Intel presented the standard last year Thunderbolt 5the company’s connectivity solution with greater bandwidth than its predecessor and that allows you to connect monitors, storage units, among others. This new standard is available on some latest generation boards, however, it is not necessary to update the computer’s motherboard to be able to use it if ours is not compatible.
The main plate manufacturers are launching onto the market PCIe cards that add support for Thunderbolt 5 in models where it is not available, with ASUS being the latest to join the party with the ThunderboltEX 5 card.
Add support for Thunderbolt 5 with the new ASUS PCIe card
If you have a board from ASUS or any other manufacturer that does not have support for Thunderbolt 5, adding it is as simple as buying the new card Thunderbolt EX 5 from this manufacturer, a card that has everything you need to get the most out of this standard.
This model has a unique PCIe power connector 6 pin. Inside is the controller Intel JHL9580. It offers support for USB-PD up to 130W compatible with fast charging and a single USB-C port is capable of offering up to 96W output, more than enough to charge practically any laptop on the market.
Thanks to the Thunderbolt standard, we can connect up to 3 monitors based on DisplayPort 2.1 with 8K resolution to this card with a maximum frequency of up to 60 Hz using Display Stream Compression technology. We can also connect up to 3 monitors with 4K resolution at 144 Hz and is even compatible with monitors larger than 500 Hz refresh rate.
Regarding the number of ports, this new ASUS card includes two USB-C ports compatible with fast charging up to 130W. Also includes 3 mini DisplayPort ports. Included in the box are 3 DisplayPort to mini DisplayPort adapters, so there’s no need to compare it independently. Allows you to connect up to 5 devices in chainoffers a bidirectional bandwidth of up to 120Gbps for data transfers and video outputs.
As for compatibility, as with Wi-Fi 7, Thunderbolt 5 It is only compatible with Windows 11so your team is managed by Windows 10you can forget to use this or any other similar card, since there are no drivers for Windows 10, the version of Windows that, starting in October 2025, will no longer receive support in the form of updates from Microsoft, as long as we do not pay for extended support.
At the moment, ASUS has not announced when it will be available on the market or what its starting price will be.
Gigabyte also has a Thunderbolt 5 PCIe card
As we mentioned above, ASUS is not the only manufacturer that has launched this type of cards on the market. A few days ago, the board manufacturer Gigabyte presented the Thunderbolt 5 AIC, a model very similar in performance, but with a lower output power to charge external devices and which is limited to 100W, due to the 130W of fast charging offered by the ASUS solution.
