[Solved] Does Thunderbolt 3 actually work on a Hackintosh

[bobbyrabbit]

"Thunderbolt accessories are not supported on this Mac"
I've just purchased an Akitio thunder3 Quad Mini hard drive enclosure. I have the Asus Z270 Prime MB which I know cannot be expanded to Thunderbolt 3, but I thought using the device through USB 3.1 would be compatible. Seems not. Anybody have any suggestions? I have the latest BIOS Firmware.
I perhaps should have looked into purchasing a slightly higher spec MB for my build. If I replaced it with a Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Gaming 8 would this enable Thunderbolt 3 out of the box or is Thunderbolt a little flaky on a Hackintosh?

 

[Jamesbond007]

"Thunderbolt accessories are not supported on this Mac"
I've just purchased an Akitio thunder3 Quad Mini hard drive enclosure. I have the Asus Z270 Prime MB which I know cannot be expanded to Thunderbolt 3, but I thought using the device through USB 3.1 would be compatible. Seems not. Anybody have any suggestions? I have the latest BIOS Firmware.
I perhaps should have looked into purchasing a slightly higher spec MB for my build. If I replaced it with a Gigabyte GA-Z270X-Gaming 8 would this enable Thunderbolt 3 out of the box or is Thunderbolt a little flaky on a Hackintosh?

Your motherboard, Asus Z270 Prime, does NOT have a Thunderbolt chip onboard so it is NOT going to support Thunderbolt 3. If that board has a Thunderbolt header, then perhaps you can buy an Asus ThunderboltEX 3 add in card to enable Thunderbolt 3 on your system.

The GA-Z270X-Gaming 8 supports Thunderbolt 3 via the USB-C port at the back (as the board has a Thunderbolt chip onboard). But are you able to get hold of one? Many Z270 motherboards are out of production and once stock runs out you won't be able to get a new one.

As of now, Thunderbolt has some problems on hackintoshes, one of them being the lack of hotplug. You will have to plug in the Thunderbolt device, power it on if necessary, and then start the computer for the system to recognize the device, and you cannot eject it. There seems to be a little progress towards enabling hotplug recently, but it still does not work in general.

 

[bobbyrabbit]

I managed to get hold of a Gigabyte AORUS Z270X Gaming 9 and installed today. I wasn't expecting much on boot and was preparing for a full system re-install, it actually booted to the desktop without any problems, without touching the bios! I installed the kext to enable the E2500 ethernet and setup the bios correctly with the Thunderbolt options enabled. Totally painless!!
To get my Akitio Thunder 3 mini raid enclosure to work I had to install Softraid. The Akitio raid software failed to see the device but SoftRAID worked perfectly.
Bluetooth worked straight away, although no luck with the onboard Wi-Fi.

 

[titust1]

I have Gigabyte Z170 UD5 TH, that has the Intel Alpine Ridge TB 3 chip. Is there a way to make this working In a hackintosh?

 

[maclinuxg4]

may be this interrest all

[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

Hello @hairyconipiton @CaseySJ ... Say I have a Gigabyte Designare Z390 with an i9-9900K CPU and I would like to load in 128gb RAM .... I was looking at Part Picker which validated my previous research that the following will work on my MOBO ==> Corsair Vengeance LPX 128 GB (4 x 32 GB)...

www.tonymacx86.com

 

[PunkPrincess]

Can confirm Thunderbolt visible and working on my Designare Z390 running Mojave.

 

[Shamstanley]

Can confirm Thunderbolt visible and working on my Designare Z390 running Mojave.

Hi PP, is there any chance you could attach your EFI? I'm running a near identical system to you BUT I can't see any thunderbolt - either in the Thunderbolt area or in the PCI.

 

[etorix]

Thunderbolt 3 can work, even with hot plug, but it's not merely a matter of EFI: You have to flash a Thunderbolt controller chip with a modified firmware AND THEN you may add custom SSDT, tailored to what you did to the chip. Without that, another EFI will do you no good.
Please do read the Designare Z390 thread carefully! (At least the relevant mini-guides… the thread itself is way too long to read). It allowed me to have working Thunderbolt on my Gigabyte C246-WU4.

 

[Shamstanley]

Thunderbolt 3 can work, even with hot plug, but it's not merely a matter of EFI: You have to flash a Thunderbolt controller chip with a modified firmware AND THEN you may add custom SSDT, tailored to what you did to the chip. Without that, another EFI will do you no good.
Please do read the Designare Z390 thread carefully! (At least the relevant mini-guides… the thread itself is way too long to read). It allowed me to have working Thunderbolt on my Gigabyte C246-WU4.

I have it working on a Designare Z390, hot plugging etc, purely with EFI and SSDT from the Designare Z390 thread.
No flashing of chips required. My Apogee element 88 (thunderbolt 2 via apple TB3-TB2 adapter) is very happy.

 

[CaseySJ]

Flashing the Thunderbolt firmware is not necessary for most Thunderbolt devices. Hot plug will work without flashing. Some devices, however, will connect only when "Thunderbolt Bus" is activated, which is the purpose of flashing Titan Ridge firmware. Thunderbolt Bus for Alpine Ridge can be activated in most cases by SSDT alone.

• Thunderbolt-capable NAS drives often require Thunderbolt Bus
• eGPUs often require Thunderbolt Bus (for best compatibility)

Here's a more complete list:

[SUCCESS] Gigabyte Designare Z390 (Thunderbolt 3) + i7-9700K + AMD RX 580

** Thunderbolt Devices Made Compatible After Enabling Thunderbolt Bus ** Please do not quote this list. Post a link instead. So you've successfully flashed the modified Thunderbolt firmware and System Information --> Thunderbolt is finally looking like a real Mac! Congratulations. In this post...

www.tonymacx86.com