[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

[CaseySJ]

Thanks! The monitor I have has a KVM switch built-in to the monitor. Do you think that will affect it?

We generally use ghost plugs with many (most?) Thunderbolt monitors if the Thunderbolt monitor is the only monitor connected to the system. As you discovered, the Thunderbolt monitor is blank during boot, but when a second monitor is present, then the Thunderbolt monitor may turn on. The ghost plug is designed to act as a phantom second monitor. But if you are already using a real second monitor, then the ghost plug will provide no added benefit.

 

[TheRealGudvin]

@CaseySJ

I have an external SSD Drive (USB-C Gen 2 10Gbps), no USB-C issue after booting without any devices. XHC2 device appear on IOReg. When I connect SSD Drive, it is instantly detected.

I noticed during SSDT/Firmware experimentation that when I have :

• kPowerStateSuspended increasing value after boot, XHC2 is operating (my current SSDT)
• kPowerStateOff increasing value after boot, XHC2 is operating only after Sleep/Wake.

View attachment 473307

This behaviour depends on SSDT XHC2 content :

The following is my current XHC2 methods :
View attachment 473308

Sometimes, when I don't want to use XHC2 and want to have device disabled (but operate after only one Sleep/Wake), I use my second SSDT :

View attachment 473309

On this second SSDT, my only issue is that XHC2 doesn't operate after boot (XHC2 device detected but no effect after Drive plugging). I have to Sleep/wake one time. After this, It will normaly operate by switching between kPowerStateOff (with no device plugged), kPowerStateOn (with device plugged), kPowerStateSleep (during first Mac Sleeping State) and kPowerStateSuspended (during all other Mac Sleeping State).

I have the following BIOS config :

• Discrete Thunderbolt Support Enabled
• TBT Vt-d base security Disabled
• Thunderbolt Boot Support Disabled
• Wake from Thunderbolt Devices Disabled
• Security Level to User Authorization
• Thunderbolt Usb Support Enabled
• GPIO Force Prw Enabled

Hello! Send pls ur SSDT.

 

[wiiwelshman]

We generally use ghost plugs with many (most?) Thunderbolt monitors if the Thunderbolt monitor is the only monitor connected to the system. As you discovered, the Thunderbolt monitor is blank during boot, but when a second monitor is present, then the Thunderbolt monitor may turn on. The ghost plug is designed to act as a phantom second monitor. But if you are already using a real second monitor, then the ghost plug will provide no added benefit.

I actually didn't know that. LOL! I only have one monitor with a built-in KVM. I ordered the part. It will be here on Friday. I will provide an update.

 

[CaseySJ]

I actually didn't know that. LOL! I only have one monitor with a built-in KVM. I ordered the part. It will be here on Friday. I will provide an update.

The ghost plug is not guaranteed to work, but it is something to try.

 

[CaseySJ]

Hello! Send pls ur SSDT.

That is not a simple SSDT. It cannot be used on other systems. Please describe what problem you’re trying to fix.

 

[jackil182]

Hello @CaseySJ! I'm glad to let you know that my "black screen on wake" issue that I started having 2 months ago has been solved with the clean installation of the latest Catalina according to one of your guides. Sorry for the 20+ messages it took to investigate this. Screen wake works now both in MacOS and Windows (including hibernation). Of course Messages doesn't work for me again as with the original Catalina 10.15.3 installation (reported here) and clean OS installation (as per your suggestion, Casey) didn't work. But that's alright. I'm super happy that the sleep issue is fixed, because it was causing a lot of headache.

There's one question I have left though, which is was the purchase of two USB-C to HDMI cable a waste, since it turns out that connecting displays via USB-C is a bad idea?

 

[jackil182]

Honestly, I'm still a bit confused why this is a bad idea, because I've seen a lot of discussions regarding connecting monitors via Thunderbolt 3 and monitors listed in Thunderbolt 3 Experiences in post #1 (which is essentially what I'm trying to do...). Am I missing something important? How else can I connect monitors via thunderbolt?

 

[CaseySJ]

Honestly, I'm still a bit confused why this is a bad idea, because I've seen a lot of discussions regarding connecting monitors via Thunderbolt 3 and monitors listed in Thunderbolt 3 Experiences in post #1 (which is essentially what I'm trying to do...). Am I missing something important? How else can I connect monitors via thunderbolt?

