Motherboard + CPU which offers 40+ PCIe Lanes & Thunderbolt 3

TrumanHW · June 15, 2020, 4:25am

I’ve looked and looked for hours and hours.

I’ve looked at the
• W-2200
• W-3200
• Thread Ripper …
• Xeon E5
• Epyc

Those are all the PDQ CPUs with ample PCIe Lanes… but not ONE of those chips are supported by a single motherboard which has Thunderbolt-3

… for those who may think that AMD doesn’t support TB3, while you’re correct that it doesn’t, officially support it – there are motherboards which are stated to offer it.

And even though PCIe 4.0 is double the bandwidth, I’ve seen no corroboration that using a PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD which needs x4 lanes would only use x2 lanes due to their greater performance. While such a conclusion has been dangled for people to assume … nothing has provided any evidence to support that rationale.

Honestly, I’d really like 64 PCIe Lanes (at 3.0 performance, or if there were some magic that I’ve yet to assume of using 4.0, I’d need 32 of them still) … but not only do I not think it works that way, but still, we’re only talking about (even if it did double the lanes, only 32 x 3.0 I think… and that’s IF PCIe 4.0 can do in x2 what 3.0 does in x4 …

IF I actually had a genie, then the MB would have to have even more ridiculous features, like:

Have UHD 630 - for Quick Sync (Intel) to transcode HEVC quickly…
10GbE SFP+ Networking built in …
Thunderbolt 3 ports native, on the board …
USB 3.2 (10 Gbps, not just 3.0 with a new plug).
Support for Optane & Optane DIMMs
IPMI of some sort, (iDRAC, whatever)
1 M.2 and 2x U.2 ports built in (instead of 3x M.2 slots, only)

And what the hell… they’d use HW from the HCL list for Hackintosh.

But I digress… I would happily settle out of court for…

40+ PCIe 3.0 Lanes…
Thunderbolt 3

The rest…? Regardless of how universally desirable they are…
why would motherboard mfr’s EVER provide all options to any of us suckers… eh…?

Thanks to any and all who’ve read this.

IF anyone needs to know what I have in my system…
• x16 card with 4x U.2 NVMe ports…
• 3x M.2 but I’d prefer only 1x M.2 to get 2 more U.2 NVMe ports …
• 10GbE SFP+ Card…
• PC-3000 Express ( x4 3.0)
• x16 for another 1080 Ti
• A proprietary USB 3.0 for another data recovery device…

nbartowski · June 15, 2020, 3:14pm

If I understand your question correctly Gigabyte’s trx40 aorus xtreme or trx40 designare motherboards with 3rd gen Threadripper will provide you 40+ pcie lanes + tb3. There are threads in this forum talking about how to set up.

TrumanHW · June 15, 2020, 5:53pm

That’s great info. Bummer it’s $1500 … but, if I sell off my two i7 8700k it’ll make it more affordable.

Greatly appreciate the info … and at least now there’s something to set my sights on. Thank you all…

TrumanHW · June 22, 2020, 9:08pm

PS, apparently, there’s a Gigabyte board that’s a measly $800 (if you can find it) which has a TBT header (usually they call the Thunderbolt-3 header THB-C, but, why should I worry about their inconsistencies to use their own naming convention when I’m hoping for a feature they don’t explicitly list…?

It is a DP 3647 2nd Gen board… the only wish left were that it supported CPUs with the IG of a UHD 630.

Now I just need to see what a kidney goes for in the US …

FurryJackman · June 22, 2020, 9:50pm

The 10900X and the X299 Designare EX is a better option. The Designare EX you’ll have to get on the used market and ensure it’s the latest up to date BIOS, but the 10900X should be available for sale somewhere.

The X299X Designare 10G has 10Gig, but in Cat6. So you need SFP and the Designare EX fits that need better.

Trooper_ish · June 23, 2020, 12:53am

_{Cough,_{Cough, _{_{_MacPro}}cough} cough…}

That PC-3000 looks toatlly bad ass though

TrumanHW · July 3, 2020, 9:29pm

It really is. There’s definitely no better tool anywhere for Data Recovery … and hopefully they’ll have something for NVMe soon. Do you do D.R. …?

TrumanHW · July 3, 2020, 9:29pm

For now, as I just posted in another very similar thread, I’ve decided to settle for the X390 Designare … as it’s reasonably priced – and I’ll just have to put the 4x x4 NVMe U.2 drives in my FreeNAS server and hopefully figure out how to make them actually work well. At least it has the slots (It’s a T320) … just probably doesn’t have the PCIe Lanes. I’ll look later.

IF it weren’t SO ridiculously priced I’d actually have bought the X390 Xtreme – but there’s literally ONE available (ignoring the liquid cooled options on eBay as I don’t want a custom loop in a computer with a PC-3000; too. scary.

The other nicety had I been able to find the X390 Xtreme is that it actually has the Power and Reset buttons ON the case … which would have allowed me to run the Streacom BC1 case I have… BUT, Noooooo. of COURSE not. WHY would they manufacture enough for demand!??

And in TOTAL, there’re maybe 4…? If that – Gen 8 + Gen 9 (Intel) compatible MB which even have TB3 built-in. Which is RIDICULOUS; as if it’s “SO rare a desire” … I could go on, but I’ll spare you.

Here’s the pics of the Xtreme and the Streacom case that I’d be working on if the MB were still available for the MSRP.