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I've recently tried this. It's not much improved. I have a PC, and invested in the TB3 compatible motherboard and add-in card. Displays rarely work, but so I in

I've recently tried this. It's not much improved. I have a PC, and invested in the TB3 compatible motherboard and add-in card. Displays rarely work, but so I instead hardwire this machine to the displays, as they have the extra inputs. On some boots, Thunderbolt isn't detected and will need a few reboots to be picked up. Getting the drivers installed, for a custom build PC, was also a nightmare. The thunderbolt headers are unique to manufacturer, so my Gigabyte Titan Ridge has a 5 or 3pin connector, whereas my Asus board is a 12 pin. Luckily, it seems to only be present for DMA security, so if you bridge pins 3 and 5 on the Add-in card it works. The motherboard still needs to support thunderbolt however, this didn't work on an older, z270 chipset. On the MacBook side the only issue is that when disconnecting, a display won't sleep and just show a frozen image. So, at least rest well knowing you've cut your losses wasting time with thunderbolt.

kitsunesoba 5y ago
In my experience, boards with built in TB work better than boards that have headers but require a dedicated card. Recently I put an ASUS ProArt X570 Creator in my main tower, and its onboard TB4 works great. Some basic functionality was there straight away after a clean Windows install and the gaps were filled in by installing Thunderbolt drivers from ASUS’ support site for the motherboard. It even supports G-Sync on the monitor through the hub-connected monitor, which was a real surprise (though refresh rate is limited to 120Hz without using a compressed color format due to the dock only supporting DisplayPort 1.2). The biggest problem was actually getting the video card to recognize DisplayPort as a monitor connection during boot. For some reason EVGA 3000 series cards had a quirk where DP connected displays weren’t recognized in EFI and would only come online after booting the OS. Thankfully EVGA had a VBIOS update available that fixed this. I’m looking forward to more TB4 docks being released. My current dock, the TS3+ has been quite reliable (especially after updating its firmware), but as noted its DP out is outdated.
- month13 5y ago
  Oh no doubt. To be clear, mixing and matching manufacturers was a cost-saving measure, and in retrospect, should have done better research. I did eye the ProArt board, but considering it was over twice as expensive in my region for a machine not really intended for content creation, i went with the far cheaper option. Also using the CalDigit TS3+. Fantastic dock.
raegis 5y ago
I just installed a Thunderbolt 4 card in a new motherboard, so I'm being a little more optimistic, but I will take advantage of the free return policies over the holidays if necessary. The only problem I have is devices from my connected Thunderbolt 3 dock stop working after waking from suspend (but the display DOES work), so I'm going to try updating drivers to see if it works.

kitsunesoba 5y ago

In my experience, boards with built in TB work better than boards that have headers but require a dedicated card. Recently I put an ASUS ProArt X570 Creator in my main tower, and its onboard TB4 works great. Some basic functionality was there straight away after a clean Windows install and the gaps were filled in by installing Thunderbolt drivers from ASUS’ support site for the motherboard. It even supports G-Sync on the monitor through the hub-connected monitor, which was a real surprise (though refresh rate is limited to 120Hz without using a compressed color format due to the dock only supporting DisplayPort 1.2). The biggest problem was actually getting the video card to recognize DisplayPort as a monitor connection during boot. For some reason EVGA 3000 series cards had a quirk where DP connected displays weren’t recognized in EFI and would only come online after booting the OS. Thankfully EVGA had a VBIOS update available that fixed this. I’m looking forward to more TB4 docks being released. My current dock, the TS3+ has been quite reliable (especially after updating its firmware), but as noted its DP out is outdated.

month13 5y ago
Oh no doubt. To be clear, mixing and matching manufacturers was a cost-saving measure, and in retrospect, should have done better research. I did eye the ProArt board, but considering it was over twice as expensive in my region for a machine not really intended for content creation, i went with the far cheaper option. Also using the CalDigit TS3+. Fantastic dock.

raegis 5y ago

I just installed a Thunderbolt 4 card in a new motherboard, so I'm being a little more optimistic, but I will take advantage of the free return policies over the holidays if necessary. The only problem I have is devices from my connected Thunderbolt 3 dock stop working after waking from suspend (but the display DOES work), so I'm going to try updating drivers to see if it works.