Let's see if we can straighten out the confusion:

• There is a difference between connecting monitors via Thunderbolt and connecting a Thunderbolt monitor.
• Not all monitors are Thunderbolt monitors.

In other words:

• If a monitor has DisplayPort, HDMI, DVI connectors only, then it is not a Thunderbolt monitor.
• If a monitor has a USB-C connector without a Thunderbolt logo printed on it, then it is not a Thunderbolt monitor.
• Thunderbolt monitors have a USB-C connector with a Thunderbolt logo. These monitors may also have DisplayPort and/or HDMI connectors.

Next:

• Thunderbolt ports carry at least 3 kinds of signals:
  • DisplayPort
  • USB 2 and USB 3
  • PCIe bus extension
• When we use a USB-C to DisplayPort cable (with USB-C end of the cable connected to Thunderbolt port on motherboard), the cable will only send DisplayPort signals to a standard non-Thunderbolt monitor that has a DisplayPort connector.
  • This provides compatibility with non-Thunderbolt monitors.
  • There is no reason to do this if you have an AMD GPU with a DisplayPort output built in.
• When we use a USB-C to HDMI cable (with USB-C end of the cable connected to Thunderbolt port on motherboard), the cable will convert DisplayPort to HDMI and send that to a standard non-Thunderbolt monitor that has a HDMI connector.
  • This provides compatibility with non-Thunderbolt monitors.
  • There is no reason to do this if you have an AMD GPU with a HDMI output built in.

Finally:

• If you have a real Thunderbolt monitor that has a USB-C (Thunderbolt) connector with a Thunderbolt logo, then and only then it becomes necessary to use a Thunderbolt Cable (with Thunderbolt logos on both ends of the cable).
• We connect the Thunderbolt cable to either of the two Thunderbolt ports on the motherboard, and the other end goes to the Thunderbolt port on the monitor.
• Then we have two options for enabling video over this cable:
  • Option 1: We can put iGPU into non-headless mode (0x3E9B0007).
    • This option is highly discouraged because it causes compatibility problems with various applications.
  • Option 2: We can connect a short DisplayPort cable from the AMD GPU to the DP-Inport on the rear IO panel. Then we can use the top Thunderbolt port (the one closest to HDMI port) to connect the Thunderbolt monitor.
    • This is the better option because the AMD GPU is much more powerful than Intel's iGPU.

Examples of Thunderbolt cables (i.e. with Thunderbolt logo printed on each connector):

 

[roastable]

In conclusion it seems that these ports may indeed be able to support Gen 2 10Gbps. From these screenshots, I'm noting that the mA of "Current Available" to the drive is a much lower 500 when connected in 10Gbps mode than the 900 available when connected as 5Gbps. Given that the "Current Required" is 896 mA, I'm wondering if power might not be properly configured to give the device enough current when running at Gen 2.

I'm looking to do some more testing with the C to C cable once those adapters arrive but I'm not expecting anything much different.

No different behaviour with the adapters. In fact, the drive doesn't even bother attempting to negotiate and pretty much immediately sets itself at 5Gbps.

I have confirmed that the Type-A ports are capable of Gen 2 however and that the adapters are indeed able to establish that speed through my iPad Pro that has no problems getting 10Gbps. Perhaps establishing the link over Type-A is a matter of bus powered vs. non bus powered devices like the iPad. If that's a known spec of USB, then maybe that's why there aren't too many Gen 2 devices that aren't Type-C.

The next step would be to try in Windows to see if the drive can get 10Gbps there but I'm not too certain of what software I'd use to check the link speed.

EDIT: I tried to use this software and my computer blue-screened. Will maybe continue trying to test in Windows when I'm not working.

 

[brousseau6933]

<------ See my Z390 setup over there <-------
It looks fine. The connection speed seems to be dependent on the speed of the little TB card that is inside whatever device you're connecting, as well as the capabilities of the Thunderbolt cable. My Apollo has a Falcon Ridge-type TB 2 card inside because it was made in ~2016. I'm not convinced that the latency (RTL) would be lower if I dropped $600 on a UAD TB 3 card: My FW400 MBox Pro and FW400 003R is only 2ms "slower"in RTL than the Apollo at 48 KHz.

My Z390 Thunderbolt has not been flashed. I have full powerswap/hotswap with my UAD Apollo 8 and my BMD MultiDock 2. FWIW, it is the stock Z390 and I run the i9 at 4.8 GHz.

Presonus support (kudos!) confirmed to me that this behavior is correct.