m-itx board with Thunderbolt 3 for Coffee Lake

MIDIBoss

Weaksauce
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I am planning a PC build around the Coffee Lake 8700k coming out later this month. The two purposes of this build are 1) Audio production & performance and 2) Gaming.

One of my audio compnents needs Thunderbolt 3.

The only z270 m-itx board I am aware of that has Thunderbolt 3 is the Asrock Fatal1ty m-itx, which is not compatible with Coffee Lake.

I haven't been able to find out from them when that board will be available in z370 form.

Are there any other m-itx boards that have Thunderbolt 3? I haven't been able to find one. EVGA Stinger m-itx board has USB C but that is a different protocool than TB3 even though the port is the same shape.

Any idea about when/if Asrock will release z370 Fatal1ty m-itx? Right now, only the regular z370 m-itx board has been announced which does not include TB3 as a feature.
 
Even if they release a Fatal1ty ITX mobo, there is no guarantee that it will have TB3...
 
Even if they release a Fatal1ty ITX mobo, there is no guarantee that it will have TB3...

That's true of course but the z270 Fatal1ty m-itx did have TB3 so I'm hoping that simply carries over to the z370 version...
 
ASRock had planned on TB3 on a few different new products (microSTX-based DeskMini units & X299E-ITX/ac motherboard), but they were cut due to Intel & its very long certification process...
 
Premium/flagship itx boards are almost never released at launch, more likely to be q1 next year.
 
Premium/flagship itx boards are almost never released at launch, more likely to be q1 next year.

Yes that's kinda what I figured, but I'm sort of new to PC building so I didn't know for sure. That's too bad but I suppose I could just buy a cheap one now and then upgrade later if needed. Thanks for your input.
 
Might come sooner rather than later:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming-ITXac/index.us.asp

Also given their calling out of 40Gb/s its possible for this update they went with the beefier x4 lane thunderbolt chip instead of the x2 on their Z270 board. I'm sure it is still connected to the PCH but always nice to have more bandwidth.

I built some stuff with a pair of the Z270 boards, they are really nice and IMO the best itx platform we've had in awhile.
 
Might come sooner rather than later:

https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z370 Gaming-ITXac/index.us.asp

Also given their calling out of 40Gb/s its possible for this update they went with the beefier x4 lane thunderbolt chip instead of the x2 on their Z270 board. I'm sure it is still connected to the PCH but always nice to have more bandwidth.

I built some stuff with a pair of the Z270 boards, they are really nice and IMO the best itx platform we've had in awhile.

Oh man, awesome! This is the motherboard I want over any of the others. The quality seems to be there with this line, and I really want Thunderbolt for future compaibility with Thunderbolt audio interfaced. I have no use for USB-C and that is what the ASUS ROG Strix board has & is limited to (no metnion of Thunderbolt compatibility on that ASUS ROG Strix USB C port)... I would buy this in a second if it comes out in October.

My current performance audio interface for gigs is USB 2.0 but my recording interface is Firewire, although it has the option to patch in a proprietary Thunderbolt upgrade card for compatibility with Windows/Mac Thunderbolt 3 ports. I would not do this right away because my Macbook is still running and has Firewire built in, but when that machine inevitably dies I am thinking about future hardware compatiblity issues for my recording interface... Would be great to have onbaord Thunderbolt for peace of mind.
 
I am planning a PC build around the Coffee Lake 8700k coming out later this month. The two purposes of this build are 1) Audio production & performance and 2) Gaming.

One of my audio compnents needs Thunderbolt 3.

The only z270 m-itx board I am aware of that has Thunderbolt 3 is the Asrock Fatal1ty m-itx, which is not compatible with Coffee Lake.

I haven't been able to find out from them when that board will be available in z370 form.

Are there any other m-itx boards that have Thunderbolt 3? I haven't been able to find one. EVGA Stinger m-itx board has USB C but that is a different protocool than TB3 even though the port is the same shape.

Any idea about when/if Asrock will release z370 Fatal1ty m-itx? Right now, only the regular z370 m-itx board has been announced which does not include TB3 as a feature.

Usually they come out a couple of months after the new chipsets are out, fingers crossed this time is different.
 
Usually they come out a couple of months after the new chipsets are out, fingers crossed this time is different.

Phew a few months! Oh man. I certainly hope it is different this time. I'm new to the PC enthusiast world. I've been planning my Ncase M1 build around an 8700k for a while now. I have everything available except the CPU and motherboard. I really hope at least one of the Asus, MSI, or Asrock boards are available at launch, I'd like to get this project rolling!

I actually decided I think what I'm going to do is just get a Firewire PCIe card. My audio setup is convertable to Thunderbolt, but the Thunderbolt upgrade cards cost like $500... A developer-supported Firewire 800 PCIe card costs $70. No brainer! The only bummer is m-itx only has 1 PCIe slot. So I guess what I'll end up doing is mostly leaving the GPU card I've got picked out installed, and switching out the GPU for the Firewire 800 PCIe card whenever I want to record audio or do an involved mixing session on my PC. For the most part though, my old Mac still does great with recording audio and relatively large mixing sessions or audio tracks. It's the high-quality .vst and low-latency audio stuff that kills the CPU in my Macbook. So the PC m-itx will funciton mostly as a standalone digital "instrument" for low-latency performance with hi-res .vst's and also as a gaming machine.

