is there any form of adapter to add a thunderbolt 3 port to a PC?

Does your motherboard have a PCIe 3.0 x4 slot needed by the Thunderbolt 3 add-in card?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Order=BESTMATCH&Description=ASUS+ThunderboltEX+II+Expansion+Card+&N=-1&isNodeId=1It only needs a 2.0 x4 slot.

I missed the 3.

Thunderbolt 3 will be fun, there are quite a few offers Thunderbolt 3
Lacie, DAtOptic. Akitio. Caldigit but a massive storage only 2 Lacie and DATOptic up to 96TB RAID 12x drives
http://www.datoptic.com/ec/jbod-raid-data-storage-solutions/thunderbolt-3.html
http://www.lacie.com/products/raid/12big-thunderbolt-3/

bump.

the ThunderboltEXes require an ASUS motherboard. Is there any vendor-neutral solution?

I bought a thunderbolt 3 ready MSI GT72S 6QE Guest what, I have yet to find an inexpensive solution to a 'USB-DOCK' and any decent products on sale yet. Plenty of cables and plenty of hipe and information on specification and bandwidth etc.
There is a website that is up to date on this technology and offers you the different components and keeps a record of all brands that have achieved the standard after tests. ie: 'Thunderbolt 3 compatible'.
https://thunderbolttechnology.net/blog/thunderbolt-3-usb-c-does-it-all

https://thunderbolttechnology.net/sites/all/themes/tb/images/Thunderbolt3_infographic_100715.jpg

This links are irrelevant to the query, however its an opportunity to see other products that will be at decent price and a great component technology to a high end system.

One catch but and that is why I made this comment.

The stringent tests and certificates that have to be obtained to have proper compatibility on all systems both MAC/Windows/Linux etc, its taken over a year since Intel released the thunderbolt series 3 controller and there is hardly anything on the market to buy.

I bought this USB-C Dock in march this year, the people have been good to me but they told me they would give me other treats if I hang off asking for my money back because they are still under testing stages for the certificate of compatibility.

This is the product in question and the company as far as I know has been into this tech for awhile.

http://caldigit.com/usb-3-1-usb-c-dock/

https://www.asus.com/us/Motherboard-Accessory/ThunderboltEX-3/ But I have no clue if it's good or not, haven't seen anyone use it.

It is certain Main board need to be compatible, or this will not work

I have looked extensively to try and find this out. I would like to add a Thunderbolt 3 card to my older PC also. I have determined, based on how the existing cards work, that Thunderbolt must be built into the chipset for an add on card to work. All the add-in cards that I have been able to find for Thunderbolt 2 and 3 require a cable to connect the card to a Thunderbolt header on the motherboard, that is in addition to the required PCIe slot. Nobody is stating it, but I think that it must be linked to the chipset somehow. I don't know why, but that seems to be the case. That is a HUGE limitation which is going to really slow down implementation. But I have not been able to find any information in the marketing material that actually states this. Not many people are going to buy a new motherboard just to get Thunderbolt.

That motherboard header requirement has more to do with license verification. It's not chipset related at all. I think it has to do with the motherboard's BIOS, since only certain motherboards are supported. The Thunderbolt license key would be stored in the motherboard's BIOS and used during the add-in card's authentication process during POST.

I can tell you that you are wrong with that assumption. This is both good and bad for reasons that I will explain.

I have an Asrock Thunderbolt 3 AIC - and at first I only had my Z270 Gaming-ITX/ac which is not Thunderbolt ready. Nothing I could do would make the Thunderbolt 3 AIC detectable. I assumed that what you said had some merit. But I bought the supported motherboard for experimental purposes (Z270M-Extreme4) and found that the card could work without the GPIO header attached at all, with all functionality, except for hotplugging PCIe devices. It could work with eGPU, provided it was attached before boot / power on. Even Thunderbolt networking worked perfectly to other computers without the header, even when hotplugged.

The reason I was hoping you were correct is that if it is only license verification, then in 2018 when they make it royalty free, they could fix the problem with firmware updates. But it appears it is actually a technical reason. The good thing is that the PCIe card can be detected by any system without the GPIO header, but is either ignored or somehow passed over.

Now, the fact that it worked so well without the header attached means that any motherboard can be updated to work to some extent with Thunderbolt 3. I asked vendors to allow for use of their AICs as plain USB 3.1 controllers (because most normal ones use PCIe x1 and are bottlenecked), and they said it could not be done. That is complete nonsense.

I believe that BIOS should fade out. Linux does not even take notice of ACPI (although interestingly Thunderbolt is not recognised by the kernel with ACPI=off kernel argument). Thunderbolt should be able to work with any computer, and it is clearly the BIOS that is holding it back.

I wonder if later, Intel will make a device to add the GPIO header via USB. I don't know if that will give low enough level access to the system, but actually if they stop using ACPI to enumerate the PCI bus (Kernel should do work), then it should not be an issue.

It is worth noting that in the release notes of the 17.2.71.250 the mention of "Added support for Windows* 10 RS3 Native PCIe Enumeration ('Native Express' mode) and Selective Suspend (RTD3) state". That is intriguing.

The last thing I wonder is putting a Thunderbolt AIC in an eGPU enclosure, and turning 1 port into 2 ports. I managed to get it detected in this scenario, but non-functional (firmware brick issue with the AIC).