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Any chance to get a Z370 based motherboard with built-in thunderbolt in the near future ?

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Dec 16, 2017
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Motherboard
GA-Z370 AORUS Gaming 7
CPU
i7-8700K
Graphics
UHD 630
Mac
  1. MacBook Pro
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
Hi,

So I'm trying to find a motherboard with built-in thunderbolt to build a CustoMac Pro. It needs to be ATX format since I already own a modified G5 case with ATX tray that I'll use for this build.

trs96 told me about the GA-Z270X Gaming 8, but it's a $400 mobo (at least in my country) and it only supports Kaby Lake processors… Performance is not my priority, but $400 seems a little bit expansive for a build that won't be upgradable at all.

I read somewhere on this forum that most recent motherboards from either Asus or Gigabyte only provided Thunderbolt Header, and require a Thunderbolt card to get it work, that may not be natively supported in macOS. Thunderbolt is my number one priority for this build, as I intend to use it with a Thunderbolt audio interface (apollo twin or focusrite clarett, which are both TH2 I guess).

So, I don't know if there's really a way to predict that, but do you guys think there's any hope to see a new model from Asus or Gigabyte that would be Z370 based (for coffee lake compatibility) and have at least one TH3 port in the near future?

Thank you for your help!

Raphaël
 
Hi,

So I'm trying to find a motherboard with built-in thunderbolt to build a CustoMac Pro. It needs to be ATX format since I already own a modified G5 case with ATX tray that I'll use for this build.

trs96 told me about the GA-Z270X Gaming 8, but it's a $400 mobo (at least in my country) and it only supports Kaby Lake processors… Performance is not my priority, but $400 seems a little bit expansive for a build that won't be upgradable at all.

I read somewhere on this forum that most recent motherboards from either Asus or Gigabyte only provided Thunderbolt Header, and require a Thunderbolt card to get it work, that may not be natively supported in macOS. Thunderbolt is my number one priority for this build, as I intend to use it with a Thunderbolt audio interface (apollo twin or focusrite clarett, which are both TH2 I guess).

So, I don't know if there's really a way to predict that, but do you guys think there's any hope to see a new model from Asus or Gigabyte that would be Z370 based (for coffee lake compatibility) and have at least one TH3 port in the near future?

Thank you for your help!

Raphaël

My guess is that what I am going to say (or rather conjecture) may not be what you want to hear.

My guess is that since the lifetime of Z370 is probably not very long (rumors of a newer chipset Z390 supporting 8 core CPUs are already circulating), and since we have not seen any Z370 motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 (apart from an ASRock ITX), we may not see another Z370 motherboard with Thunderbolt 3.
 
My guess is that what I am going to say (or rather conjecture) may not be what you want to hear.

My guess is that since the lifetime of Z370 is probably not very long (rumors of a newer chipset Z390 supporting 8 core CPUs are already circulating), and since we have not seen any Z370 motherboards with Thunderbolt 3 (apart from an ASRock ITX), we may not see another Z370 motherboard with Thunderbolt 3.

Thank you for your answer. I realize now that I'd better stick to a GA-Z270X Gaming 8 / Kaby Lake processor combo. I initially thought that choosing a Z370 motherboard would be a better future-proof option than a Z270 one. But as you said, the lifetime of Z370 is probably not very long now. Besides, a Z370 motherboard will only allow me to use a Coffee Lake processor, and would probably not be compatible with the next generation of intel processors (right?)

I also read several topics where owners of Z370 boards w/ Coffee Lake processors and TH3 add-on cards report serious issues to get their thunderbolt peripherals to work properly, so I think the safest bet for me is to stick with the GA-Z270X Gaming 8.
 
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