I assembled a fine PC after years of lurking and contemplation. And, now I've discovered that I have something better than I planned for.
My system is a Ryzen 7 3800X on an ASUS ROG Strix B550-F Gaming WiFi motherboard. I have 16Gb of memory that I won't bother describing until I adjust the memory clock and timings for best results.
I come to the source of all knowledge because I overlooked a spec when I bought my motherboard. It is THUNDERBOLT capable!!!
Of course that means that I have to try to get it working. Oh ohhh, the pain of being afflicted with tinkeritus.
It looks like ASUS Engineering and Design did not work well with ASUS Marketing, End-User Support and Sales.
The motherboard has a 13 pin Thunderbolt header. The manual has a half page illustration and description that ends by saying "The add-on Thunderbolt I/O card and Thunderbolt cables are purchased separately." Finito, end of story. Searching has not found any further expansion on the manual.
I get that it supports Intel's Thunderbolt Technology which allows setting up a Thunderbolt daisy-chain of up to six Thunderbolt enabled devices and a DisplayPort enabled display.
But, does anyone know where to locate said add-on cards and cables? The manual does not even identify what Thunderbolt generation we are talking about here.
Should I have posted in politics and religion?
I know Thunderbolt is closely related to Apple's (supposed) superiority for content creation. But, I am hoping that we can all just get along because we are discussing a new AMD platform that includes Intel technology AND I am not installing IOS.
Yay Team, can you help a tortured soul? Everything is working, it must be time to f,,, it up!