CustoMac Pro - Thunderbolt compatibility

[Mo Facta]

Hi all,

Long time. Hope everyone is well!

I'm looking to build a CustoMac Pro for a friend in the audio biz and follow the buyer's guide with the i7-8700K and the Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Gaming WIFI.

My question is, how is Thunderbolt support on this build? Does it work as intended without too much hacking? Please let me know.

Thanks a mil.

Cheers

 

[Mo Facta]

OK, so I see that none of the motherboards on the buyer's guide have got on-board Thunderbolt 3 via the USB type C connector. For those of you that are using thunderbolt, what can you recommend? Basically finding the Gigabyte Thunderbolt AIC is impossible for me. I live in South Africa.

Basically we need thunderbolt. Suggestions, please guys?

Cheers

 

[Mo Facta]

Ok so the Alpine Ridge add-on card is not available at all in my region or anywhere online for that matter.

Does anyone know of any third party Thunderbolt PCIe cards that are compatible with a hack?

Cheers

 

[vulgo]

Ok so the Alpine Ridge add-on card is not available at all in my region or anywhere online for that matter.

Does anyone know of any third party Thunderbolt PCIe cards that are compatible with a hack?

Cheers

It's available from ebay.com

 

[Jamesbond007]

Ok so the Alpine Ridge add-on card is not available at all in my region or anywhere online for that matter.

Does anyone know of any third party Thunderbolt PCIe cards that are compatible with a hack?

Cheers

Perhaps you can try the Asus Thunderbolt EX3.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-3/

As you have found out, USB-C and Thunderbolt 3 are not the same in the PC world. Except for one ASRock ITX, no other Coffee Lake motherboards have Thunderbolt 3 support. The only way to have Thunderbolt 3 is to make sure the motherboard has a Thunderbolt header and then get a Thunderbolt 3 add-in card.

 

[Mo Facta]

Yeah, thanks guys. It's a grim affair. The only Z370 boards I have found with TB headers are Gigabyte AORUS (Asrock might as well). The catch, after speaking to our local Gigabyte product manager at the distributor, is that Gigabyte does not manufacture these cards any more due to low demand. Yet they still have the headers on their boards and advertise it as a feature. Dumb.

The other catch is that while the Asus ThunderboltEX-3 is freely available here for very cheap, it is only compatible with Z170 and X99 chipset Asus boards. The Z370 boards do not have TB headers. LAAAAAMMMME-OOOOOO.

Anyway, thanks for the comments

 

[Jamesbond007]

Yeah, thanks guys. It's a grim affair. The only Z370 boards I have found with TB headers are Gigabyte AORUS (Asrock might as well). The catch, after speaking to our local Gigabyte product manager at the distributor, is that Gigabyte does not manufacture these cards any more due to low demand. Yet they still have the headers on their boards and advertise it as a feature. Dumb.

The other catch is that while the Asus ThunderboltEX-3 is freely available here for very cheap, it is only compatible with Z170 and X99 chipset Asus boards. The Z370 boards do not have TB headers. LAAAAAMMMME-OOOOOO.

Anyway, thanks for the comments

If you can afford the Asus ThunderboltEX3 (you did say it is "very cheap"), then perhaps you can get a Gigabyte motherboard and the Asus card and see if they can work together? Sure, Asus said it is compatible with X99 and Z170 boards only, but that compatibility list has not been updated for a long time. It is possible they can work together.

 

[Mo Facta]

If you can afford the Asus ThunderboltEX3 (you did say it is "very cheap"), then perhaps you can get a Gigabyte motherboard and the Asus card and see if they can work together? Sure, Asus said it is compatible with X99 and Z170 boards only, but that compatibility list has not been updated for a long time. It is possible they can work together.

To my knowledge they use different headers