UFX+ yes
UFX, UFX II no
UFX eventually via thunderbolt to firewire adapter, but then its firewire, not thunderbolt native.

Not sure whether you know this .. the mainboard needs to support thunderbolt as well !!!
You can't simply upgrade any mainboard by just plugging in a thunderbolt PCIe card.

I am not 100% sure whether a Thunderbolt to Firewire adapter can be used also for Windows.
Maybe browse the forum for that.
Which Windows version btw ?

Not enough PCIe slots ? Which board do you want to buy ? How many cards do you need to mount ?

You can also plug normal PCIe cards into -x4, -x8, -x16 sockets.

You only need to check manual whether it impacts the primary graphic card to switch to x8 or not.
Could be the case that the lower x16 socket maybe does not cause issues.

Why you need to install a network card ? You want 10Gb Ethernet ?

Alternatively you could implement a dLAN solution which I did at home.

Before my wife also used an 802.11ac card. Now she is very happy that we implemented
this dLAN solution as we could switch off wireless in the whole appartement.

The Devolo products are IMHO advanced, they offer a good performance, product line and
a nice Cockpit application which tells you the bandwidth to the different dLAN adapters and
allows you to patch and upgrade.

Drivers of WLAN adapters might have an impact on the latency of the CPU internally of your system.
I personally would prefer for a recording workstation to use ethernet based LAN.
Then you also would not have the issue that the number of PCIe slots shrinks so quickly.

I am using this starter kit to make the main connection between Internet Router and the 2nd PC, which is at the far end of the room to avoid long cabling:
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/dev … 50679.html

Then I am additionally using this older product as it offers 3 LAN connections which are fully sufficient for my home TV solution to get internet access and to stream videos. By this I can connect: TV, Bluray Player and Sky+:
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/dev … 53356.html

Then I have at the other end of the appartment 2 rooms, which require WLAN for a Radio (streaming client for internet) and another TV, for this I use a Powerline device which can expand our WLAN:
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/dev … 64623.html
Very nice is the push button on this device which allows for quick enabling and disabling of WiFi.

This might be a better approach for a Recording Workstation compared to use an 802.11ac PCIe adapter where you always need to worry about the efficiency of WiFi driver not to block your cores too much.

My dLAN cockpit tells me the following available Bandwidth from the source to the satellite dLAN adapters:
Same Room 915 Mbps (of "1200"), to Multimedia 327 Mbps (of "650"), far room 631 Mbps (of "1200").

Start only with the starter kit which is only €99.
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/dev … 50679.html

Your ASUS WLAN adapter costs already €70.
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/asu … 93303.html

There are 3 reasons not to use WiFi adapter which IMHO justifies spending ONLY €20 more.
- WLAN driver could potentially cause latency issues
- Robs you a PCIe slot
- Less radiation around you
- less heat inside of the case.

What I do not understand .. you say you have an UFX.
If you need to be cost conservative pls allow me these questions:
1. for what do you need thunderbolt ?
2. for what do you need Firewire ?
3. for what do you need so many USB3 ports ?

If I were you I would make it really simple to the point
1. get the DLAN solution for €99
2. save the cost for the thunderbolt adapter
3. save the cost for the thunderbolt to Firewire adapter
4. leave the firewire card out of the case
5. connect the UFX to an USB2 port which is fully sufficient for 30 i/o channels
6. connect the PC via Gigabit Ethernet to the dlan solution

There are additional advantages by connecting the UFX via USB.
You can perform firmware upgrades via USB only, so take one cable and perform everything over it.

Look here in my blog article how well the USB implementations of RME perform.
You will see everything of interest, RTT values for
- RayDAT and UFX in front of it as preamp
- UFX via USB and Firewire
- UFX+ via USB3 and Thunderbolt

Look how close UFX+ performs with USB3 compared to thunderbolt.
And look how close UFX performs ...
http://www.tonstudio-forum.de/blog/inde … 8-RME-UFX/

IMHO you can save a lot of bucks if you keep it simple.

And having fewer hardware in the computer generates less interrupt load which means, from this you also benefit when doing recording ... less heat .. etc ... less likeliness that a bogus driver sits on the same CPU like your DAW related processes ... at the end ... a more agile system.

That DLAN solution seems like a very good idea. And an affordable investment.
Im glad youve mentioned it, i had no idea this was possible.
My computer is in my bedroom so thats why i dont want to drag cables from my living room, where the internet access point is, all the way to the bedroom. So i figured ill go for a wifi card instead, but that was 2 years ago. Ill try to get one of those starter kits and see how it goes.

I really didnt know that the USB and firewire connection on the ufx have such similar performance.
I am going to try without a firewire card and use the usb connection instead. If it performs just as well i might stick to the usb solution. I am a heavy user of virtual instruments like orchestras in kontakt 5, Omnisphere etc and many tracks. So i thought i needed a firewire connection to get the best performance possible.

And thanks for all the tips about the backup programs and solutions. Ill look into that when i got the system up and running.
I just finished building my pc. It has a Be Quiet Dark Rock Pro 3 cpu cooler which is a monstrous awesome looking cooler:)

Not sure if you're original question still needs an answer but I can speak to recording from a FF800/802 pair over TB2 & TB3.

The FW interfaces are the LSI/Agere FW643 family chips used in the Apple TB2->FW dongles and the OWC TB2 & TB3 docks.  The dongles will dead-end the TB chain so the docks let me get enough 1394b ports for the two Firefaces.

The Apple FW dongles are selling here for US$29 and the docks weren't an extra cost since I have them anyway for laptops.

I run the TB2 setups on Win7 and the TB3 connections on both Win7 & Win10.  If I daisy-chain the Firefaces the system will choke and turn blue when I bring up DIGICheck.  I quit trying to do that and use one FF per host port ever since I spotted a post from MC that hinted (or just plain said?) not to do that.

On my mainboard it didnt matter whether to use USB or FW. Get quality USB2 cable, not longer than 2-3m.

With other boards it can be different.

If your mainboards USB implementation has an issue then go for the Sonnet 4-port card with Fresco Chipset.
https://www.heise.de/preisvergleich/son … 79334.html

Its a fabulous card with 4 USB3 controller on it, 1 dedicated per port !

This chipset has been mentioned in the UFX+ handbook as supported for USB3.
Its fully USB2 compatible and it works really great in my system driving 2 UFX+ and ADI-2 Pro.