The 6 Best Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Cards
Special Honors
MSI ThunderboltM3 There are four major performance motherboard manufacturers, and MSI is one of them. If you have an MSI board with the appropriate headers but no actual Thunderbolt 3 ports, this is the only expansion card currently on the market that you'll be able to use to fix that. msi.com
Editor's Notes
November 20, 2020:
First of all, none of these will work if your motherboard doesn't have the proper connectors to enable Thunderbolt 3. Second, these may take at least a little BIOS tweaking to get working, or a lot if you're using them with a Mac, Hackintosh, or Linux setup. Third, these aren't just some of the best PCIe TB3 expansion cards out there right now, they're just about the only.
With that in mind, the Gigabyte Titan Ridge 2.0 is the best performing for its manufacturer's boards, and it even officially supports some high-end AMD mainboards. If you have an older chipset, the Gigabyte Alpine Ridge might be what you need. Luckily, it's significantly cheaper, although it does lack some key features such as 100-watt Power Delivery.
Similarly for Asus systems, the Asus ThunderboltEX 3-TR is the premium, no-holds-barred version that can drive multiple monitors at once. It doesn't have quite the same manufacturer approval for Ryzen chipsets, but there are some Ryzen boards that it works with - you'll just have to do a little more work to get it up and running. The Asus ThunderboltEX 3 Expansion is the less costly option here as well. The AsRock AIC R2.0, meanwhile, is the only one that's currently available for AsRock boards, although keep an eye on them, because they may release one in the coming months.
February 11, 2019:
Thunderbolt 3 is one of the most interesting up-and-coming connectivity protocols; its blistering top speed enables all kinds of fancy advancements, not least of which the plug-and-play use of high-powered, external GPUs. The current king of add-in cards is without a doubt the Titan Ridge; the nerdiest among us have even confirmed that it will work with some AMD chipsets, given enough tweaking. The Alpine ridge, its older model, is a reasonable choice if your motherboard has the right headers, and all you want it for is quick data transfer. It's also available at less than half the price of the leader. Sonnet's add-in board is designed to turn a TB2 system into a TB3 powerhouse, so keep in mind its somewhat limited compatibility. The Asus is a good mid-range choice, and provides decent charging abilities, while the AsRock may be the easiest to install, but it's been reported to not be quite as fast as the top choice.