ASRock WRX80 Creator R2.0 Thunderbolt/USB-C not working

Hardware Motherboards
#1

I have a ASRock WRX80 Creator R2.0. The board is great, except I cannot get the 2 Thunderbolt 4 ports (type-c) on the back to activate. Plugging in any regular USB-C devices (such as a flash drive) to these two ports doesn’t work either, they are simply not detected. All the other USB ports are working fine. I’m on Windows Server 2019.

TB4 is enabled in the BIOS:

BIOS_thunderbolt_enabled
BIOS_thunderbolt_enabled800×600 133 KB

The controller driver and software is properly installed and detected in Device Manager:

TB_controller
TB_controller790×898 118 KB

TB_device_manager

Thunderbolt Control Center in Windows loads properly, but no devices are detected:

TB_details
TB_details998×710 92 KB

Attached_TB_devices
Attached_TB_devices996×572 30 KB

Approved_TB_devices
Approved_TB_devices996×540 36.6 KB

Approve_TB_devices
Approve_TB_devices1000×516 38.9 KB

I contact ASRock tech support and they said the TB4 drivers are only for Windows 10/11, and Windows Server OS’s are not supported. When I mentioned that USB-C devices are also not working, they said maybe the ports are defective. The only solution they suggested is an RMA.

Is there anything else I can try before an RMA? I hate to return an otherwise excellent board.

#2

I got the replacement board from ASRock today and swapped it in. It’s working great! Both Thunderbolt and USB-C are working. So my old board must have been defective. I did an advanced RMA (paid ahead) so there is little downtime on my server.

TB_device_detected
TB_device_detected986×1248 82 KB

If you have one of these boards, I highly recommend you test the two Thunderbolt ports on it, before the 1-year warranty runs out. I was using my board for a few months already, and didn’t realize the Thunderbolt ports were defective until I needed to use a Thunderbolt device!

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