ASUS ThunderboltEX II PCIe Expansion Card - Testing Thread

[brutwurm]

Hey people!

DATE OF EXERIENCE: 1st of MAY, 2018

My experiences with installing the ThunderboltEX II 2 Dual:

Sooo.. I just tested the Asus Thunderboltex II Dual on my Hackintosh. I run Sierra 10.12.6. Asus Maximus IX 9 Hero


The good news is: I made the card work for Windows 10 and for Sierra (both)! It is as they say: first make it work in Windows, then it works in osx.

The bad news is: (a lot more unfortunately) All about it was highly unstable. First i had to order the card used from Germany (sold out everywhere). That's fine with me but long story short: It took me 14 hours and a looot of reading. I arrived at a point where I booted into windows and my lacie Thunderbolt 2 drive showed. I rebooted into Sierra, and it also showed. (Seems fine, ah?)

Point is I had to temper with a lot of ASUS BIOS settings and rebooted the PC approx. 200 times. 70% of them were dead boots to a black screen. The OSX installation seems pretty fragile when it comes to bios settings. In the end i could use my card and the thunderbolt drive in Win 10 and OSX, BUT THEN - without changing any bios settings, and even after rebooting about 10 times perfectly fine into WIN 10 and macOS, I couldn't boot into macOS anymore. just like that. So the whole thing was highly unstable, and as I "live" on my mac, it gave me a lot of problems to even temporarily **** up my Hackintosh. I mean i changed about 30-40 bios settings (some to try -> reboot -> put back the setting). Back and forth. Dead boot. Boots fine. nothing changed. Reboot. Boots fine. - again the same. suddenly: BÄM! doesn't boot anymore.

Sometimes the Thunderbolt connection would work, sometimes not. Sometimes my PC would boot, sometimes not. Windows 10 always booted fine btw.

What I did:

Did what was in the youtube video below (including descriptions)
(vid is for ThunderboltEX 3 only, but i took a bet and it made no difference as it seems)

you really have to install every driver package that came with the asus download SEPERATELY by clicking "install" (and after that the SETUP.exe itself)

I also read a lot in forums and added some of their suggestions.

when/why/after doing what exactly did it work? why did it work at all? Please i couldn't answer after 14 hours in front of a damned BIOS screen.

I tried the Intel TB driver, didn't work. I tried the "older" 2016 TB drivers (older than the newest TB Intel drivers that didn't seem to work at all) for the card from ASUS, and at some point, It just worked (-> connect your drive or the TB card will NEVER show up ! Install, reboot, try -> unsuccessful, reboot, uninstall, reboot. install packages alone, then driver, reboot. ETC ETC....

Suddenly it worked. just leave the drive connected. First step of all should probably be to to install the drivers without the card inserted. Leave connected and press "reboot" in WIN10 to have the TB drive show up in macOS also IF the hackintosh reboots.

I also replaced the OsxAptioFix2Drv-64.efi with OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi (dl from google somewhere). that's when it worked 10 times in a row, and then not anymore.

Btw also sometimes when changing this one memory parameter from 32 to 128 (as tonymacx86 writes you should do for OSX) the Mac part often didn't boot.

Things i experienced:

-My Lacie D2 4TB was nearly as fast in OSX said the benchmarks as in Windows. OSX: 190 MB/s write 190 MB/s read. WIN10:210 MB/s write 210 MB/s read. (for me in macOS it resulted in the same speed as with a USB 3.1 cable on my 3.1 connector - that basically is as fast as a 3.0 USB due to hardware hackintosh circumstances) - for me - no real speed gain.

- temper with the BIOS settings, get burned. 97% of what i changed was TB settings only, and after I disabled the TB support completely in the BIOS settings everything worked fine again - fortunately!!

-rebooting or shutting down unfortunately makes a difference in the process

-don't disconnect your drive or the TB functionality is not there, or even the whole Computer doesn't start anymore



Conclusion:

-no real speed gain after 14 hours (for me)
-sometimes booting macOS worked, sometimes not
-sometimes drive and ThunderboltEX II card worked, sometimes not.
-highly random process, (for me as a more or less noob) with only a few consistencies
- A lot of settings have to be tempered with and numerous combinations have to be tried out (at least 20 Thunderbolt BIOS settings had to be changed /tried, 3 driver packages for TB (1 old ASUS DL driver, one newer ASUS DL driver, one Intel driver)


I hope this helps! (and maybe even saves a day of your life -> go play in the park, nerds!) I nearly made it though. If one can figure out how to make the drive always show up and how to avoid black screen and "no way" graphical sign apple boot screen - hey, man maybe you understand more about Computer settings than me and then it might just work for you.

cheers, ilots

 

[brutwurm]

ah, yeah, and I used the slot furthest from the CPU

 

[koitsu]

Good grief, and you've even got an Asus board! I was trying with an ASRock board and made only slightly less progress...

I ended up making my board work all right with ASRock's TB2 card, but it got too old having to leave my audio interface on all the time, or reboot the machine if I turned it off. Ended up moving from a TB interface to a nice RME USB interface. At this point, RME, Focusrite and Zoom have all worked latency over USB so low, no human is going to tell the difference anyway.

 

[eetfuk1988]

Hey everyone,

sry for digging up this thread, but I think it's the right place for my issue. I have my Hackintosh running on a Asus Z87 Pro board and it works like a charm: smooth an powerful. in order to use my audio interface I want to use the Thunderbolt functionality the board offers. Unfortunately, it's super hard to find the ThunderboltEX II extension cards. I was lucky enough to come across a used ThunderboltEX II/DUAL only to find out that it's not supported with the pro version of my board... thanks for making the naming so confusing Asus (II/DUAL seriously?)

