Back in late February 2020, we heard that there a solution has been found, which enables MacPro Cheese-grater owners to install a Titan Ridge Thunderbolt 3 card into a Mac Pro 5,1 and to be able to use Thunderbolt 3 in macOS. It is turning out to be a challenge to implement, but we continue to update this article as new information becomes available.

You may recall we posted an article back in March 2019 entitled Mac Pro 5,1 Cheese-grater With Thunderbolt - The Impossible Is Now Possible in which we showed, with the help of Create Pro that it was possible to use a Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Thunderbolt Card with the caveat that you had to boot the Mac Pro into Windows 10 to load the Windows drivers before rebooting in the macOS to continue working.

Create Pro then discovered a conversation on a German Hackintosh forum discussing a custom firmware one member, DSM2, had created allowing for native compatibility for the Titan Ridge card in macOS.

There is also a thread on the Mac Rumours forum, which is in English. It turns out that DSM2 wasn’t prepared to lose his intellectual property by just selling modified Titan Ridge card, he would only sell them if you signed an NDA agreeing not to share the firmware he had developed to make this work. Create Pro asked for DSM2 for comment about his cards…

“Well, not everyone can have the same level of technical knowledge. It’s not just installing a card and everything runs without you having to do anything. On the old Apple computers the EFI was a pure disaster. So that this disaster can be avoided, we make use of OpenCore.

a) because it fixes the problem regarding EFI
b) improves our system in the long run and allows to install newer versions without any additional patches
c) also allows us to inject SSDTs into the system, which is what we need in terms of Thunderbolt hot plug.
Need because the MacPro 5.1 was never designed for Thunderbolt.

If you have twenty people to support, that’s a lot of work, but what if you have 30 or 40 people or even more?

We can’t keep giving support, we all have wives, kids, work. Neither my team nor I can run it permanently.

There will be a How To Guide but still there will be people who will have questions and we cannot just take care of everything.

There are no more cards under NDA available.”

Then according to one of his customers on the Mac Rumours thread, DSM2 had refunded their money for a Gigabyte card…

“He just sent me a refund telling me that he was contacted by gigabytes lawyers.”

This looks as though DSM2 has received a ‘cease and desist notice’ and so chose to refund people as he was no longer in a position to deliver Gigabyte cards with his updated firmware.

Then followed a section of the thread on the Mac Rumours forum, which ended up in DSM2 posting the code required to make this all work. DSM2 also included a link to another thread on the Mac Rumours forum which explains how to install the OpenCore software, which is needed to make this work. DSM2 also said…

“Firmware for the Titan Ridge based on NVM23. OpenCore EFI attached for the MacPro5,1 with an SSDT (created by my Friend @apfelnico) for Slot 4. Install the Thunderbolt Card in Slot 4 and have Thunderbolt with hotplug from cold boot on. Everything you need you will find in the files attached.”

Not For The Faint-Hearted!

We have taken a look at this and this is seriously messing with the computer and the macOS. The second thread on the Mac Rumours forum has a number of warnings “that this may turn your computer into a brick, don’t attempt unless you know what you are doing”.

So although DSM2 appears to have released the keys to unlocking Thunderbolt 3 on older Mac Pro computers, the path to get to it is not an easy one to take.

Note that we have not tested the download links in the Mac Rumours thread. Proceed with caution and AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Light At The End Of The Tunnel?

But there may be light at the end of the tunnel. Create Pro have said in their article that…

“We have purchased a Titan Ridge card and will follow up with a how-to guide next week.”

Then in a response to a comment on their article George from Create Pro said…

“Hi Matt, don’t worry, we will provide a video and written guide explaining every step! Fingers crossed the card turns up today.”

Create Pro has posted an update on their Facebook page….

The full text says…

“An update to the Titan Ridge card: Firmware loaded no problem and we've installed the OpenCore EFI & Thunderbolt Card Drivers.

We can confirm that we have external storage working as well as display passthrough. We've had a Lacie drive and LG Ultrafine display running together.

There are some slight kinks we're currently looking into, nothing major we just need to find the correct configuration needed to ensure consistency.

We've ordered a Thunderbolt 3 SSD enclosure so we can provide test speeds of the connection.

We anticipate 1,500MB/s to be the maximum as that is the internal maximum. Once we have this all together we will provide a video and written guide explaining every step required.”

UPDATE: Added On May 24th 2020

It would appear that the Create Pro route has gone cold and Create Pro still have not replied to my enquires on their Facebook page. However, ‘Mattia Happybottoms Feliciani’ replied to our query with a link to a GitHub page where ‘ameyrupji’ (who we suspect is the same person) has posted his experiences and a full walkthrough including how to flash the chips yourself. He rightly adds a disclaimer…

“Try this at your own risk. I do not guaranty that this will work for you but I hope it does. This is purely for educational purposes and I am not responsible for any void in warranty. This is not an end all be all guide for getting the GC-Titan Ridge thunderbolt card working for every use case. These steps have worked for me but there might be additional steps that might be required for getting other thunderbolt devices to work. Please follow the links mentioned in the Useful Links section below for more update to date information about the community postings on this topic.”

He also lists what you need to get…

• Obviously a Mac Pro and a Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card

• EEPROM Flash Bios USB Programmer

• Custom firmware for the Gigabyte GC-Titan Ridge Card v2.0

UPDATE: Added On June 25th 2020

We have had an update from Create Pro who say…

“It’s been a while since our last update however a lot has been going on with the development of the customer firmware however it’s not all good news but progress is being made. We’ve been keeping in touch with the original developer who created the TITA Ridge Thunderbolt 3 EFI and DSM2 has provided us with an update to where he is at.”

The developer DSM2 goes on to say…

“The advantages of using the Custom Firmware are mainly features that are only known from the Apple Thunderbolt firmware like : Ethernet over Thunderbolt, Target Disk Mode, Target Display Mode, correct initialization of the Thunderbolt devices.
For example devices that do not work without custom firmware like Antelope Interfaces, Drobo Raids, Slate Digital Audio Interfaces and many more.
Basically this works perfectly on the Hackintosh if you flash the firmware and make the correct modifications regarding the UUID and the ACPI Paths. The MacPro4,1/5,1 is still problematic.
It still fails during initialization, so unfortunately massive problems still occur. We are now at the 5 firmware version, which is not publicly available, there is still a lot to do and currently I can’t say if we will ever get it right on the cheese grater… Problems are related to EFI…”

Reading this from DSM2, it is interesting that he has chosen to highlight Antelope Audio and Slate Digital interfaces as devices that are still causing problems and for this to be a complete solution you need to be able to plug any Thunderbolt devices into it.

Create Pro has seen some conversations in forums and communities of success stories with their own card and you may be able to get the result you want from the current version but it’s important to know that it may not work and this Mac Pro modification is very much experimental.

As we learn more we will keep you updated and announce when new public versions are ready for release.

Not For Everyone

As we said at the outset, this is not one for the non-technical amongst us. The current solution requires the user to programme and flash some of the chips on the card but it is possible. It is a shame that Create Pro are not been in a position to be able to sell ready-flashed cards, in a similar way that can happen with GPUs. All of which means this route is still very much a DIY solution, only to be contemplated by those you consider they are sufficiently technically proficient to undertake the required tasks.

Will This Help You?

Even though the Mac Pro 5,1 cheese-graters are getting long in the tooth, would being able to have Thunderbolt 3 working natively mean that you would consider going this route, especially with an easy to follow set of instructions from Create Pro to give your cheese-grater another lease of life?

Please share your thoughts in the comments below…