Hi,
ASUS just announced the first AMD motherboard with Thunderbolt 4, it’s called Asus ProArt B550 Creator.
Will sell for around $299 and have two TB4 ports in the back I/O.
Great news for everyone who wants great connectivity speed without ditching the AMD Ryzen segment.
It’s a proprietary Intel technology that operates over a USB Type-C port.
Isn’t Thunderbolt supposed to be an open standard now? Yeah I know, reality and all that, but what’s the actual deal? Fuck around with 3 for so long and make it torturous to actually use reliably until.4 comes out and it is proprietary again and 3 will be dropped so quick software wise meaning it dead?
I´m actually liking the features that the Asus pro art B550 creator board offers.
Dual intel 2.5G nic’s, TB4 etc pretty cool i guess.
The only major downside for me is the cut down on the sata ports.
Would be nice when Asus also makes a x570 version with atleast 6 sata ports.
I think this is really just going to be something that requires either a RAID controller or HBA. I think the reality is for folks looking to install U.2 or U.3 drives (I’m one of them) are likely going to be installing multiple (like my plans for RAID10, because I’m crazy). It just makes a lot more sense to leave that to a PCIe 4.0 x16 or x8 add-in card rather than using the limited space on the motherboard that only a tiny fraction of end users would ever consider.
It is nice to see ASUS getting into the game, because historically it’s only been ASRock and Gigabyte I think, and then, I believe mostly (or only) with TRX40 boards? I’m hoping we’ll see some Thunderbolt 4 support alongside what should just be TRX40 updates for Zen 3 Threadripper when it’s announced (presumably) at Computex in June 2021, and some Thunderbolt 4 Maple Ridge add-in cards being announced to go alongside.