⚡ Power your productivity with ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 — speed, clarity, and charge in one sleek package!
The ASUS ThunderboltEX 4 is a high-performance expansion card featuring Intel’s Thunderbolt 4 JHL 8540 controller, offering dual USB Type-C ports with up to 40Gb/s bi-directional bandwidth. It supports daisy-chaining up to five Thunderbolt devices, 8K DisplayPort 1.4 output, and rapid 100W quick charging, making it an essential upgrade for professionals demanding ultra-fast connectivity and future-ready display capabilities.
Max Screen Resolution | 7680x4320 |
Memory Speed | 2666 MHz |
Chipset Brand | Intel |
Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
Brand | ASUS |
Series | ThunderboltEX 4 |
Item model number | THUNDERBOLTEX 4 |
Operating System | Windows 10 - 64 bit |
Item Weight | 1.96 pounds |
Product Dimensions | 9.1 x 7.3 x 2.4 inches |
Item Dimensions LxWxH | 9.1 x 7.3 x 2.4 inches |
Color | Black |
Manufacturer | ASUS |
ASIN | B08ZS3D6JY |
Country of Origin | China |
Date First Available | March 24, 2021 |
J**N
A piece of Junk or it is not compatible with my Asus X670E-E Motherboard supposed to work with it
Works great if you hook it up correctly! Using an ZikeDrive Model Z666 USB4 M.2 Nmve case (they claim the fastest M.2 Drive Case): and an Fanxiang S880 4TB M.2 Nmve I get the fastest speeds of 3050.32 MB/s read, 2689.04 using Crystal Disk Mark 8 speed test. Running the Orico TCM-U4 Thunderbolt4 USB4 case with an Fanxiang S880 4TB M.2 I get the speeds: 3049.98 MB/s read, 2689.04 MB/s write. The Orico TCM-U4 is cheaper, but has a cooling problem with its top installed - but works great with thermal strip and copper heat sink and no top installed - it is reliable. But the ZikeDrive Model Z666 USB4 M.2 is slightly faster, has excellent cooling so far - better heat sink metal case with plastic over it - but the ZikeDrive is not as reliable when running thru my Plugable TB4 USB4 Hub (cant boot computer with it hooked in w/o error - sometimes errors if it is plugged in after computer booted? Seems to be working ok now.)The above ZikeDrive Model Z66 with Fanxian S880 4TB when plugged into Plugable TB4 USB4 Hub to Asus ThunderboltEx4 will get 2977.65 MB/s read, 1893.94 MB/s write for anyone who is interested.This same Fanxian S880 4TB when plugged into my Asus Hyper M.2 X16 Gen 4 Card or my Asus X670E-E motherboard M.2 PCIe 5.0 slot runs at 7271.24 MB/s read, 6187.19 MB/s write. So you can see the bottle neck is not in the M.2 I am using. It is cable of this speed, but Thunderbol 3 or 4 or USB4 is not cable of that speed. (I can't wait for Thunderbolt 5! I hope it works with my motherboard!)I am running Windows 10 & Windows 11 dual boot. Tests were done in Windows 10 on a Asus X670E-E Motherboard with AMD Ryzen 7950X3D CPU and using the GPU: MSI Gaming GeForce RTX 3060 Ti 8GB OC Edition "BGB GDDRR6X". And 96 GB DDR5 RAM (GSkill) 5400Mhz. So this is a top notch AMD computer build and is quite fast. I boot from an XPG 4TB GAMMIX S70 Blade PCIe Gen4 M.2 2280 Internal Gaming SSD Up to 7,400 MB/s in the PCIe 4.0 internal M.2 slot on the Asus Motherboard. (It has 3 PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots too reserved for future Raid-0 for video recording/editing and audio, etc.)To get this to work properly you MUST plug it into the proper PCIe X4 slot, plug the included cable from the USB 2.0 port on it into the USB 2.0 header on your motherboard, and plug the included cable from Thunderbolt Header on it into the Thunderbolt Header on your motherboard. If you don't hook it up to the USB 2.0, USB Devices can work on it, but no Thunderbolt. I have an Orico TCM-U4 Thunderbolt4 USB4 case with an Fanxiang S880 4TB M.2 in it, it was running at 1063.91 MB/s read, 1057 MB/s write, when the ThunderboltEx4 was not hooked up from its USB 2.0 to the USB 2.0 header on the motherboard. But when the ThunboltEx4 was hooked up correctly (USB 2.0 on it to USB 2.0 header on motherboard) then it was running at 3049.98 MB/s read, 2689.04 MB/s write, using the Fanxiang S880 4TB M.2.
J**N
Works great, just follow the instructions
A lot of folks are complaining that this card doesn’t work or that the instructions aren’t comprehensive enough.I got this card working first try. Just ensure:- You have a TB header- You connect everything up (power, TB header, etc)- You use the correct PCIe slot- You turn on the correct TB settings on your MB BIOS (varies depending on manufacturer)Yes, theres some tinkering. This is not plug-and-play. But once its set up, it works great.-
S**L
Misleading, with bad documentation.
Hardware is fine (though misleading), support documentation is probably the worst headache I've dealt with coming from an established company such as Asus.I purchased this card to use with my standing desk setup - I wanted to clean up the cables a bit, and the best solution for me was to install a thunderbolt card. Having an Asus motherboard that properly supports this device, I bit the bullet and invested a couple hundred dollars in an entire thunderbolt setup.After countless hours troubleshooting the card (and researching online forums about trouble with this card in particular), I figured out why it's been so difficult to get it the way I wanted it to work:- Port 1 is a full-fledged thunderbolt port, meaning you get high-speed USB, PCIe tunneling, and all of that. Problem is, it seems to be a PURELY hot-swappable thunderbolt port, with the intentional design being that it does NOT work at all during boot (displays are a hit or miss), and that you can only use USB devices after the OS has loaded and the thunderbolt drivers are initialized. Every boot with peripherals connected to this port will throw a "No keyboard detected" bios error at you.- Port 2 is.. another thunderbolt port, which DOES work immediately during boot (all USB devices are accessible and displays have never failed me), but it does not have full thunderbolt capabilities - biggest issue being that it does not support anything above USB 2.0; I have no idea if PCIe tunneling works because quite honestly, it's discouraging to troubleshoot more after dealing with this garbage.This has been a HUGE inconvenience, because I have a Focusrite audio interface that requires a USB 3.0 connection to be stable - Considering that port 2 is the only usable port during boot (sure, power cycling the thunderbolt dock / hub works after boot, but this is not preferable at all - ESPECIALLY when most of the time, displays aren't usable until OS is running meaning you can't even access the BIOS), I'd have to power cycle the interface once every ~5-15 minutes, which sucks just as much.Worst of all? No manual for this device mentions this at all. The only reason I could come to this conclusion is through all those hours of research on forums for this device - every single negative comment I've seen have had the exact same issues that I've had, being that you'd have to power cycle the thunderbolt dock to make it work after a cold boot (on port 1, which is usually not mentioned but understandably feels like "the port" to have everything connected to), but nothing about port 2 being limited to USB 2.0 (I only found that out by checking USBView with that Focusrite interface connected to the dock by swapping it between the TB card's port 1 and 2; port 1 read that it was "SuperSpeed capable" [USB 3.0], port 2 read it was just "High-speed" [USB 2.0])
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