So, I was able to get my system to boot with the EX3 using Test2-2016.EFI from Nick Woodhams. (OsxAptioFixDrv2-2000.efi didn't work for me) It wasn't great, though. I had to barebones some of the EFI files, loading only the bare necessities just to get it to boot. If I didn't, it would start to load and just as it seemed to get to the login screen, it would reboot.
I had a Firewire 800 drive that, on my GA-Z170X-UD5 TH - this is my secondary system, the drive would load dynamically and mount properly. With that system I was using the Apple TB3 to TB2 adapter.
Using that same adapter and drive, when I tried that with the EX3, plugging the drive in after loading, the system didn't lock - it blew up (rebooted). With the EX3 card, I had to connect it before boot. But then the drive wouldn't mount. Disk Utility could see it, but wouldn't mount it. I also have an Apple Gigabit Ethernet Thunderbolt adapter, and it too wouldn't work dynamically, but if I plugged it in before booting, it did. It would not accept DHCP, but I addressed it manually and it worked. Under system devices, it does not show any Thunderbolt devices or drivers loaded.
Shutting down was long. Really long.
Perhaps after some fine tuning, this system with the EX3 card may work better. We'll see. I will continue to see if I can improve on these results. I wish I had a real TB3 device to test with, but I don't right now.
So, I posted on KGP's thread, but just in case you didn't see it, or someone didn't notice, and because Giacomoleopardo wanted me to update on this thread, I thought I would post it here,
with some updates!
Thunderbolt 3 on an Asus X99 Motherboard (with a few caveats….)
So, I have Thunderbolt 3 working on my Asus X99-A II using the Asus Thunderbolt 3 add-in card.
Because the card has only three ports of which one must be used to connect to a display port on your motherboard or graphics, card (if you want to do any kind of TB graphics, etc with it), I purchased this unit: CalDigit TS3 Lite Thunderbolt Dock. This Thunderbolt dock allows me more ports, although the performance is somewhat limited due to the fact that I’m running on a Hackintosh. The CalDigit does provide two Thunderbolt ports and supports daisy-chaining.
What works on the CalDigit, if it’s connected via a certified active Thunderbolt 3 cable to the Thunderbolt Type C port on the Asus add-in card:
- Thunderbolt drives, if loaded before boot (this is typical on a Hackintosh)
- Firewire drives, if loaded before boot (this is somewhat disappointing – no loading after boot – with a regular Firewire card, even in my other Hackintosh builds, this allowed me to plug in Firewire drives any time. Not a biggee for me really because I don’t use Firewire drives anymore.)
- Ethernet Port, if loaded before boot (also somewhat disappointing – it won’t work with DHCP, only with manual addressing)
- USB Drives and ports – Can be plugged in before or after boot
- Audio ports – Shows up in the Audio settings as USB Codec audio device, and both ports, input and output work, sometimes you may need to make adjustments in the Apple Midi utility.
- Graphics ports – I haven’t had time to test those, and I don’t have Thunderbolt displays so I don’t really know if these work.
Performance – I don’t have much to test with in terms of Thunderbolt 2 or 3 drives (are they any TB2 or TB3 drives out there except for RAIDs?), but I tried to show what the performance was with what I could test with, which includes an older Thunderbolt 1 drive, and a Sandisk Ultra II SSD. There are jpg files attached to this post which will give you some sense of how these drives perform as they are attached to various ports on the Asus card itself and to the CalDigit ports. Interestingly, the USB 3.1 Gen 2 port (10 Gbps) port on the Asus card seems to perform and drive the SSD to very close to its top rated speed. NOTE: While the CalDigit ports are labeled USB 3.1, they are all Gen 1 ports, which means they are limited to 5 Gbps (phooey!). The CalDigit can charge your phone, but will only trickle charge a new MacBook Pro via the USB Type C port on the device. CalDigit is bringing out a version of this Dock that will charge a newer MacBook Pro via the Type C port. I don’t have a newer MacBook Pro, and, I’m not buying one, so this doesn’t matter to me. Also, this is probably disappointing for all of the folks on this board that use their systems as DAW (Digital Audio Workstations), but I'm an Video Editor, and I just don't have a spare Apollo Twin to test with. If I had one, I would have tested with it. (wish I did!)
