Question ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 card is a joke, or is it not?

[SuperChuchu]

I'm about to pack this thing up and send it back to Amazon, but just in case I thought I'd ask here to see if there's a chance that it may not be as bad as it seems.

I have a Mac Studio M1 Ultra, which has 6 Thunderbolt 4.0 ports. I also have an OWC Envoy 4 TB SSD that gives me 3 GBps. Well, that's according to the macOS version of Crystal Disk Mark, but according to the Blackmagic Disk Speed test, it gives me 2 GBps. Either way, it's super fast, and obviously I paid twice what a typical USB 3 SSD costs for the same size.

Recently I built a new PC because I just needed more RAM and once you buy a new Mac, you're stuck with the amount you chose at the time of purchase. My motherboard is an Asus ROG STRIX Z790-E GAMING WIFI II, which comes with two USB-C ports, but no Thunderbolt, you have to add that separately using a PCIe card called "ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 with Intel® Thunderbolt™ 4 JHL 8540 Controller", which is 130 bucks. A little expensive, but I thought I'd give it a try, since the OWC drive connected to the fastest USB-C port, gives me 500 MBps.

Well, the thing is a joke. If it's Thunderbolt, I'm Batman. With OWC drive, it gives me 700 MBps. Another SSD I have is a Samsung T9 Shield, which is USB 3, but gives me a decent 1 GBps on the Mac, and here it gives me a pathetic 361 MBps.

So there's no way I'm going to pay 130 bucks for a pitiful increase of 200 MBps compared to the motherboard USB-C port.

But there are some settings in the BIOS that makes me wonder if they could be tweaked to get better performance:

https://imgur.com/a/Uck5tqH

I would not touch any of them because while I know computers pretty well, this is not one area that I know well, so I'd rather be cautious and not just start bumping up numbers to see if it works better. So if anyone knows how to change these settings to make this card perform as well as my Mac Studio please share.

 

[helpstar]

install the latest Intel Thunderbolt Driver
which CPU are you using?
in which pcie slot did you plug in the card?
is the bios up to date of the motherboar

m.2 slots in use? which ones?

 

[SuperChuchu]

Thanks for your reply. Answers below:

install the latest Intel Thunderbolt Driver

I did, the one that you download from the Asus support website. However, it gives no confirmation that it is installed, and as far as I could tell, it wasn't because after a reboot, no disk that I plugged in the card showed in Windows. So I installed the driver from the DVD that came with the card, and that made it work, but slow as I described. I tried installing the downloaded driver again after that, but it made no difference.

which CPU are you using?

i9 14900 KF

in which pcie slot did you plug in the card?

The bottom one, 16(G4)_2. It's the only one, the one in the middle would be way too close to the graphics card.

is the bios up to date of the motherboard

Yes

m.2 slots in use? which ones?

The motherboard has five m.2 slots, of which four are occupied. The only one that is free is M.2_1, because that one is shared with the top PCIe slot, so it would make that slot x8 if a drive was installed in M.2_1. And to take advantage of that slot, you'd need a Gen 5 SSD, which are way too expensive for now. So all the rest have Samsung 990 SSDs, one is the Pro, and the rest the Evo Plus.

 

[helpstar]

the add in card will only work in the lowest pcie slot 😊
what i found is that Windows 11 has drivers integrated. try Windows update to reinstall the latest tb drivers

bios is version 1801 ?

did you install the firmware updates as well?
PD update tool
USB FW update tool

did you connect the USB 2.0 and thunderbolt header connections from the add in card to the motherboard?

is the pcie alt mode switch of the motherboard set to auto?

 

[SuperChuchu]

the add in card will only work in the lowest pcie slot 😊
what i found is that Windows 11 has drivers integrated. try Windows update to reinstall the latest tb drivers

It used to be that under optional updates I had a long list of different things, many of them drivers. I don't have that anymore. I only had three drivers, two Intel, one called Intel net and the other one Intel Bluetooth, then an old driver for my Dell monitor. I installed the two Intel ones just in case, but there's no difference of course.

bios is version 1801 ?

Yes, I updated it even before I installed Windows. It was the first thing I did.

did you install the firmware updates as well?
PD update tool
USB FW update tool

Not familiar with those, I installed the latest versions of everything I saw here: https://rog.asus.com/us/motherboards/rog-strix/rog-strix-z790-e-gaming-wifi-ii/helpdesk_download/
Well, not everything, when you expand some of those they have all kinds of Intel drivers, which in my experience, end up making a mess. I installed the chipset driver, and Windows took care of the rest. I have 25 of experience with Windows PCs, and that experience showed me that most times it's better to go with the Windows included drivers, as long as it has them. But if you think there's anything there I should install, I can give it a try.

did you connect the USB 2.0 and thunderbolt header connections from the add in card to the motherboard?

Yes, both. The only thing that the manual showed that I didn't do was that cable that goes from the Display Port output in the motherboard to the mini DP input in the card, because it's pointless. The motherboard wouldn't have any signal coming out of the DP and HDMI ports because my CPU doesn't include graphics, it's the KF.

Plus, I'm not looking to have any display capabilities in this card, it's just for external drives.

is the pcie alt mode switch of the motherboard set to auto?

Yes, it comes that way as default and I never touched it. I remember looking at it when I built the machine to make sure it was in auto.

 

[helpstar]

try the Firmware updates

 

[SuperChuchu]

try the Firmware updates

Where do I find them?

 

[thestryker]

Where do I find them?

BIOS and Firmware tab on the link you posted above then down below the BIOS is the PD update tool and USB FW update tool.

As for the performance that seems low period. You should be able to get a minimum 1GB/s on the 10Gb ports and if the cable/drive is compatible around 2GB/s on the 20Gb ports. I have a USB drive rated at ~1GB/s and I get that all the time on the motherboard ports.

 

[SuperChuchu]

BIOS and Firmware tab on the link you posted above then down below the BIOS is the PD update tool and USB FW update tool.

Thanks, I had missed that.

As for the performance that seems low period. You should be able to get a minimum 1GB/s on the 10Gb ports and if the cable/drive is compatible around 2GB/s on the 20Gb ports. I have a USB drive rated at ~1GB/s and I get that all the time on the motherboard ports.

Yeah, after doing those firmware updates it's still the same as plugin in the drives into the 20 GB USB port, slightly higher, but not by much. So this thing is going back.