Desktop motherboards are quietly abandoning the one port that does everything
Every modern motherboard has a USB-C port that might be more exciting than it looks at a glance. (Hard to tell from the get-go, though, as USB-C ports are downright confusing.) Depending on the board, that USB-C port might move data at 20Gbps or 80Gbps, drive an 8K monitor or drive nothing at all, and charge a laptop or barely charge anything. The port shape is the same in all of those cases, which is the whole problem.
Thunderbolt 5 arrived on desktops later than it did on laptops, in fewer places, and with a quirk that catches out even people who build PCs for a living. If you’ve ever plugged a monitor into your mobo’s Type-C port and gotten a black screen, this is why.
Thunderbolt 5 is USB4 Version 2.0 with the optional parts made mandatory
The same thing, except it’s not at all the same
It’s impossible to discuss Thunderbolt 5 without discussing USB4, so let’s get that conversation out of the way first.
TB5 and USB4 Version 2.0 are built on the same foundation. Both top out at 80Gbps running in both directions at once, and both can rearrange that into 120Gbps out and 40Gbps back when a display needs extra room. Both are top-of-the-line tech, and judging by those leading specs, it’s easy to treat them as the same thing. More importantly, USB4 isn’t uncommon in modern desktops, so what am I really whining about here?
There’s a catch, that’s what.
The catch is that USB4 Version 2.0 treats its best features as optional, which is what makes it essentially less useful than Thunderbolt 5 … at least at a glance. PCIe tunneling and the full 80Gbps are things a manufacturer can, but doesn’t have to, implement. Without actually testing your ports, you’ll never know what it really is, which is an annoyance. Sure, those things show up on mobo spec sheets, but I don’t know many people who buy a PC specifically because of a USB specification.
Thunderbolt 5, on the other hand, takes that same specification and makes the good parts mandatory instead of optional. PCIe Gen 4 support is required, setting aside up to 64Gbps purely for data, and the power floor climbs from USB4’s 7.5W to 140W. Unsurprisingly, that’s pretty major. It’s the difference between charging an actual laptop and praying that your earbuds will get enough to last for 30 minutes.
Unfortunately, TB5 ports are not at all the norm on desktops. Thunderbolt ports in general simply aren’t.
Desktop platforms got Thunderbolt 5 last
And mostly on halo motherboards
Intel’s 200S chips on the LGA 1851 socket come with Thunderbolt controllers baked right into the CPU package. That sounds promising, but only until you notice it’s TB4, not TB5.
Thunderbolt 5 did reach desktops for the first time with Z890 motherboards, but only because a few board makers chose to add a separate controller chip themselves, and that decision happens exclusively at the top of the stack. The Asus ROG Maximus Z890 Extreme has a pair of TB5 ports on the back, but the cheaper Z890 (minus the extreme-ness) does not. Meanwhile, the variant with the TB5 ports sells for $849, and that’s when it’s on sale.
Laptops got there first because the port is the only expansion a laptop has, so manufacturers treat it as a headline feature worth paying for, while desktop board makers can point at the PCIe slots inside your case and call it a day. The bottom line is, unless you spend big big money, you’re not seeing the latest TB5 standard on your desktop PC. USB4, you might, but it’s hard to know what you’re dealing with exactly.
A USB-C port can hide how much your desktop is missing
The connector is doing a lot of impersonation
USB-C is one big mystery. Everything fits, but nothing about the physical port tells you which tier you’re dealing with. A Thunderbolt port usually earns a small lightning bolt next to it, and a USB4 port sometimes gets a label and sometimes gets nothing at all. Love that for us.
My own board has two Type-C ports, and I can barely remember which is which on a good day.
With that said, the good and the bad thing about Type-C ports is that nothing really fails when you plug stuff into the wrong port. Connect a Thunderbolt 5 dock to a 40Gbps USB4 port and it’ll power up, pass through your peripherals, and get on with its day, just with much less bandwidth to share and a lower display ceiling than you paid for. You may not find out the port isn’t what you expected until you start digging.
Desktop users have more to gain from Thunderbolt than they realize
Internal expansion can’t cover every base
The obvious objection to all of my ranting is that a desktop doesn’t need Thunderbolt, because a desktop has slots. That’s fair, and I’d argue it outright for a couple of cases.
External GPU enclosures are close to pointless on a machine with a spare x16 slot, and an internal NVMe drive will always beat an external one on thermals and performance (not so much cost these days, thanks RAM-pocalypse).
Slots can’t help you with anything that has to leave the case, though. Pro audio interfaces still frequently list Thunderbolt certification as a hard requirement, and no amount of PCIe lanes inside your PC changes that. The same goes for portable NVMe enclosures, capture hardware, and DAS boxes you move between machines.
Adding Thunderbolt 5 later is harder than installing almost any other PCIe card
The spare slot is only the beginning
So, let’s say you’re on a desktop, and you’re desperate to have Thunderbolt 5. An add-in card is your only option if you don’t already have one built in, but there’s a catch (as per usual).
The Asus ThunderboltEX 5 needs a free PCIe 4.0 x4 slot, a 6-pin connector from your PSU, and, critically, a dedicated Thunderbolt header on the motherboard itself, which disqualifies a lot of mobos. It’s not something you can buy on a whim and hope for the best.
Even when everything lines up, you may lose an M.2 slot or a few SATA ports to lane sharing, so it’s worth checking your manual’s lane table before you spend the money.
Thunderbolt is a decision you make before you build the PC
None of this mess makes USB4 ports bad, it just makes them difficult to predict at a glance. They may be just as good as TB5, or they may not be. If Thunderbolt was more common in desktops, we wouldn’t have to deal with this entire guessing game, but sadly, it’s not at all common, and I can’t see that changing anytime soon.
8/10
- Ports
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Thunderbolt, USB-C, USB-A, HDMI 2.1, DP 2.1, LAN
Anker’s Thunderbolt 5 dock gives you 14 ports, fast charging, and support for TB4 and USB4.
