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tonymacx86's Skylake Thunderbolt 3 Test Build: GA-Z170X-UD5-TH - i5-6600K

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mljohn said:
Not to rain on everyone's parade. I followed all the steps and got TB working. My issue is that is not 100% rock solid. I have said before, it works 8 times out of 10. But those 2 times suck, and why? If it works, it should work all the time. I didn't really get the sense that it wasn't 100% reliable until some time had passed. It worked for the first 2 weeks no problem. Then I get the startup without the drive mounting????? What changed - nothing? Then it would be fine for another week-ish or so. Then another no mount?? I just wish I could figure out why on the times that the drive won't mount??? I really hope that it's just me and my setup. I don't want this to happen to everyone. I just want it to be consistent. I'll keep plugging away trying to figure out why it isn't 100% until I get it.........
Click to expand...

Thanks. Good to know. I'll keep it in mind and report on any issues I find over the next month. So far I booted right up in to Win10 just now this morning and it is working flawlessly. Even with the Apollo itself off during boot and only turning it on after I was already on the desktop. So that's looking good.

Just curious if you've tried a new TB cable? Or on another motherboard yet to rule out hardware issues?

And one thing I didn't make clear during my first post, there is a 3rd step of installing the Gigabyte TB Windows drivers within Windows in addition to the firmware update. I wanted to share that I downloaded version:
That should be everything I believe to get it all to work.

Hope that helps.

Lastly, I read about a few people using kexts to manipulate the number of ports, etc.? Not sure about all that as I haven't studied up yet, but I didn't do anything like that. I just used cmfusco's newest guide for this mobo and my build worked. I hadn't see this build thread until today unfortunately as it also looks fantastic. Especially coming from Tony himself.

All the best guys! Good luck.
 
tonymacx86 said:
Not sure what's going on but this part is extremely undocumented until now. I missed it on my first time through- you actually have to run 2 different wizards in order for the Firmware flash to begin and finish.

STEP 4: Download and install Thunderbolt FW Update Tool (B16.0818.1)
http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=5479&kw=GA-Z170X-UD5 TH1.0#utility

STEP 5: Navigate to This PC > Local Disk > Program Files (x86) > GIGABYTE > FlashTBT > FlashTBT_100

STEP 6: Run FlashTBT_100 Application
Click to expand...

THIS is really the whole key to it. It was the missing piece for me. And it was here the whole time. But unfortunately I was using another build thread. I should probably share this on the other threads so others not seeing this build thread can succeed and not continue being unaware and still struggling. Thanks Tony.
 
mljohn said:
Not to rain on everyone's parade. I followed all the steps and got TB working. My issue is that is not 100% rock solid. I have said before, it works 8 times out of 10. But those 2 times suck, and why? If it works, it should work all the time. I didn't really get the sense that it wasn't 100% reliable until some time had passed. It worked for the first 2 weeks no problem. Then I get the startup without the drive mounting????? What changed - nothing? Then it would be fine for another week-ish or so. Then another no mount?? I just wish I could figure out why on the times that the drive won't mount??? I really hope that it's just me and my setup. I don't want this to happen to everyone. I just want it to be consistent. I'll keep plugging away trying to figure out why it isn't 100% until I get it.........
Click to expand...


Well, I can say that since I two ports, mine works consistently as long as I don't try to daisy chain any devices. Honestly, I only have the Caldigit dock and the Seagate Thunderbolt Drive so I imagine I'm good because if I purchased an Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt, I would unplug the Caldigit dock and keep my drive for carbon copy cloner purposes. In your case....we are almost there. You have more functionality than not so we all just need to figure out the last setting that is going to make it stable. When was the last time you updated all your drivers on the window side?
 
