Z270 Mobo with Thunderbolt 3

O

opfreak

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Nov 17, 2005
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Planning a new build, and I know I dont need the highest end motherboard. But I tend to build a pc for a few years so I like to end up with a few features that IMHO will last.

One of those is TB3, my laptops all have it, and I will be getting devices that support it, so I want my new PC to have it as well.

So far I plan on have an 7700k with a mild OC on air. 16gb+ ram.

And I will carry over my 1070 gtx, my sandisk 512gb ssd and the samsung evo850 1tb ssd. and my psu/case

Need the board to be reliable. At least 6sata ports. Like I pointed out a real Thunderbolt 3 connection. Form factor not to important. But I never run SLI, and eventually might want to downsize the case.


Any suggestions.

Update - Got the gigabyte gaming 7 mobo
 
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Just to update this for others.

Asrock, and asus have a handful of TB3 motherboards, but it appears you need to buy an add on card.

MSI z270 motherboards dont list any support for TB3

Gigabyte has a number motherboards with TB3 that appear to be built in, and have add on card ability.
 
Aluminum said:
Pretty hard to require an addon card for ITX:

http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/Fatal1ty Z270 Gaming-ITXac/index.asp

I'd say that fits your "no SLI and downsize" criteria ;)

The linked sata ports still work if the m2 is pci-e, but you really don't need 6 these days unless its a storage computer. (real builds get HBA cards anyways)
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nice I missed that asrock board when I was looking at them. Now I see what happened. Their site is broken when you select Thunderbolt as a filter that board goes away, but they still show boards that don't support it.

Other board I'm looking at is the Gigabyte gaming 7 (the one reviewed on this site).


Problem I found with the Asrock board is that except for the TB3 usb ports every other port is usb 3.0
 
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I picked up an Asus Tuf Z270 Mark 1 that accepts the Asus add in card. One of the reasons I went this way is the ability to feed DisplayPort directly into the card, so that the resulting TB3 connection is carrying all of my connectivity. I currently do this with an older TB2 setup to an LG 21:9 display. It accepts the single TB cable with everything. Most of the onboard TB3 implementations will only include video from integrated GPU, rather than from a discreet GPU.

I haven't built it yet, but I also plan to use TB3 peripherals, so I need to explore the possibilities of a dock and a TB3 to TB2 adapter.. it may all yet blow up in my face.

I'd advise to be cautious with the Gigabyte solutions. They supported a TB card in X99 boards, but then dropped support in a BIOS update as I understand.
 
There are tons of motherboard choices that will support Thunderbolt 3 via an add-in card. If you want native TB3 support on the motherboard, GIGABYTE is pretty much your only option.
 
Kartik Subbarao said:
Heh. One thing to note is that the Gaming 9 has an EATX form factor, which might not be conducive to downsizing the case :)
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I didn't say it was a good option. It just has Thunderbolt 3. (And virtually everything else you could put on a motherboard.)
 
The asrock itx is back in stock at newegg if you want to get your thunderbolt on in SFF. Mine works great, god damn I build too many computers these days...
 
ahah, yes I have that some problem as well, too many rigs, but so much fun building and playing with them.
 
Dan_D said:
There are tons of motherboard choices that will support Thunderbolt 3 via an add-in card. If you want native TB3 support on the motherboard, GIGABYTE is pretty much your only option.
Click to expand...


Do you know if gigabyte is using Alpine ridge on their z270 boards for TB3?
 
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