It's a good time to be alive for PC!
 
I am planning a PC build around the Coffee Lake 8700k coming out later this month. The two purposes of this build are 1) Audio production & performance and 2) Gaming.

One of my audio compnents needs Thunderbolt 3.

The only z270 m-itx board I am aware of that has Thunderbolt 3 is the Asrock Fatal1ty m-itx, which is not compatible with Coffee Lake.

I haven't been able to find out from them when that board will be available in z370 form.

Are there any other m-itx boards that have Thunderbolt 3? I haven't been able to find one. EVGA Stinger m-itx board has USB C but that is a different protocool than TB3 even though the port is the same shape.

Any idea about when/if Asrock will release z370 Fatal1ty m-itx? Right now, only the regular z370 m-itx board has been announced which does not include TB3 as a feature.

The Asrock Z370 Fata1ity ITX/ac does appear to have Thunderbolt 3. But its design is indistinguishable from the Z270 Fata1ity ITX/ac - and that motherboard was falsely advertised. They said it had 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 - but it turns out when I bought it, it is the JHL6240 '15bf' (Alpine Ridge, Low Power) PCIe 3.0 x2. They gave me some BS spiel about how it is still 40Gbps, but it is wrong to give the half speed version and advertise it just the same as the real thing.

So, ask Asrock before you buy the Coffee Lake ITX, what the exact Thunderbolt controller is, and how many PCIe lanes it is wired to. You will *not* want them to say JHL6240. Acceptable choices are JHL6340 or the JHL7XXX equivalent (new generation Titan Ridge controllers). JHL6540 is also acceptable, but it is the dual-port controller, so I highly doubt they would use that just for one port.

Also worth mentioning that they have *never* updated the firmware, and it is still on Thunderbolt firmware NVM 4, when the most recent is 25 or 30 or something.

It works fine with eGPU - but you can tell it struggles with bandwidth when loading new areas of a game. Goat Simulator was a poor experience, but my favourite game of all time, Far Cry 2 ran flawlessly at UHD (AMD R9 Nano inside of Gigabyte Aorus eGPU).

I have a Dell 9365 laptop with the real PCIe 3.0 x4 controller. The CPU is f****** slow and TDP limited, but you can tell that it benefits from the extra bandwidth, even though it suffers in other ways from the CPU bottleneck. I got it because it is the *only* admissible laptop to ever be made (other XPS models lose pen support, only have PCIe 3.0 x2 Thunderbolt controllers, and have legacy ports on the side). I am nagging Dell for a BIOS update to give an option to unlock the 7W TDP mode for the i7-7Y75 CPU.

But in my mind, PCIe 3.0 x4 is enough for graphics, at least for this generation of GPUs. PCIe 3.0 x2 is good for some games, and will also be sufficient for a single 10GbE networking port. I did get Thunderbolt networking working properly between the two aforementioned systems, but for ages, it only worked at about 1.5Gbps with iperf. I had to do extensive driver updates (use 17.1.64.250 from Necacom.net, signed by WHQL and Intel if in doubt), despite even Intel not offering these drivers for their own products (weird). Also had to kill msmpeng, Windows Firewall services, and *definitely* removed Norton Anti-virus. I told Intel to threaten to sue them for interfering with their products and making them look bad, if they did not fix the issue.

Also would like to mention that the Z170N Gaming5 from Gigabyte was never advertised to have TBT3 support, but people claim to have unlocked it: https://hardforum.com/threads/skylake-based-z170-gaming-mini-itx-motherboard.1864902/page-21
So I would look into the equivalent Coffee Lake motherboards from Gigabyte and see if the ability to unlock Thunderbolt unofficially is still there.

Silly me. I just read your post again and it says "audio". Okay, so you don't give a toss about high performance, just low latency. Buy away, then.
 
The Asrock Z370 Fata1ity ITX/ac does appear to have Thunderbolt 3. But its design is indistinguishable from the Z270 Fata1ity ITX/ac - and that motherboard was falsely advertised. They said it had 40Gbps Thunderbolt 3 - but it turns out when I bought it, it is the JHL6240 '15bf' (Alpine Ridge, Low Power) PCIe 3.0 x2. They gave me some BS spiel about how it is still 40Gbps, but it is wrong to give the half speed version and advertise it just the same as the real thing.

So, ask Asrock before you buy the Coffee Lake ITX, what the exact Thunderbolt controller is, and how many PCIe lanes it is wired to. You will *not* want them to say JHL6240. Acceptable choices are JHL6340 or the JHL7XXX equivalent (new generation Titan Ridge controllers). JHL6540 is also acceptable, but it is the dual-port controller, so I highly doubt they would use that just for one port.

