HP Thunderbolt 3 PCIe 2-port I/O Card

[Robertgmcr]

Is the HP Thunderbolt 3 PCIe 2-port I/O Card compatible with Z640 Workstation?

This is why I'm asking, I own a dual proccessor Z640 Workstation, with an HP Nvidia M4000, 128 GB DDR4 Ram, and HP TB2 I/O Card, connected to this card there are 2 Rockstor Raid 0 Arrays, one of them with 4 x 2 TB HDD, the other loaded with 4x500GB Seagate Barracuda SSD, and both of the array's deliver almost the same speed 570 MB/s Read- 670 MB/s Write, I don't know why? Should them perform better with the  HP Thunderbolt 3 PCIe 2-port I/O Card?

[soccer_dan]

The TB 3 pci-e card is not on the supported list for the z640... it may work but hasn't gone the full testing scenario for the platform

[DGroves]

it should work, from what i have found out the card itself is a refrerence intel "Alpine Ridge" based card  what i'm not sure about is if you can get the cable (or pinouts) to make your own cable that connects the card header to the motherboard

each motherboard maker seems to do their own flavor of the interface cable because the header on the MB is diffrent between the board makers

you can use the HP driver or the reference  intel TBolt driver (pick the one with alpine ridge chip suppoet)

[forgottenrebel]

No it won’t work . HP was working on this for last few  years. They did have a working solution that used other connections for the  headers on the HP mobos for both the Zx20s and Zx40s series but then it all went silent just as Asus and others came out with working solutions. Never heard from HP guys on this TB3 solution any further .  My guess is HP had the new G4 Zs on the books coming and just decided to drop making the TB3 cards that were  backwards compatible and redesign a new one for going forward only.

After all HP only gets money if you see a reason to upgrade to the newer G4 Zs! 

[DGroves]

well i have a HP z820 with the HP TBolt 2 card and cable, and i have also used other makers TBolt cards without issue using the intel stock thunderbolt drivers

the only thing that prevents other venders cards from working with the HP card (which ia bog standard intel TBolt 2 card)

is that each card vender uses their own dam interface cable to connect the card to the motherboard!!! and the z820 is further unique in that the TBolt card must use the slot HP says to put it in, or else it will not work since only that slot has the nessary TBolt signals routed to it this was a semi hack as adding tbolt to the z820 came along late in the motherboard design cycle

later hp workstations can use any slot, and have a specific TBolt header on the motherboard instead of the z820's hacked USB 2.0 type headers  that were repurposed for TBolt usage

I also have a ASUS x99 board and have used the TBolt 3 cards from ASUS  and GigaByte with the stock Intel TBolt driver

again, all i had to do was make sure the signals from the cards header (which were the same on both cards) matched the ASUS motherboard, TBolt header,.. simply using the ASUS supplied cable instead of the gigabyte one was all that was required

i also have a 

[forgottenrebel]

Yep It’s very easy to get TB2 working on most existing Z boxes now of course but TB3 has been a terribly long painful process and it’s a different animal completely . Still to rare in real world given all the advantages it provides users.  Really wish they could have made all TB3 downwards compatible for use as type-c gen2 connections as well. This would have defnetly helped adapt and sell it.  Sure would be great to hear if someone out there finds a way to get this new HP TB3 cards working on older Z machines as It may just be needing a different physical connector again this time round. Personally I’ve been waiting for this card before I buy any new Z box.  Drag to have this card in a brand new G4 Z8 but can’t use same TB3 drive to plug into any of my other HP Z machines. 

Seems all new I/O standards are botched across the board by every company these days.  Type-c gen2 is doing terrible as well. To much licensing and lawyers to get anything done anymore. 

[DGroves]

thunderbolt on the zx40 and newer systems is much easer to get working than the zx20 series as support for it it was designed from the begining when they designed the motherboards

i also wondered why i had to buy a TBolt 2 to TBolt 3 adapter to get my  TBolt 2 devices to work under the TBolt 3  cards

with that said, the speed and bandwith tbolt 3 offers is amazing!!! no other interface matches it speed wise for multiple device usage,.... usb "C " 3.1 can also do TBolt but as you mentioned the USB "C"  specs is still in flux so it's sorta a crapshoot if device A will work with B when device C is active

[IT_Enthusiast36]

I currently have the Z240 with TB2 card installed, but would like to upgrade to the newer Z2 G4 which I have on-hand. I do not see the appropriate header for the interface cable on the Z2 motherboard. Do you know of a workaround for this?

[soccer_dan]

for the new Z2 G4 Mini, HP has made the 3rd video port flexible so users can adapt it to different needs. this port can be configured at the factory or a module can be purchased and added to, or can replace an existing module... Thunderbolt 3 is one of the options