[The X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 is the first AMD-based board to receive Intel's official certification for Thunderbolt host connectivity. [Like many other AMD motherboards, ASRock's X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 comes with Thunderbolt 3 ports. However, none of the other motherboards are Thunderbolt certified. Intel has been stingy with the Thunderbolt protocol and, until recently, has been unenthusiastic about vendors offering their own Thunderbolt hardware.

According to our friends at Tom's Hardware, Intel has decided to stop being stingy with the Thunderbolt protocol in 2019 and let the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF) oversee the latest specification. This was part of an effort to expand the availability of Thunderbolt 3.

Since then, vendors have been free to produce their own Thunderbolt controllers.

"Thunderbolt 3 technology, a key feature of this motherboard, allows for lightning-fast data bandwidth of up to 40 Gbps and can also provide both data and video transfers. Meanwhile, the X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX/TB3 can daisy chain up to six Thunderbolt 3 devices such as graphics cards, hard drives, or monitors simultaneously," ASRock said.

Thunderbolt 3 works with USB Type-C ports, and its 40 Gbps bandwidth is double that of the fastest USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 standard (20 Gbps). This bidirectional standard also allows up to six devices to be daisy-chained together.

An interesting aside on this standard is the upcoming USB4 (no space, not sure why) standard: Intel has made the Thunderbolt specification royalty-free, and the USB-IF has officially injected it into USB4 so that all USB4 devices and ports now support Thunderbolt devices.