MSI fell behind when it came to providing a Thunderbolt 4 (TB4) solution for its motherboard models that didn’t offer integrated TB4 support. Which mostly just included its DDR4-supported models. Because of this, many of its customers had to go without Thunderbolt access. For Alder Lake adopters, it’s been nearly a year. However, that has finally come to an end now that MSI’s expansion card has finally made an appearance and I’m sure there will be a decent number of people scrambling to get their hands on one.
It is elusive though, just like the company’s Thunderbolt 3 (TB3) card. Although the TB3 card is almost impossible to find now, where the TB4 card is readily available (for now). It’s just at MSI’s website and nowhere else. There is no telling if it will make it to other retailers like Newegg or not.
[Update: The card has shown up on Newegg, although it is via a third-party reseller with an inflated cost]
That being said, we got our hands on MSI’s new Thunderbolt 4 PCIe Expansion Card (Model: THUNDERBOLTM4 8K) and we said if we did, we’d let you know what we think about it. So here it goes!
The card comes tucked into a small simple box. Inside, you find both internal cables that are used to connect it to the motherboard. Simply plugging it into a PCIe slot isn’t enough. You have a USB 2.0 header cable and MSI’s own 16-pin Thunderbolt header cable. The latter of which means it will not work with motherboards of other manufacturers–just like their TB cards won’t work with the MSI boards (Thanks MSI…)
You have to make sure the card is inserted into a PCIe 3.0 (or higher) slot that is x4 or larger. Then run the two internal cables between the card and the motherboard (make sure your motherboard has the 16-pin TBT header before you buy into one of these.
There are four ports on the back of the card. Of those, you get two TB4 ports that are used to break out to all of your Thunderbolt devices (TB3 or TB4). You can daisy up to three TB4 devices to a single port, or up to five TB3 devices.
The other two ports are DisplayPorts, but these are inputs. Basically, this allows you to adapt any DisplayPorts from your graphics card to USB-C/TB monitors, passing the DP signal through the TB4 ports. So DP 1 port is for passing DP signal/connectivity to the 1st TB port, and DP 2 port is for the second TB port. If you do this, you can include a TB or USB-C supported monitor within your daisy chain.
If you do make use of such monitors, TB models should be able to exist anywhere in the chain (assuming they themselves have an throughput to daisy to the next device). If the monitor is USB-C, then make sure it is at the end of the daisy chain as the USB-C device (in this case, a monitor) can’t pass TB connectivity to the next device.
Performance
Test system: MSI MPG Z690 Edge WIFI DDR4 Motherboard running Windows 10
We have connected a number of Thunderbolt 3 and Thunderbolt 4 accessories to this card. Including hubs with plenty of ports. We attached OWC’s 4-port TB4 Hub (which extends a port to multiple ports) to one of the outputs and then ran a multi-port TB4 dock from that. We then loaded the other ports of the hub and dock with multiple USB devices, and other accessories (ie, SD card, headphones, etc). All of which worked exactly as they should.
Other docks we tested included Hyper’s HyperDrive USB4 Mobile Dock, a Kensington Thunderbolt 3 4K Dock, OWC’s Thunderbolt 3 14-Port Dock, and more.
We tested it against various external TB4 SSD models, and Samsung’s C34J791 TB3 34-inch ultra-wide QHD monitor (which can also daisy chain and looks to be on sale right now!).
Everything we threw at it, simply worked. We also noticed that we didn’t have a single TB4 monitor on-site, which was surprising. We turned the place upside down looking for one, but that test will have to happen at another time. For now though, the fact that nothing gave us problems showed that we had a formidable expansion card (which is probably why MSI refers to this card as being part of its “Pro Series” of devices.
Update: Bugs
Nobody likes bugs, but sometimes they are inevitable. This may also have something to do with why it has taken so long to reach the market. It isn’t a show-stopper, but worth pointing out. Ever since installing the card, we have noticed phantom USB disconnect sounds within Windows. Sometimes it is completely at random while sometimes oddly timed to shaking the mouse and waking up the monitors connected to the PC that it is installed in. Nothing is disconnected though.
In fact, nothing changes. Everything in the chain is perfectly connected and usable. The TB4 hub, the dock, and all accessories currently within its configuration are all working without interruptions. However, Windows still suffers the random disconnect sound effect from time to time.
We even ran a USB logger that catches all USB events (connects, disconnects, errors, etc). Everytime the log doesn’t show a single thing happening. So it’s hard to say for sure what the cause is, outside of pointing out that this didn’t begin to happen until the card was installed. Again, not a show-stopper as everything is working fine. It is simply something that catches you off guard as you first thought is “wait, what just disconnected?”
Our Conclusion
It works! It works great with everything we threw at it and should make a lot of MSI built owners happy (at least, those who have gone without TB4 access all this time and have the 16-pin header on their board). This is an incredibly powerful TB4 card and should serve the needs of most users looking for TB4 support in their (MSI) system.
It is also only $69.99 (MSRP), which makes this quite reasonable for an upgrade. Sadly, many of the Z690 DDR4 boards were already incredibly expensive for not having native support. So it is still a bit of a blow below the belt to have to spend an additional $69.99 to get TB back into your system (since TB support has been around for quite some time now). So a mix between how long it took MSI to get into the game with this card and that it can “only” be purchased directly from MSI, did bring the score down a little.
