ThunderboltEx4 NVM31 downgrade tool

[Pacecar]

Hi there - Asus recently had a tool that would allow the downgrade of firmware on their ThunderboldEx4 card from NVM36 to NVM31 to support Thunderbolt 2 devices, however the tool is no longer available. Would anyone kindly have a link to the tool?

Thank you!

[johnpaul134]

I had the same issue with my core i9 system with Asus rog formula motherboard with my thunderbolt 2 universal audio apollo 8.  @Jiaszzz_ASUS sent me the firmware downgrade program for my specific motherboard and that fixed my issue.  One thing also to note is that you may need to unplug computer from wall/power to get changes to be reflected/thunderbolt to be initialized.  

[Audioeng80]

So you were able to get the latest BIOS with Intel 2503 microcode while keeping Thunderbolt2 compatibility?

[johnpaul134]

Yep—I am on newest bios. The firmware downgrade doesn’t care about the bios version. I had the same concern too but all is working well for me. Also, you may need to boot you audio interface up before your computer

[Audioeng80]

Hey John, 

Not the case here. I've tried the NVM31 downgrade after updating to bios 2503 and it didn't work. First time it completed as if it worked, then it messed up my TB2 compatibility. Then I tried again and i got a "controller not found" error within the shell.efi downgrade tool procedure. Then I had to rollback to an older bios (2305 I think) then I was able to downgrade to NVM31 and I just left it alone. 

Seems the ideal solution would be for ASUS to just provide a bios update derivative from the 2503, just with NVM31 TB firmware, something like that. Instead, it seems many of us are jumping thru hoops with this issue, either leaving our chips vulnerable to degradation or having downtime due to TB2/TB3 incompatibility. 

I was even thinking on finding an Alpine/Titan ridge PCI TB card with the proper firmware and install it on my Z790 ProArt but they are so scarce and costly right now...Anyway, let's see what the ASUS guys say!

[johnpaul134]

Yeah I had issues finding the thunderbolt controller but I had to unplug my computer from power for it to initialize.  Reboot wasn't enough.  I would try that and make sure you see the thunderbolt controller active in device manager