ASUS launches its ThunderboltEX 3-TR Expansion card for Intel 10th Generation systems

With Comet Lake and their 400-series motherboard lineup, Intel wanted to push Thunderbolt 3 further into the limelight by allowing a wider range of motherboards to support the standard. This came in the form of direct integration into high-end Z490 and H470 motherboard models, or as an expansion option using a TB3 motherboard header. 

Thunderbolt 3 offers users up to 40Gbps of bandwidth and up to 100W of power, making the standard useful for charging devices, transferring data at high speeds, enable external PCIe connectivity to graphics cards, or to act as a high-bandwidth display cabling option. 

To meet the needs of users, ASUS has created their ThunderboltEX 3-TR expansion card, which allows users to add two Thunderbolt 3.0 ports to compatible motherboards. This card also offers DisplayPort Passthrough, which is a useful feature when using Thunderbolt displays.   

This add-on card uses Intel’s “Titan Ridge” JHL7540 2-port Thunderbolt 3 controller and requires a 6-pin PCIe power connection to function. This allows the card to offer connected devices up to 100W of USB Quick Charge power. 

On Amazon US, this controller is available for $89.99, making this an expensive add-on for most users. That said, nothing with Thunderbolt in the name comes cheap. There’s a reason why so many motherboards ship with TB3 internal headers and no Thunderbolt ports.  

With this expansion card, ASUS ships two mini DisplayPort to Displayport connectors, a USB 2.0 connection cable and TB3 connector. This is everything that users need to get this expansion card running on compatible hardware.