus.com/articles/product-news/asus-hyper-m-2-x4-pci-express-gen23-to-m-2-x4-ssd-adapter-card/

 

The Samsung Nvme + Hyperm2x4 card also works in the 3rd PCIe x16 Slot on the Z87 motherboard if I run my crossfired GPUs + the SSD in PCIe3.0/8/4/4.
It hits crossfire performance if I do that though.

Also if you are thinking of getting one, the Asus Z87 BIOS will not boot from the NVMe SSD + HyperX card with official ASUS BIOS. It just sees a data drive once you boot into Windows 8.1. It performs great. Data Transfer rates on atto are brilliant. You just cant use it as a Boot drive because the BIOS does not see the drive at boot. 

I got in contact with someone who found a way of extracting some code from a  Z97 BIOS download and then modifying the Z87 Bios with the extracted code and then
he claims you can boot from the NVMe SSD + HyperX. That seems a step too far for me. I woould be worried about bricking my motherboard.
 

For the Asus Z97 Deluxe.

====================

The Samsung Nvme + Hyperm2x4 card works in the 3rd PCIe x16 Slot on the Z97 motherboard. If you download the lastest Z97 Motherboard BIOS files from the ASUS Website and reflash Motherboard BIOS with it then you can Boot from the Samsung 1TB NVMe SSD. It shows up in The BIOS at boot. I did a full Windows 8.1 installation on the NVMe SSD and was able to boot from it. It worked. But I will tell you. It was a 10 seconds faster booting up than the original Corsair 1TB SATA III SSD.
 

My Asus Z97 Deluxe came with with Thunderbolt 2 EX Card + Header Connection.

It is, officially at least, stuck on Thunderbolt 2.

 

Unofficially though I found a presentation / youtube video  where someone was testing an Asus Thunderbolt 3 addon Card in their Asus Z97 board with a Thunderbolt 3 EGPU case and a GPU inside it.  I don't have the link / video here. But basically the person on the video said that although not officially supported by Asus, he was using it constantly for 1 month and it worked fine. His conclusion was, if you have an Asus Motherboard with an Asus Thunderbolt Header the Thunderbolt 3 EX card will very likely work.

I intend to try this out sometime later this year using an Akitio Thunder 3 EGPU.

I hope this helps.

 

[colesdav]

On 28/01/2017 at 9:21 PM, gdoe said:

I am wondering about the same thing. Any help is greatly appreciated

 

Here is the best article I found describing the whole Thunderbolt Header on Asus Motherboards story.
https://www.pcper.com/category/tags/thunderboltex