Yeah, I was and am one of those.
Prior to the purchase of the ASRock X570 Taichi I was torn between that motherboard and Gigabyte’s counterpart in that price range. But my being bullshitted sense got tingly when I saw that TB was mentioned nowhere in Gigabyte’s official X570 documentation which swayed me to get the Taichi.
I just hope that @wendell isn’t too depressed about that development and has the muse to tackle the USB 3.x/Type C DisplayPort hotplug issues with Gigabyte’s GC-Titan Ridge AIC on the Taichi so maybe ASRock can see that there is at least a niche demand for that feature…
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Seems like Indian customer support copying and pasting a response. You’ll want to get one of the product managers directly, not customer support.
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But weren’t it these product managers that decided that not even the Thunderbolt Header is mentioned in all of the available public documentation?
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@wendell confirmed that the version of this motherboard at launch had the Thunderbolt connector. There are several other people who confirmed that the Thunderbolt connector was on this board.
There are even reviews of this board that showed the connector.
But for some reason the Revision 1 boards have the connector removed and there are only solder points left with the name THB_C.
Another user in this post suggested that this is because Intel reverted back to the “Good ole Days”" scare tactics again and bullied manufactures and retailers into oblivion to prevent AMD to use a decent Thunderbolt option.
Gigabyte listened to Intel and removed the connector and called the updated board revision 1.
Assrock did not listen and the equivalent Assrock motherboard still has the Thunderbolt option and is still sold as we speak.
If this is true, that Intel misused his power again via manufactures to prevent AMD to unroll a Thunderbolt solution, to me this is very disturbing.
Intel is losing the battle on the CPU market so they revert back to these disgusting tactics and we the customer are the real victim and need to buy Intel boards if we want to use Thunderbolt or an Assrock AMD board for the time this will last I’m afraid.
Asrock even has an ITX x570 board with an integrated TB3 controller. (1 port)
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@GermanShepherd
As stated me mentioning the “good ol’ days” is just a feeling right now without any concrete or circumstantial evidence.
However I was around at the early '00s and remember Intel’s past shenanigans including the stalling of the antitrust fine they received from the EU.
@Methylzero
The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 just soldered its AIC on the PCB and you still have to loop an external cable to its DP-in to actually enable Thunderbolt. Well, this is logical since you might not use an APU on that board and the DisplayPort signals have to come from somewhere.
I wonder if the reason why ASRock isn’t offering a current Titan Ridge AIC is that they refused to not implement TB3 on AMD platforms so Intel refused to ship any new TB3 chipsets to ASRock and they’re just using their stock inventory of the old Alpine Ridge chipsets.
Maybe I’m paranoid but I’ve had the opportunity to look behind many curtains and since then I haven’t had a single occasion yet where my gut feeling was actually wrong.
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As stated, you mentioning, me mentioning, you mentioning that this could be The Good Ole Days scare tactics by Intel, as mentioned I hope this is not true.
If it is true then this is very disturbing at least, I think. 
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Honestly, I don’t know any more what behavior of multi-national corporations would suffice to actually disturb me. 
I just checked the Aorus Master boards that just came in to a local retailer, and they all lack the Thunderbolt header.
No longer speculation anymore, this is fact that it was taken away for the retail boards.
They made the standard royalty-free. And it’s going to be included in USB 4.0… My suspicion is BIOS engineers were overworked. Priorities were set and this had to be cut because there was no manpower.
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All the Revision 1 boards have the Thunderbolt connector removed.
But the boards that where reviewed and sold at launch had the connector.
We will probably never know why Gigabyte removed the connector and why Assrock did not.
As I stated before, for me this missing Thunderbolt is no issue. I bought the X570 Aurus Master for other reasons. But I can imagine that many people who bought this motherboard under the impression it has the Thunderbolt are very mad at least. And Gigabyte made a mistake. Finally they have a AMD motherboard of this magnitude, they announced it as a Thunderbolt ready AMD motherboard, send out review samples to several Tech YT channels and the Thunderbolt was present, selling this motherboard at launch with the Thunderbolt, and suddenly for some reason they removed the connector and called these boards Revison 1.
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Yeah, but something that’s quite fishy to me is that, if I remember correctly, Intel made a condition that all devices that use TB3 have to be certified by Intel - even if it is “at no cost”…
How many non-Intel platforms have we seen in the paat two years since Intel announced Thunderbolt’s “freedom” that offer TB out of the box?
1, the just released ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 and that also seems to be the outdated Alpine Ridge Revision of TB3.
I mean, if @wendell can implement Thunderbolt support without having access to firmware/driver sources then I hesitate to accept the reasoning that the poor, poor manufacturer hasn’t been able to implement TB due to a lack of software engineers.
I wonder how many “review” videos that mentioned the TB Header on Gigabyte’s X570 boards will be updated to correct that statement.
Which means there could be backdoor royalties at play… An open standard isn’t open if you have to have membership to just view the full specs. SMPTE is an excellent example of “open” standards nobody can access without a paid membership, which means it’s still closed.
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But since Gigabyte and ASRock have offered Intel-based motherboards with TB3 they surely must have access to TB’s specifications?
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Gigabyte must have asked for the official logo specification and got bullied, whereas Asrock apparently did not.
It’s one thing to implement the hardware IP, another to actually use the logos. Asrock got Intel’s blessing, but Gigabyte got a cold shoulder.
And Gigabyte just knows what we the Thunderbolt-curious (tb-curious?) users actually want:
An Intel Thunderbolt sticker on the motherboard’s box and not functional TB Headers on the boards themselves that let us use TB even in an unsupported way - way to look out for the customers
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It’s legalities with IP use. Intel still controls IP use with the Thunderbolt spec as far as logo placement, and if you don’t get the logo, it’s either Gigabyte don’t want to mislead or they got bullied into removing the support by IP lawyers.
So according to a reddit user the Asrock X570 ITX mobo with onboard TB3 is equipped with a titan ridge controller.
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That makes it even weirder that ASRock’s TB3 AIC Rev. 2.0 only has an Alpine Ridge Chipset 
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I think an exclusivity deal must have been struck, so Intel told Gigabyte to back off… No direct support from Intel would make it nearly impossible for BIOS engineers to comply to spec, because they don’t have the specs, or are legally not allowed to use the specs.
