Question 1

Will this work in a Mac Pro Tower?

Accepted Answer

No. you will need a matching motherboard that has a special pin connector to connect to the add in card. It would work in a hackintosh with an ASRock motherboard. I use it with an apple Thunderbolt Display.

Question 2

Will this Thunderbolt expansion card with a Gigabyte X79-UP4 socket 2011?

Accepted Answer

This card is exclusive to Asrock boards, but not exclusive to their x99 boards. They have several Z97 boards that support this card. How do I know? I have one on my Z97 Extreme 6. Some motherboards support 10GBps while most support 20GBps.

Question 3

I'd like to purchase and install this card on a Dell Precision Tower 5810 (Intel Xeon CPU E5-1660 v3 3.0GHz) running Windows 7.  Do you know if it is compatible?  My intention is to connect my computer to a Thunderbolt 2 RAID 5 enclosure.

Accepted Answer

Not sure, but Google this article:

"Dell Precision Tower 5810/7810/7910 and Rack 7910 Thunderbolt Add-In-Cards Setup Guide"

Card uses PCI Express 2.0 x4 interface, as noted in the specs.

Question 4

does this unit support windows 10?

Accepted Answer

Yes this works on windows 10. This is to be used on ASRock motherboards with the thunderbolt AIC connector on it.

Question 5

Does anyone know if this card would work if I'm booting Ubuntu?

Accepted Answer

Not sure about that, but I found out that the card needs a motherboard that will support it.

Question 6

will this work in a pcie 3 slot in one of the supported mobos?

Accepted Answer

It seems to work in my asrock extreme4 mobo quite well, sometimes it doesnt recognize on bootup but is fine once i restart.  Probably has to do with software setup.  
If your mobos on the list you should be good to go, although thunderbolt is relatively new for pc so goodluck with compatability,  mobo guide should say which slots to utalize first

Question 7

Has anyone used this to connect their discrete GPU to an Apple Thunderbolt display? How well did it work? Any issues? Thanks!

Accepted Answer

I can confirm that it is possible. It was just a little fussy: I needed to enable 'iGPU Multi-monitor' in BIOS and I had to also disconnect my other HDMI-connected display from the GPU. The Thunderbolt utility will ask permission to use the Thunderbolt Display, and will note that it is not supported for windows. But it works beautifully. I'm using Windows 10 Tech Preview, ASRock H97M-Pro4, GTX 770.

Question 8

Has anyone gotten this to work in Linux and/or FreeBSD?

Accepted Answer

I haven't been able to make it work at all. 
Maybe a Mobo compatibility problem but I gave up after losing too much time trying everything.

Question 9

Will my ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3 Motherboard support this card?

Accepted Answer

I specifically ordered the ASRock X99 Extreme4 ATX LGA2011-3  to work with this card for my home recording studio that is connected to a Lynx Hilo audio interface with a Thunderbolt connection. I was having problems with audio clicks and dropouts until I realized that the Thunderbolt card shares the same IRQ as the USB3 buss. I disabled the USB3 in the bios, uninstalled the drivers and the problems went away. Works great!

Question 10

does this include a low profile bracket?

need to fit this on my z230 sff

Accepted Answer

My card came with an alternate low  profile bracket

Questions & Answers