Also, the disconnect sounds that Windows plays despite no activity in the logs and no devices actually disconnected, is a bit odd. It doesn’t stop a single thing from working. Just odd. Odd enough to bring the score down some more as it feels like something is broken despite everything working just fine (from what we can tell, at least).
Now, hopefully, the company extends inventory to retailers so that we can trust that it will stick around longer than the TB3 card did.
Additional Images:
Specifications:
- Part #: MS-4463v3.0
- Model: THUNDERBOLTM4 8K
- Interface Type: PCIe 3.0 x4
- Compatibility: Intel 500/600/700 series motherboard with JTBT+JUSB header
- Dimensions: 6.1″ x 5.8″ x 7.2″
- Weight: 0.29 lbs
- Connectivity:
- 2 x Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C) ports (output)
- 2 x DisplayPort input ports
- Internal Connectivity (PC must support this)
- 1 x 16-pin TBT header (MSI exclusive)
- 1 x USB 2.0 header
- Compatibility
- Support up to 40Gbps transfer rate with Thunderbolt devices
- Support up to 20Gbps transfer rate with USB4 devices
- Support up to 10Gbps transfer rate with USB 3.2 devices
- Support up to 5V/3A , 15W power charging
- Each port can daisy-chain up to three Thunderbolt 4 devices or five Thunderbolt 3 devices
- Support for up to 8K display (need to connect the DisplayPort of the motherboard or discrete graphics card to the DisplayPort Input port on the ThunderboltM4 8K card)
Are you a manufacturer or distributor that would like us to test something out for review? Contact us and we can let you know where to send the product and we will try it out.
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15 Comments
Does the M4 support ethernet from a TB4 dock?
I’ve been trying for months to get my m4 to work. There is no help from MSI.
Everything looks installed properly but it simply isn’t working in windows 10.
The sad part is I have an MSI gaming desktop MS-7D09
You would think it works straight out of the box, but I got nothing
Just found this review. I installed this card and a couple of interesting things for folks that are trying to get it to work. This card needs an X4 slot of which only one of the slots on the MSI Pro Z690-A will work. I put it in one of the X1 slots and had it sort of work to the degree that I was thinking it was a driver issue but once I re-read the insert instructions that came with it and looked at the Z690-A manual, I realized my mistake. Putting it in the X4 slot solved all the problems. Other issue is that MSI has no driver download for this.
Hello Ed. This is true and we point this out in the review. It does indeed require a 4x slot or larger in order to function. It is a driverless install (this isn’t mentioned), but driver updates could always release in the future. They just wouldn’t come from MSI likely as it is using Intel drivers that Windows 10+ is already capable of finding (or already has) once you boot the system with the card installed. No user involvement is needed initially, while future updates will likely appear via Windows Update.
Would this card work to send signal from 1 thunderbolt port to a thunderbolt hub and then send a signal to two monitors or does it have to use both ports for multiple monitors?
so, it’s a no-go for an AMD 5600g with B550 chipset?
Yep! Only Intel boards for whatever reason MSI dropped the ball this time.
Actually, it isn’t the only one. I believe it is the ASUS TB4 card that is also Intel only. The Gigabyte TB4 card may also suffer the same (we haven’t tested that card). It would make since as they all likely use the same TB4 Intel chipset, so there may be driver issues with AMD boards.
I just got mine and I can’t get it working to save my life. Everything’s plugged in, the BIOS is configured, but nothing is detected. Sometimes it shows up in device manager, sometimes it doesn’t, when it does it’ll usually throw an error within 30 minutes, and thunderbolt control center can see and the dock plugged into it but refuses to connect to it.
That is unfortunate. We didn’t run into any issues and now we have tried it on two different machines already with two different cards. I’d say that your best bet would be to troubleshoot the obvious stuff first. Make sure it is in a PCIe 3.0 (or newer) slot that is at least 4x or larger. We used 8x or 16x slots since that was what we had to pick from. Then check both ends of each of the two cables to make sure the connections are solid. Double-check bios settings (just to be sure). Then make sure you’re using the latest version of the control center software. If it does show up in device manager, try looking for any driver updates from there.
I know it’s annoying to go through the obvious troubleshooting, but sometimes it really does help. If not, the worst-case scenario is that you have a bad card and may have to swap it out with MSI for a new one.
Best of luck!
Does your system based on AMD processor? Official site says it only supports Intel 500/600/700 series motherboards
Too late. I went with AMD because of this.
Unfortunately, being late to the market with such a thing would have likely pressured many of those customers to other models or brands already. If you need TB, you need TB. If a company isn’t delivering on time, it’s sometimes best to move on. If a customer is willing to wait a year for features like this, they must not have needed it that badly.
I would be interested to know why TB wasn’t included with the DDR4 Alder Lake models. What was the company’s strategy for this? Either it was placing pressure on customers to adopt DDR5, or it was a mere attempt to gain a little extra profit. The system I am typing on now is a 2016 model and it has DDR4 and TB. So it does feel a bit odd that they would do this.
This is why I skipped Alder Lake altogether as it just wasn’t worth the investment in my eyes and I still have plenty of well-performing DDR4 at my disposal. I read every tech doc/spec/manual that I could find involving the Alder Lake series and I couldn’t find any mention of limitations when paired with DDR4 vs DDR5. So this does feel like manufacturer’s choice (a “strategy” of some kind).
It’s about damn time.
No single word in the article that this is supporting only Intel 500/600/700 series motherboards. Shame!