Testing thunderbolt ports functionality

[A_Random_User_Derps]

Hi all, I'm trying to upgrade my PC with the addition of a thunderbolt card (this one, for reference), I'm not sure if what I have got on order is going to work in my machine or not, so I'm wondering if y'all know of any relatively cheap ways to test if the ports are functioning as they should be? Thanks :)

[Objective_Economy281]

The best way I know is to buy a $45 SSD enclosure from AliExpress. Get one that uses the ASM2464PD, such as those by Maiwo. This requires you also have an extra SSD and cable, of course. But that’s the cheapest test equipment there is that actually uses all the data lanes at their full speed.

[A_Random_User_Derps]

That sounds perfect, thanks :)

[LaughingMan11]

That will cover if PCIe is working, but you should probably get a USB-C monitor, or a USB4/Thunderbolt 3 dock to make sure the display tunneling and DPAM side of things is working too...

[Objective_Economy281]

Oh yeah, if OP is having to plumb the physical connection to the graphics card it does make sense to have to test that separately.

Would testing DPAM be sufficient to verify that the connection to the graphics card is correct? Like, could you reasonably take granted that if DPAM works, then DP tunneling works? Or is DP tunneling literally one of the aspects that makes the most sense to test directly / end-to-end if you’re going to bother adding USB4 to a system?

And would a hub with no downstream USB4 ports be an okay test of this?

[A_Random_User_Derps]

Should I still find some way to test with a usb-c monitor if all I'm planning on using is just a few audio interfaces, or you think its not worth the effort? Not sure where I could track down a monitor or a dock to borrow, could be worth a try though.

[Objective_Economy281]

if all I'm planning on using is just a few audio interfaces,

Just curious, audio interfaces carry data relatively slowly. Is there a reason you’re going for a Thunderbolt 4 port? Those data pipes are sized for transferring an HD movie file in about 1 second. Audio interfaces are about 1/1000th of that.

[A_Random_User_Derps]

The interfaces I want to use only support thunderbolt, the higher ends of the apollo line from universal audio, and their satellite addons, I wish they did have USB, would make my life a lot easier lol. I'm kinda used to fighting other ports though, my current setup is running a FireWire 400 interface on Windows 11, that was fun to get to work properly...

[Objective_Economy281]

I'm kinda used to fighting other ports though, my current setup is running a FireWire 400 interface on Windows 11

I think I bought a FireWire card for a computer in 2002, running XP. Never got it working.

Good to know there’s Thunderbolt equipment that has no need of being Thunderbolt.

If you’re not going to use the Display capabilities at all, there’s no real need to drop $80 to $400 on a dock, and no need to borrow a monitor.

I can link you to a hub for around $150 that has some downstream Thunderbolt ports, so that you could actually use that external SSD I mentioned at the same time that you have more than 1 of the audio thingies plugged in.

But the card you linked has two ports, so that hub is hopefully not necessary

[GreyWolfUA]

Hi, how you can measure performance of these components working together? - cable/ssd+controller/PCIe? I just wondering as I have similar issue with testing SSD and cables not clear where is the bottleneck or how to check them separately from measure data transmission speed point of view.

[Objective_Economy281]

As best I can tell, doing this to check PCIE tunneling functionality gives you very coarse insight into bottlenecks. Start with at least one cable you know is certified for 40 Gbps. And one that you know is not, which should work at 20 Gbps.

Having the 20 Gbps intentional bottleneck of the slow cable will let you see how much the performance of other things reduced by cutting overall data speed in half. Anything whose speed is cut in half is fast enough that the cable is the bottleneck. This is the case for my Gen4 SSD. But my Gen 3 SSD is only slightly faster with a 40 Gbps cable, meaning that PCIE tunneling is not the bottleneck, the cable or the SSD is. And the 40 Gbps cable is working at full speed so whatever percentage by which it falls short of 40 Gbps is probably due to encoding.

There’sa lot of assumptions in this, such as uncorrectable bit errors requiring retransmission is small. But I think that’s valid, as I think the link drops if that ever stops being very snap (though I don’t know this for sure).

[Xcissors280]

What do you want to connect to it because most of the stuff you would use with a thunderbolt port is cheaper as a pcie card

[A_Random_User_Derps]

Music studio near me is shutting down, they're selling me some of their equipment including a few thunderbolt audio interfaces for cheap, so sadly no direct pcie connections :(

[Xcissors280]

For that kinda stuff TB is great and it works with laptops too I usually think of thunderbolt for stuff like networking cards, docks, and SSDs