Help with Thunderbolt 3 add in card. I have an annoying issue!

[Roybromwell]

I have the GC-ALPINE RIDGE (rev. 1.0), it's a T3 add-in card. I've had it for a while and haven't had any problems until now. It seems it can only read one T3 device at a time, in plug and use cases. I have an external HDD plugged into it at all times and when I attach another T3 device, 1 of 3 things will happen,

- 50% of the time, nothing happens. The new drive wont show up.

-45% of the time, both drives vanish.

-5% of the time, it actually works. Both drives show up.

The only way to get my PC to see both drives, reliably, is to have them both plugged in at startup. If none of them are attached, everything works as intended if I only attach one. It is getting tiresome that any time I want to attach 2 T3 drives, I have to reboot my PC. Is this a card issue, a power issue, or something else?

Thanks in advance for any help anyone can provide.

 

[Eximo]

Interesting. What about the rest of the hardware?

I could see you running out of PCIe lanes under the right conditions.

And when you are facing strange issues it is always best to update as much as possible. The motherboard BIOS, the drivers, perhaps even the firmware of the card. Not sure I would go so far as trying the firmware on the drives, but worth looking into.

 

[Roybromwell]

Interesting. What about the rest of the hardware?

I could see you running out of PCIe lanes under the right conditions.

And when you are facing strange issues it is always best to update as much as possible. The motherboard BIOS, the drivers, perhaps even the firmware of the card. Not sure I would go so far as trying the firmware on the drives, but worth looking into.

I tried updating Everything, just recently as my astronomy teacher suggested that, actually. It fixed a lot of things; but not this, unfortunately.
This is the rest of my hardware,

Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Memory Size - 4096 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Core Clock - 1000 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)
System Memory - 32 GB
CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz

 

[Roybromwell]

Interesting. What about the rest of the hardware?

I could see you running out of PCIe lanes under the right conditions.

And when you are facing strange issues it is always best to update as much as possible. The motherboard BIOS, the drivers, perhaps even the firmware of the card. Not sure I would go so far as trying the firmware on the drives, but worth looking into.

I tried updating Everything, just recently as my astronomy teacher suggested that, actually. It fixed a lot of things; but not this, unfortunately.
This is the rest of my hardware,

Graphics Chipset - AMD Radeon R9 200 Series
Memory Size - 4096 MB
Memory Type - GDDR5
Core Clock - 1000 MHz
Windows Version - Windows 10 (64 bit)
System Memory - 32 GB
CPU Type - Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-7700K CPU @ 4.20GHz

 

[Eximo]

That is a fairly generic list of parts missing most of the important information.

CPU: i7-7700k
Motherboard: (particularly the chipset, but the exact model will be very useful)
GPU: (Presumably an R9-290 or better?)
Complete list of drives and their connection details.
List of all expansion cards:
1) GC-ALPINE RIDGE Rev 1.0

Motherboard information should take care of most of the other disk controllers and other items that consume PCIe lanes. If this isn't one of the high end chipsets you could easily have run out.

It could also just be a terrible product that doesn't quite work right.

 

[Roybromwell]

Sorry about that, I'm not the most PC literate, my PC's a hand-me-down. I did some extra research and I believe the mobo is a GA-Z270MX-Gaming 5 (rev. 1.0).
The GPU is a R9-290X.
The Drives are a 1TB 960 Pro, a 1TB 840 EVO, and a 260GB(?) Intel 600 Series [it's attached via a PCI card]

 

[Eximo]

As I feared, this is actually more complicated still. It might be that the reboot solves the problems by allocating resources properly at the start, vs having to do it on demand. Old style eSATA drives had similar problems in the past.

The rest (24 lanes) come from your chipset. However these are consumed by many things. Network, sound, disk controllers, USB controllers etc.

Your Thunderbolt card can only work in the PCH 16x (4x mode) slot, not the CPU one, according to Gigabyte. Only one place it could be is in the last slot.

I assume your PCIe adapter for the other SSD is running through the CPU, reducing your graphics card to 8x mode.

Now, if you aren't using your SATA controllers you should go into the BIOS and disable them. Might be wasting some lanes there which could be causing a resource conflict.

And if you have any spare network or sound controllers to disable, those as well. (I know many people now use USB based headphones with their own internal sound chips)

 

[Roybromwell]

As I feared, this is actually more complicated still. It might be that the reboot solves the problems by allocating resources properly at the start, vs having to do it on demand. Old style eSATA drives had similar problems in the past.

The rest (24 lanes) come from your chipset. However these are consumed by many things. Network, sound, disk controllers, USB controllers etc.

Your Thunderbolt card can only work in the PCH 16x (4x mode) slot, not the CPU one, according to Gigabyte. Only one place it could be is in the last slot.

I assume your PCIe adapter for the other SSD is running through the CPU, reducing your graphics card to 8x mode.

Now, if you aren't using your SATA controllers you should go into the BIOS and disable them. Might be wasting some lanes there which could be causing a resource conflict.

And if you have any spare network or sound controllers to disable, those as well. (I know many people now use USB based headphones with their own internal sound chips)

You are right. The GPU is in the 1st slot, the SSD is in the 2nd and the T3 card is in the last one. That is what you just described, right? Would it do me any good to take the SSD out of the 2nd slot?

I will also go into BIOS and disable that stuff you said. I think I've seen some of those options, before, when I was poking around with it a long time ago. I will report back, soon.

 

[Eximo]

No, removing the SSD will just put your GPU back into 16x mode. Putting it in an available M.2 slot will then consume lanes from the PCH, potentially making it worse.

I'm not sure if there are any ready tools for checking available lanes or what is consuming them. I rarely build up computers to the point where that would become a problem.

 

[Roybromwell]

No, removing the SSD will just put your GPU back into 16x mode. Putting it in an available M.2 slot will then consume lanes from the PCH, potentially making it worse.

I'm not sure if there are any ready tools for checking available lanes or what is consuming them. I rarely build up computers to the point where that would become a problem.

Unfortunately disabling the Sata ports didn't help. Do I just have to get a new/better board?

 

[Eximo]

I'm not sure. There are certainly fancier boards, but they would still use the same chipset unless you replaced the entire core system with an X299 board and CPU.

More for GPUs and such, but there are high end boards that have PLX chips which artificially switch lanes from the CPU to get more lanes. That could solve the problem, however, that thunderbolt card might not work.

A potential solution might be a true thunderbolt controller card, but I am not certain they exist. Seems we are still stuck with board specific adapters that simply break out the connection from supported boards.

 

[Roybromwell]

I'm not sure. There are certainly fancier boards, but they would still use the same chipset unless you replaced the entire core system with an X299 board and CPU.

More for GPUs and such, but there are high end boards that have PLX chips which artificially switch lanes from the CPU to get more lanes. That could solve the problem, however, that thunderbolt card might not work.

A potential solution might be a true thunderbolt controller card, but I am not certain they exist. Seems we are still stuck with board specific adapters that simply break out the connection from supported boards.

'Sucks, but thanks for the help.

I really don't know anyone who bought this card, either and I haven't seen a single reliable review, online. So in short; from my experience, the card is what it says it is, but it really does have a significant draw back. If you're gonna attach more than 1 device to it, better make sure the PC is totally off, if not, it will kill both devices, simultaneously. At least half the time.