About ASRock Z87 Extreme11/ac Motherboard

[cavendishqi]

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Z87 Extreme11ac/?cat=Specifications

Z87 Extreme11/ac
22 x SATA3 ports (16 SAS-3 + 6 SATA3), 4-Way SLI™ & CrossFireX™, Thunderbolt™ 2.
This one simply has it all!

A-Style : Home Cloud, Purity Sound™, 802.11ac WiFi
22 x SATA3 (16 x SAS-3 12.0 Gb/s + 6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s) from LSI SAS 3008 Controller+ 3X24R Expander
AMD 4-Way CrossFireX™ and NVIDIA® 4-Way SLI™ supported by PLX PEX 8747 Bridge
Supports 4-Channel, Dual-Port Thunderbolt™ 2 Technology
Supports 4th Gen Intel® Core™ i7 / i5 / i3 / Xeon® / Pentium® / Celeron® in LGA1150 Package
Premium Gold Capacitor Design, Digi Power, 12 Power Phase Design, Dual-Stack MOSFET
Supports Dual Channel DDR3 2933+(OC)
4 x PCIe 3.0 x16, 3 x PCIe 2.0 x1, 1 x mini-PCIe
VGA Output/Input: 1 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort-In, 2 x mini DisplayPort/Thunderbolt™ 2
Intel® Dual Gigabit LAN with Teaming
7.1 CH HD Audio with Content Protection (Realtek ALC1150 Audio Codec), Supports DTS Connect
1 x eSATA, 2 x mSATA, 12 x USB 3.0, 7 x USB 2.0
1 x ASRock Wi-SD BOX (Supports 4 USB 3.0 ports and an SD 3.0 card slot)
WLAN : 1 x 802.11ac + BT v4.0 module
Supports A-Tuning, XFast 555, Easy Driver Installer, FAN-Tastic Tuning, USB Key

 

[cdrhoek]

I'm using an Asrock Extreme9/AC motherboard and so far cannot get OSX to recognize the Thunderbolt hardware. I wonder if the Extreme11/ac Thunderbolt will work? Both of the Asrock Thunderbolt boards support connecting a discrete graphics card to the motherboard via a Displayport input and then out via a Thunderbolt port. I have tested this with a displayport equipped iMac in the target display mode and it works. It does not work with a Thunderbolt iMac as a target display. I have not tried it with a Thunderbolt display.

From the Asrock website:

Exclusive DP-In Design for Supporting Graphics Cards via Thunderbolt™
Connect your graphics card to ASRock's exclusive DP-In port on the motherboard using a mini-DP to DP cable (see red arrow) and link your Thunderbolt™ devices and monitor with a Thunderbolt™ cable (see green arrow), then you may check out the extreme performance of your graphics card via Thunderbolt™ technology!

 

[cdrhoek]

I changed the bios settings to force load the thunderbolt option ROM and to disable wake on thunderbolt. I connected a firewire drive via a thunderbolt to firewire adapter. Rebooted, and lo and behold, I had the external firewire drive sitting on my desktop. The system report changed for "Thunderbolt: no hardware was found" to "no drivers loaded". I think I will try my iMac in the target disk mode and see what happens.

 

[Katocaramon]

I'm very interested to this motherboard for the possibility to route the signal of a GPU to Thunderbolt, I'm trying to figure out the best mackintosh configuration to do graphical work using my Thunderbolt display.

Have you been able to configure correctly this mobo to make thunderbolt work, this would be a bread added value to me.

Thanks for the support.

 

[cdrhoek]

I have a thunderbolt monitor connected to the Z87 Extreme9/ac. It works using dual 7970s connected to the displayport input to the motherboard and out to the monitor via thunderbolt. The only problem is that there is no video until the os loads (No display of the bios settings if needed). The only way I managed to get thunderbolt working for external drives was to load the thunderbolt drivers in windows. Once this was done, thunderbolt worked in OSX

 

[Smuuh]

I have a thunderbolt monitor connected to the Z87 Extreme9/ac. It works using dual 7970s connected to the displayport input to the motherboard and out to the monitor via thunderbolt. The only problem is that there is no video until the os loads (No display of the bios settings if needed). The only way I managed to get thunderbolt working for external drives was to load the thunderbolt drivers in windows. Once this was done, thunderbolt worked in OSX

Hi cdrhoek,
I've been following this thread 'cause I'm very interesting in having a thunderbolt PC output to a thunderbolt monitor like the imac (late2013).
Are you saying this works with the Z87 Extreme9/ac? I mean is possible to have a booted win8 on the thunderbolt monitor via target display mode?

 

[cdrhoek]

It works with the thunderbolt display. I don't get any video until the login screen when I use my discrete GPU. The integrated gpu works like any other monitor. Both windows and osx work fine. This is not the same thing as the target display mode. This requires an iMac and does not work with anything other than a thunderbolt equipped Mac.

 

[Smuuh]

This is not the same thing as the target display mode. This requires an iMac and does not work with anything other than a thunderbolt equipped Mac.

Thanks alot for your answer. So the target display mode only works with apple original devices? There is now way to get a signal from another source to the iMac screen?