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What do I need to add thunderbolt to my CustoMac?

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Jan 9, 2011
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Motherboard
Asus P8P67 Pro
CPU
i7-2600k
Graphics
Evga Geforce GTX 470 model 012-P3-1470-AR
Mac
  1. iMac
  2. MacBook Pro
Classic Mac
  1. iBook
  2. iMac
  3. Power Mac
  4. PowerBook
  5. SE
Mobile Phone
  1. Android
I currently have a CustoMac built on an asus p8p67 pro motherboard (and matching lga1155 i7-2600k, 16gb ram, nvidia gtx 470 gpu, 6x1tb samsung spinpoint f3 hdd's and an ocz vertex 3 ssd for a boot volume). it has so far made an excellent video editing workstation using FCP X and adobe production premium, however, I am very much interested in investing in a new camera that transfers video over the thunderbolt connector. my computer is currently not equipped with thunderbolt and I'm not sure exactly how to go about adding it to my CustoMac.

Does anybody have any ideas about PCIe add-in cards that are known to be lion / mountain lion compatible that would add a thunderbolt port to my configuration?

thanks!
 
There is no such thing. You will have to replace your motherboard with one that has built in thunderbolt ports. Preferably the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH since it is confirmed working and all additional hardware is also 100% compatible. The UP4 TH board is a bit cheaper and should also work fine with thunderbolt but a bunch of its USB 3.0 ports wont work in OS X so i don't think that's a good tradeoff. There are also MSI, Asus, and Asrock boards with thunderbolt but i do not know how well supported they are, and the Asus boards seemed very pricey. So again i would get the UP5 TH for best TB enabled system.
Cheers,
g\
 
This is not at all the news that I wanted to hear :( - however, there's a bit of silver lining - the camera that I want (black magic cinema) that happens to use thunderbolt for transfer does all of it's recording to off the shelf SSD's in HFS+j format! - sadly i'd be missing out on the real-time scopes/monitoring that i'd get over thunderbolt, but I think i can handle working without those advanced features so long as i can pop out the ssd and stick it on top of my case (which is a coolermaster 690-II which has a convenient sata dock on top :) )

I just really hope that eventually someone releases a pcie card that allows for upgrading a machine for use with thunderbolt devices.
 
if thunderbolt is that useful for you why don't you just upgrade your motherboard? The UP5 is a steal for its features. And you would be able to recoup a good amount of the upgrade cost by reselling your old board.
g\
 
reselling boards is easier said than done - i don't have the box for my board (since tossed it) and reselling motherboards is always hella annoying. and that'd be $200ish less than i'd be able to spend on a shiny new ssd for the camera...

and yes, I love my case's integrated sata dock (it's an amazing case dock or no dock). i've used it for all kinds of data transfers and hd recovery so far. very handy.

I never even thought of considering an ssd (or hdd) as the cartridge in a high quality video recording setup before... interesting times.
 
It's an interesting camera, but it seems like what you need is a notebook, not a desktop to hook it up for all the monitoring features.

And FYI, there will never be an upgrade path for your motherboard, since as far as Intel is concerned, on the PC/Windows platform, Thunderbolt started with the 7-series LGA-1155 chipsets and Ivy Bridge CPUs...

Even the cards that Asus wanted to launch that Intel failed due to it's strict Thunderbolt regulations/specifications/certifications, needed a special connector on the motherboard to work, as they needed to communicate with the GPIO bus and your board doesn't have that connector.

Technically speaking, but again, knowing what I know now, it's not going to happen, it would be possible to put a Thunderbolt chip in a graphics card, but Intel won't allow it, as they want you to use their crappy graphics...
 
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