I’m trying to move my PC outside my room using a TB3 optical cable setup. My setup is as follows:
OS: Win11
CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900x
Motherboard: X570 AORUS MASTER (rev. 1.0)
AIC: GC-Titan Ridge (rev. 2.0) - shorted pin 3+5
Cable: Corning Thunderbolt 3 Optical Cable
Dock: Caldigit TS4
AIC Details:
driver 1.41.1094.0
firmware fw50
Bios settings (not sure if these are all relevant)
TB security setting: no auth
enabled above 4g decoding and resize-bar
enabled IOMMU
disabled CSM and enabled secure booting
My problem rn is that when I plug in the optical cable, the indicator light on the TS4 dock starts flashing on and off at around 1s intervals. No signal on any peripherals and the windows Thunderbolt app does not detect it.
Now here comes the weird part when I try to troubleshoot:
If I switch to the default TB4 cable that comes with the Caldigit TS4 dock, everything works flawlessly, no need to restart, plug & unplug the TB cable, or anything else, it just works as if all peripherals are connected directly to the PC.
Then I thought it could be the corning TB3 optical cable’s problem, but if I plug the optical cable into my laptop (which has a TB3 port), everything works flawlessly as well.
This leaves me wondering what the hell is going wrong
Any help is appreciated!!
After transferring GC-titan ridge to the lowest PICE slot, updating the Bios to the newest F37b, and editing the two memory options all the way to the maximum, now my system can recognize the optical cable and use it normally ONLY AFTER booting up the PC with the TB4 cable comes from Caldigit TS4.
So I need to boot up the PC with a very short TB4 cable attached to the dock, then manually swap the cable to the optical one. This works but defeats the purpose of moving the PC to another room.
Thunderbolt is so insanely blizzard and I guess I’ll need to keep looking for other workarounds…
I don’t know why Intel’s websites are so horrible to navigate. And their automatic Thunderbolt software/drivers package installer has been bugged for years. Thunderbolt 4 drivers should also work with Thunderbolt 3 controllers.
Do you have DMA Protection enabled in the UEFI (careful: NOT DMAr)?
You disabled CSM, not enabled it, is this a typo in the initial posting? If you enabled it, is there a specific reason?
For 1, I tried the newer 1.41.1340.0 model but don’t seems to change the result…
for 2, I checked the status of DMA protection status using MSINFO32.exe and it shows it’s off, but I went through the BIOS and couldn’t find any setting related to it, only thing close is the SVM mode which was already enabled. Also checked google and don’t seem to see anyone mention how to enable it only the official guide mentioned very vaguely to enable Intel Virtualization Technology,but I’m on AMD lol. Does it mean I’m out of luck?
for 3, yeah I made a typo, I disabled CSM and enabled secure boot
Also, may I ask what mobo are you using now? I’m thinking if things don’t get resolved, I’m probably gonna switch to the newer revision of x570 or x670 platforms which support the AIC natively, or just jump straight to intel…
Be aware that the ProArt B550 doesn’t have Wi-Fi or Bluetooth so you’d have to add these functionalities in if they are important to you. Depending on current deals the X570 variant might be the better offer then.
Thanks for pointing that out! I also just noticed that it only supports 4 SATA ports, which is a downer… but not a deal breaker tho. But thanks anyway, I’ll take those into consideration!
May I ask how you find your experience with natively integrated TB4 on pro-art B550 creator? stuff like driver/firmware support, stability/compatibility.
Also, is hibernate/sleep work as expected? and I assume you don’t need to unplug - wait - then plug in the cable after reboot/cold boot?
I don’t have any issues with TB devices, I generally use 3 kinds of peripherals:
TB Ethernet Bridge, directly connect systems with TB, this way you get a 20 GbE network connection
TB3 NVMe SSD enclosures
TB3 External case with a PCIe slot, using it with an HDMI Video Capture card for example.
The system can go to sleep (S3) and wake again without the connected devices having issues
I never use Intel’s .exe installer for the Thunderbolt drivers, I always install them manually, Windows 10/11 gets the Thunderbolt management software automatically from the Microsoft Store after you installed the drivers by hand
To be on the safe side I disconnect Internet access until all drivers have been installed.
To be fair I also haven’t had issues with the GC-Titan Ridge, using ASRock X570 motherboards that have that 5-pin TB header so I never had to do any “odd” workarounds
I’ve made a general help thread focussing on Thunderbolt use on AM4 systems:
Remembered one issue with the ASUS ProArt B550-CREATOR (that might have been just a sporadic manufacturing quality control failure):
On my first unit the HDMI and the two Thunderbolt ports were soldered (?) badly. Tested multiple HDMI and Thunderbolt cables (every cable behaved identically) that work absolutely fine with each of the ProArt X570-CREATOR WIFI units I have access to.
Issue description:
You plug a cable into the port, the fit is nice and firm
Everything is working fine
If you move the cables a bit so the “force vector” on the plug changes (even being extremely careful), the connection is lost for a short while; in case of a display this is annoying but in case of SSDs connected via Thunderbolt this is catastrophic.
My purchase was in 2021 but if you happen to choose the ProArt B550-CREATOR please look out for this behavior immediately to not have any issues returning it.
Plug in the corning cable and it blinks without actually enabling anything whereas the included TS4 cable works perfectly, but my laptop works with the corning cable.