One of the problems with these Docks, is that most USB ports come with a 10-20% hit in performance. If you do some research, you’ll find that this is true of most all Thunderbolt Docks, whether they are Thunderbolt 2 or 3 Docks. Maybe some of the newer Thunderbolt 3 docks will fix this, but this one has this same issue as with the older Thunderbolt Docks.
To get this to load, I had to use Nick Woodham’s Test2-2016.efi file, nothing else would allow the system to load, including his OsxAptioFix2Drv-free2000.efi file (using that was an instant and repeated KP). For anyone who is interested, I attached snapshots of my Drivers64EUFI folder, and my Kexts (10.12 folder) directory from Clover. My config.plist is really not much different than the config.plist posts in Giacomoleopardo and KGP’s config.plist examples, which you can easily obtain in this thread or in Giacomoleopardo's new post on his upgrade to Sierra. My config.plist (without serial numbers, etc) can be found at the bottom of this post.
I owe an enormous thank you to both Giacomoleopardo and KGP! My build would not exist without these two excellent contributors!
The other place where my build differs from theirs is in the Audio settings. I use AppleALC, and the details on how to load that can be found here from dMatik's excellent build:
https://www.tonymacx86.com/threads/macos-sierra-10-12-on-asus-x99-deluxe-u3-1.204503/
In summary, I can say that while it's not perfect, and I can quibble with the CalDigit, I do have Thunderbolt and the ports do all seem to work. Not perfectly, but they work. I did some long involved copying and that worked with no disconnects or odd behavior. I cloned a disk and that worked. I did some 3D exports from After Effects (and Cinema 4D) that was pretty intensive, and that worked without any lockups or problems. And, of course, I did the tests displayed below, along with the fact that I've been working with the system (mostly Avid, Premiere and After Effects) for almost two weeks.
But more importantly, the system is very stable, and no KPs, no lockups, no nothing! It boots up every morning just fine, and I can say that if you try to unload a TB drive or a Firewire 800 drive after loading, it scrambles things in the Dock, and for sure dynamic loading just doesn't work. But it doesn't blow up the entire system, and you can keep working.
The Dock itself is quite nice, but there are other TB 3 Docks being released soon, so if you decide to purchase one, it's probably good to review each one and choose the one that works best for you. If you have a working Thunderbolt II setup and Dock, is it worth it to upgrade to TB3? I wouldn't think so, unless you're running a TB3 Raid and just have to have that extra performance.
Finally, I included my Geekbench 4.1 test, just for reference (I run a 6900K (at 4.0, not 3.2 Ghz), with 64GB of G.Skill 3000 Mhz DDR4 RAM, an EVGA GTX 980 TI, Broadcom BCM4360 card (for wireless and bluetooth) and a Samsung Pro NVMe drive). My Bios version for this board is 1501.
For the TB Card, my process was this:
1. Plug the card into the slot furthest from the CPU (Slot PCIEX16_4), connect cables as required (per the manual)
2. Boot into Windows
3. Download latest Thunderbolt Drivers from the Asus website.
4. Apply those drivers, and test functionality in Windows
5. Shut down, boot into MacOS, and add Test2-2016.efi into Clover, then shut down.
6. Connect the Dock and boot into Sierra (currently I'm on 10.12.3)
I do hope this post is helpful to some.
Updates since my original post: First of all, I removed AppleThunderboltNHI.kext from S/L/E, and startup and shutdown work a lot better. Secondly, as a result of BoomR's suggestion, I did enable in the bios,
Above 4G Encoding, and that seems to be okay.
For those who are interested, I have attached a generic version of my config.plist.