HP Thunderbolt 2 PCIe card?

[Banichi]

So just renewing my research about thunderbolt on socket 2011. I know that there are several hurdles in the way of us seeing PC hardware with socket 2011 and thunderbolt of any kind including the lack of thunderbolt proliferation in the market.

So I was looking at other ways and I am familiar with the ASUS card and while it is a bit awkward to have to plug in the display port cable it does get you t-bolt on a 6 core or more board.

Which brings me to the HP Thundebolt 2 PCIe card: http://h30094.www3.hp.com/product.aspx?sku=10778991&mfg_part=F3F43AA&pagemode=ca

HP states compatibility with a few of their workstations. I'm curious if this precludes the possibility for compatibility with general mobos. I'm sure it is entirely possible that there are specifics about the mobos that the card was tailored for.

Has anyone heard anything about this card or it being used anywhere other than with the workstations mentioned?

 

[doc.hackintosh]

I have been told that this card will support the MacOS thunderbolt kexts and run natively. However - windows machines will need drivers and extra bits.

$200 is a very good investment - worth while to test!

 

[Banichi]

That's good to here. I'm curious where your information came from. The documentation for the card at that HP site got so specific about installation in the workstations as to say that it had to be in the 3rd PCIe slot.

This leads me to think that there might be some very specific firmware/bios level interactions that may not fly with non-hp specified boards.

Thoughts?

 

[Asus-Freak]

I have been told that this card will support the MacOS thunderbolt kexts and run natively. However - windows machines will need drivers and extra bits.

$200 is a very good investment - worth while to test!

Told by who? Where did this info come from?

 

[doc.hackintosh]

Chen, a close friend of mine from my days living in Hong Kong has recently purchased the HP system with the Thunderbolt 2 card. What is unique about the internal set up is that the nVidia K5000 graphics card is linked with the thunderbolt 2 card directly through very simple BIOS commands. Interestingly enough this is precisely the same way the new Mac Pro uses sockets 2011 processor which ties in the AMD fire pro card nicely.

Oh, and BTW - Chen ran his HP with MacOS and yes, in fact he got the thunderbolt card working. How he patched the system and what BIOS setting he used would be interesting to know.

Seem like HP and the Mac Pro have something in common hardware wise.

 

[toleda]

Seem like HP and the Mac Pro have something in common hardware wise.

All Thunderbolt PCIe cards require an additional dedicated motherboard connector. Certain HP workstations have the connector for the HP Thunderbolt card; no MacPro motherboard has that connector.

 

[doc.hackintosh]

Sure - it is confirmed that the HP has an extra connection so that the graphics card can interface with the PCie slot. The new Mac Pro uses similar technology for card to processor exchange ----

 

[jimmiz]

Hi doc.. could you be more specific?. I bought this card for my hp workstation, but it doesn't work on mavericks in a first approach. Bios option only adjust security policies. I'm not interested in display abilities. Just as HD input connector. Could you know how your friend configured his workstation, in somehow?

thanks

 

[Banichi]

So I think that I'll be abandoning the HP card. Asus now has a thunderbolt 2 card that actually has 2 t-bolt ports as well.

At the moment it looks like it's only compatible with specific asus boards that have a thunderbolt header on the board. But that's not all bad. I'm looking at the asus X99-deluxe board with a xeon e5 2630-v3. I haven't yet come across a reason why it wouldn't work. But I haven't searched the forums long and hard yet.

I had shifted my buying eye back towards the apple mac pro but this definitely changes the game back to hackintosh for me.

Of course finding that asus card for purchase has not been something that I've been able to find reliably. Non of the typical outlets are selling that I can tell, (newegg, tigerdirect, etc.).

Anyhow that looks to be the best option for thunderbolt on socket 2011 at this point. Hopefully I can make the investment soon and report back.

 

[Banichi]

Also I just noticed this thread