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Skylake ASUS ThunderboltEX 3 Testing

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Changed slot back to bottom, changed BIOS to SB - slot 3. Got connection again. Rebooted to OSX, no link. Rebooted to Windows, no connection.

Seems the only way I can get a connection is if I boot with no TB card in, set BIOS to Slot 2, put card in slot 2, boot to BIOS, change to slot 3, then place card in slot 3, then it works for ONE boot. As soon as I reboot, no dice.

Any ideas?
 
Okay - finally got it to work. The trick is, you have to cold boot. Anything else is unreliable at boot up. Had to change vboxhfs to HFSPlus.efi as well.

See attached for final config (I did end up changing cache size to 128mb as well).
 

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Just wanted to chime in that I have a z270-ar w/ ex3 card that works w/ apollo twin on win but can't get osx to see thunderbolt at all. Just did a fresh install of 10.13.2 and so far most everything else is a go. Tried various settings in bios but no luck. I'll keep checking back see if anyone gets it solved.
**edit**
I have it working on my system. Turned off AR AIC in bios and boot with Apollo twin powered up and it's good to go. Also wanted to add that while most things seem to be good, on occasion I get printf freeze at boot now and then but rebooting seems to do the trick. PITA though.
***last edit***
In case anyone wanted to ask questions etc. I have to say that for now I've abandoned the project until I have more time to dedicate to nailing things down. Was running into too many issues trying to get this to work. Most annoying was the fact that the Nvidia web driver would constantly break/fail to load at startup resulting in boot crashes. Additionally, while my fans run whisper quiet in windows (and I have control over them) they were really loud/fast in hackintosh and for some reason, my middle case fan stopped altogether. I don't know if this has to do with fakesmc plugs or not. Finally, while the apollo appeared to be seen I had no chance to actually test it because logic kept freezing up at start. I'll probably give it a shot again in a few more weeks after holidays. Cheers.
 
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I can confirm the ThunderboltEx3 card works with the Asus Prime Z370-A mobo and Coffee Lake i7-8700k CPU running High Sierra 10.13.2. I am using Universal Audio hardware (UAD-2 quad satellite). After installing High Sierra, I installed Windows to another SSD. Installed the ThunderboltEX3 drivers in Windows. I was having some strange hit-or-miss issues with the Thunderbolt BIOS. MacOS booted every time without fail when Thunderbolt was disabled, but it would often fail with the warning sign when I had it enabled. It seemed that in order to get MacOS to boot and see the UAD hardware I had to disable Thunderbolt in BIOS, boot to MacOS, restart and enter BIOS, enable Thunderbolt, save & exit, then it would all work for one boot. Upon restarting, I'd get the warning sign and no boot until I'd disable Thunderbolt again. This morning I replaced the OsxAptioFix2Drv.efi with OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi and I have had no issues since. Tried multiple reboots from within MacOS and it boots up every time seeing the UAD hardware.

The BIOS settings I used for Thunderbolt were pretty basic. I started out by disabling everything. Enabled Thunderbolt Boot Support and changed Security setting to 'No Security.'
 

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Hey jpg724,

I'm trying to get the exact same system (z370-a card/EX3, i7-8700k and apollo), I'm a bit of a noob at this, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind uploading the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi file you mentioned? Might be the solution to my problems!

Cheers!
 
I can confirm the ThunderboltEx3 card works with the Asus Prime Z370-A mobo and Coffee Lake i7-8700k CPU running High Sierra 10.13.2. I am using Universal Audio hardware (UAD-2 quad satellite). After installing High Sierra, I installed Windows to another SSD. Installed the ThunderboltEX3 drivers in Windows. I was having some strange hit-or-miss issues with the Thunderbolt BIOS. MacOS booted every time without fail when Thunderbolt was disabled, but it would often fail with the warning sign when I had it enabled. It seemed that in order to get MacOS to boot and see the UAD hardware I had to disable Thunderbolt in BIOS, boot to MacOS, restart and enter BIOS, enable Thunderbolt, save & exit, then it would all work for one boot. Upon restarting, I'd get the warning sign and no boot until I'd disable Thunderbolt again. This morning I replaced the OsxAptioFix2Drv.efi with OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi and I have had no issues since. Tried multiple reboots from within MacOS and it boots up every time seeing the UAD hardware.

The BIOS settings I used for Thunderbolt were pretty basic. I started out by disabling everything. Enabled Thunderbolt Boot Support and changed Security setting to 'No Security.'

Also, I'm wondering if you're able to post a pic of your thunderbolt bios settings if possible, that would be a fantastic help!

Cheers!
 
Hey jpg724,

I'm trying to get the exact same system (z370-a card/EX3, i7-8700k and apollo), I'm a bit of a noob at this, I'm wondering if you wouldn't mind uploading the OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi file you mentioned? Might be the solution to my problems!

Cheers!

The EFI file can be found here:
https://nickwoodhams.com/x99-hackintosh-osxaptiofixdrv-allocaterelocblock-error-update/

I'll upload the Thunderbolt settings a little later when I have a chance. Do you have Windows installed also? And can you see the Apollo from Windows? From what I've read, part of making this work in OSX is to install the ThunderboltEx3 drivers in Windows first.
 
Just a heads up- your PC may not sleep/wake correctly if you have Thunderbolt enabled in BIOS all the time. If you see that your PC sleeps/wakes one time but doesn't won't go back to sleep again and it restarts instead of going to sleep, you may need to disable Thunderbolt. This seems to be an issue with High Sierra.
 
Thunderbolt/USB3.1 is still messy. It wil work after a fashion with some devices when these are connected at boot, but with TB/USB3.1 enabled I definitely can't sleep my Hack. If only someone with the right skills would dive into this...
 
Thunderbolt/USB3.1 is still messy. It wil work after a fashion with some devices when these are connected at boot, but with TB/USB3.1 enabled I definitely can't sleep my Hack. If only someone with the right skills would dive into this...
Still messy indeed, however this thread is about ASUS Thunderbolt 3.
 
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