Also worth mentioning that they have *never* updated the firmware, and it is still on Thunderbolt firmware NVM 4, when the most recent is 25 or 30 or something.

It works fine with eGPU - but you can tell it struggles with bandwidth when loading new areas of a game. Goat Simulator was a poor experience, but my favourite game of all time, Far Cry 2 ran flawlessly at UHD (AMD R9 Nano inside of Gigabyte Aorus eGPU).

I have a Dell 9365 laptop with the real PCIe 3.0 x4 controller. The CPU is f****** slow and TDP limited, but you can tell that it benefits from the extra bandwidth, even though it suffers in other ways from the CPU bottleneck. I got it because it is the *only* admissible laptop to ever be made (other XPS models lose pen support, only have PCIe 3.0 x2 Thunderbolt controllers, and have legacy ports on the side). I am nagging Dell for a BIOS update to give an option to unlock the 7W TDP mode for the i7-7Y75 CPU.

But in my mind, PCIe 3.0 x4 is enough for graphics, at least for this generation of GPUs. PCIe 3.0 x2 is good for some games, and will also be sufficient for a single 10GbE networking port. I did get Thunderbolt networking working properly between the two aforementioned systems, but for ages, it only worked at about 1.5Gbps with iperf. I had to do extensive driver updates (use 17.1.64.250 from Necacom.net, signed by WHQL and Intel if in doubt), despite even Intel not offering these drivers for their own products (weird). Also had to kill msmpeng, Windows Firewall services, and *definitely* removed Norton Anti-virus. I told Intel to threaten to sue them for interfering with their products and making them look bad, if they did not fix the issue.

Also would like to mention that the Z170N Gaming5 from Gigabyte was never advertised to have TBT3 support, but people claim to have unlocked it: https://hardforum.com/threads/skylake-based-z170-gaming-mini-itx-motherboard.1864902/page-21
So I would look into the equivalent Coffee Lake motherboards from Gigabyte and see if the ability to unlock Thunderbolt unofficially is still there.

Silly me. I just read your post again and it says "audio". Okay, so you don't give a toss about high performance, just low latency. Buy away, then.


Thanks a lot for looking into this. Yes it seems Asrock is not quite as reputable as some other companies. I wound up going with an Asus ROG Strix board. Been very happy with that for a number of unrelated reasons, but alas it does not have TB3 only USB-C. It's ok though. I decided if I really want to use my Firewire 800 audio interface which has an upgradable peripheral port in it for TB compaitibility, I will just temporarily remove the GPU from my build and buy an audio-card supported Firewire PCIe card instead for $70. The TB upgrade port for the audio interface I have costs $500. Pretty expensive for a secondary port option and no real performance upgrade for the way I am using it, just staright up audio stuff lol. I think there is some advantage to the amount of DSP plugins you can run over Thunderbolt bandwidth vs Firewire, but I don't really run huge sessions so it doesn't really matter for me that much. I'll just buy the Firewire PCIe card if needed down the road, but for now I leave the audio stuff on the Mac and the MIDI virtual instrument stuff on the PC (and let's not forget gaming on the PC!) and it works out great. The Asus ROG Strix mitx board has a sweet stock overclocking feature that allowed me to clock my CPU at 5.0ghz easily. I love it. Good USB i/o and so for right now I'm very happy with that board.

Cheers,
M
 
Phew a few months! Oh man. I certainly hope it is different this time. I'm new to the PC enthusiast world. I've been planning my Ncase M1 build around an 8700k for a while now. I have everything available except the CPU and motherboard. I really hope at least one of the Asus, MSI, or Asrock boards are available at launch, I'd like to get this project rolling!

I actually decided I think what I'm going to do is just get a Firewire PCIe card. My audio setup is convertable to Thunderbolt, but the Thunderbolt upgrade cards cost like $500... A developer-supported Firewire 800 PCIe card costs $70. No brainer! The only bummer is m-itx only has 1 PCIe slot. So I guess what I'll end up doing is mostly leaving the GPU card I've got picked out installed, and switching out the GPU for the Firewire 800 PCIe card whenever I want to record audio or do an involved mixing session on my PC. For the most part though, my old Mac still does great with recording audio and relatively large mixing sessions or audio tracks. It's the high-quality .vst and low-latency audio stuff that kills the CPU in my Macbook. So the PC m-itx will funciton mostly as a standalone digital "instrument" for low-latency performance with hi-res .vst's and also as a gaming machine.

It's a good time to be alive for PC!
I’ve stopped using discrete graphics cards for years now.
No need for a dedicated Audio PC.
TBolt 3 looks nice.
I’m still using FireWire on my converter but PCI-e 1X Audio interface.

FWIW Using PCI 3 16x on H97 Server Boards means Audio card directly connects to CPU.
That connection has since changed starting with Z170 and goes through the PCH adding latency, barely noticeable.
But the best boards I’ve got for Audio are Z97m WS and H97m WS from ASRock.
Asus has some nice WS Boards too.

But ITX should be great as there’s less gunk.
Have fun...
 
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