SpaceGhost23 said:
Well, I can say that since I two ports, mine works consistently as long as I don't try to daisy chain any devices. Honestly, I only have the Caldigit dock and the Seagate Thunderbolt Drive so I imagine I'm good because if I purchased an Apogee Ensemble Thunderbolt, I would unplug the Caldigit dock and keep my drive for carbon copy cloner purposes. In your case....we are almost there. You have more functionality than not so we all just need to figure out the last setting that is going to make it stable. When was the last time you updated all your drivers on the window side?
Click to expand...
I guess you could say I haven't updated any drivers. I did all the stuff on the windows side when I did the build in late May/early June. Since I had TB working, I thought everything was good. It wasn't until some time had passed that stability became the issue. I only ever have 1 drive plugged in at a time and it's a TB2 using the Startech adapter. The apple adapter was too flaky. I guess what I need to start digging more into settings to see what I can tweek there.
 
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mljohn said:
I guess you could say I haven't updated any drivers. I did all the stuff on the windows side when I did the build in late May/early June. Since I had TB working, I thought everything was good. It wasn't until some time had passed that stability became the issue. I only ever have 1 drive plugged in at a time and it's a TB2 using the Startech adapter. The apple adapter was too flaky. I guess what I need to start digging more into settings to see what I can tweet there.
Click to expand...


That's interesting. My startech Thunderbolt cable works perfectly but my Apple one does not. Now I'm wondering if the daisy chain might work if I was using startech for both....hmmm. I've never been able to make an apple firewire to Thunderbolt adapter work either. Had two new ones to test at the time.
 
Interesting. I'm using a startech thunderbolt cable too and it is working. Haven't tried my Apple cable yet. But I am using the apple TB3>2 adapter, I do not own the startech adapter. I guess I'll try out my apple TB cable just for everyone's info. But I can't imagine the cables quality differs enough to affect results. Perhaps though.

Unless you misspoke and meant adapter when you said cable...?

And my stuff is still working great on both Win 10 and Sierra 10.12.6. :)
 
So I'm thinking about ordering one of these to test the 4k@60hz abilities of the o-nboard TB3 in my second unused port. Anyone tried any of these yet? And how's everyone getting along with their ports working? Mine is still perfect. Just wished hot-plug worked in macOS like it does in Win 10.

USB C to HDMI Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072M9LVZD/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
 
According to https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/apple-tb3tb2-adapter-fails-on-xps-9350-detected-only-as-usb-c/ the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter requires NVM version 18. Some PC's may have an earlier version of the firmware. I think Intel should not have given control of the firmware updates to the vendors, since they are slow to release new versions or won't release a new version at all.

Rational said:
So I'm thinking about ordering one of these to test the 4k@60hz abilities of the o-nboard TB3 in my second unused port.
USB C to HDMI Adapter
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B072M9LVZD/?tag=tonymacx86com-20
Click to expand...
Note that the motherboard's Thunderbolt 3 ports can only use Intel graphics because the motherboard doesn't have DisplayPort inputs. You may have problems trying to use both Intel graphics and Nvidia graphics at the same time. You should consider a DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 adapter instead. Or you can use USB-C adapters with a GC-ALPINE RIDGE card.
 
joevt said:
According to https://egpu.io/forums/pc-setup/apple-tb3tb2-adapter-fails-on-xps-9350-detected-only-as-usb-c/ the Apple Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter requires NVM version 18. Some PC's may have an earlier version of the firmware. I think Intel should not have given control of the firmware updates to the vendors, since they are slow to release new versions or won't release a new version at all.


Note that the motherboard's Thunderbolt 3 ports can only use Intel graphics because the motherboard doesn't have DisplayPort inputs. You may have problems trying to use both Intel graphics and Nvidia graphics at the same time. You should consider a DisplayPort to HDMI 2.0 adapter instead. Or you can use USB-C adapters with a GC-ALPINE RIDGE card.
Click to expand...
Turns out I'm running NVM firmware version 21 and have been the whole time. So that doesn't play into why the apple dongle doesn't work for me.
 
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