I tried it anyhow as there seem to be people that mix extension cards with other manufacturers boards and somehow get it to work. I read the entire thread. I think I know all the tricks, and I get mine to work half... sometimes the audio interface is available in macOS (system report says there is no Thunderbolt HW installed though). The audio interface is not always recognized, but, when it is, it is working stable and doesn't get "lost" again. performance is not good though, I need to configure a 256 byte buffer on my audio interface and even then there are dropouts. moreover there is a symbol in the taskbar offering me something like "eject card" und when I do macOS crashes (directly into reboot). btw the card doesn't work on Windows at all. I get the driver installed but one PCI-to-PCI driver in device manager is not working (yellow exclamation mark) and the audio interface is not recognized.

I think I tried everything on this thread here and I'm wondering if anybody has an idea or knows where to get a ThunderboltEX II non DUAL so I can try with that.

thanks in advance!
Alex

 

[diamontus]

Hi! Can I use Parallel desktop for Windows and under this Windows install drivers for Thunderbolt?

 

[joevt]

Hi! Can I use Parallel desktop for Windows and under this Windows install drivers for Thunderbolt?

You need a virtual machine that allows direct access to PCIe devices. I don't think they exist for Mac. I don't think there's a Parallels Desktop for Windows anymore.

 

[ageev]

Just installed my ASUS ThunderboltEX DUO card on an ASRock Z170 Extreme7+ motherboard in PCIslot#3, turned on "Intel Thunderbolt" in BIOS and selected "one time stored key" instead of "legacy", and guess what:

The card is visible under the Thunderbolt Options in System Information Manager and all connected Thunderbolt devices are usable (right now only Apple Thunderbolt-2-Ethernetadapter connected). Didn't have to enable it under WINDOWS first... just installed, BIOS settings selected and CLOVER-Boot right into El Capitan 10.11.6 (latest beta) - et voila: it shows in System Information as Thunderbolt-Hardware.

Used an ASRock Thunderbolt2 AIC the last weeks (also in PCIslot#3) but was never able to get recognized as Thunderbolt, even if i could use connected Thunderbolt devices. Card was always detected as "Express Card".

PS: this card is now also visible as Thunderbolt under YOSEMITE 10.10.5

Hello dear friends. I apologize in advance for my English, because this is not my native language, I write from Russia.

I have a big problem connecting ThunderboltEX II to the ASRock Z170 Exteme 6 motherboard.

The TB header extension cable has 9 pins, while there are only five on the motherboard. Higher in the forum, I read that you have positive experience connecting TBx2 to ASRock Extreme 7. How did you connect TB header 9 pin to 5 pin?

Unfortunately, the complete adapter is lost, and when you connect the contacts in its photo, the red light on the controller goes out and the computer still does not see the tb device (MOTU audio card).

I beg you for help! Please direct me on the right track.

 

[joevt]

I have a big problem connecting ThunderboltEX II to the ASRock Z170 Exteme 6 motherboard.

The TB header extension cable has 9 pins, while there are only five on the motherboard. Higher in the forum, I read that you have positive experience connecting TBx2 to ASRock Extreme 7. How did you connect TB header 9 pin to 5 pin?

Unfortunately, the complete adapter is lost, and when you connect the contacts in its photo, the red light on the controller goes out and the computer still does not see the tb device (MOTU audio card).

I beg you for help! Please direct me on the right track.

The ThunderboltEX II manual shows that there should be a 9 pin to 5 pin Thunderbolt header adapter. If you don't have this adapter then you need to make one. Unfortunately, I cannot find a pinout for the 9 pin connector. However, you can buy a cable at

Asus Motherboard ThunderboltEX Card 10 Pin to 5 Pin Connectivity Cable

Buy Asus Motherboard ThunderboltEX Card 10 Pin to 5 Pin Connectivity Cable for $9.99 with Free Shipping Worldwide (In Stock)

www.moddiy.com

 

[ageev]

The ThunderboltEX II manual shows that there should be a 9 pin to 5 pin Thunderbolt header adapter. If you don't have this adapter then you need to make one. Unfortunately, I cannot find a pinout for the 9 pin connector. However, you can buy a cable at

Asus Motherboard ThunderboltEX Card 10 Pin to 5 Pin Connectivity Cable

Buy Asus Motherboard ThunderboltEX Card 10 Pin to 5 Pin Connectivity Cable for $9.99 with Free Shipping Worldwide (In Stock)

www.moddiy.com

Thank you very much for your response. I made the pinout of the 9-5 pin converter, according to the photo from your link. I was able to plug in my audio card. The problem with loading windows, freezing on the initial screen with a choice of boot options and entering the BIOS setup, when the computer stops responding to pressing the keyboard buttons. You have to reboot in order to manage to enter the setup and turn off the thunderbolt in the BIOS. After everything is done the opposite way, after a few times the windows will all start. When the cable is connected to the motherboard, the red LED on it goes out.

 

[joevt]

There is no photo

Thank you very much for your response. I made the pinout of the 9-5 pin converter, according to the photo from your link. I was able to plug in my audio card. The problem with loading windows, freezing on the initial screen with a choice of boot options and entering the BIOS setup, when the computer stops responding to pressing the keyboard buttons. You have to reboot in order to manage to enter the setup and turn off the thunderbolt in the BIOS. After everything is done the opposite way, after a few times the windows will all start. When the cable is connected to the motherboard, the red LED on it goes out.

I don't think there is any more help I can give. You can try a different cable (buying it instead of making it), or trying a different Thunderbolt add-in card (you can try Thunderbolt 3 and use a Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter).