External PCIe Thunderbolt 3 boxes

[ekwipt]

Who has one and what PCIe cards do you have installed?

 

[Mike Boreham]

Who has one and what PCIe cards do you have installed?

I have the Orico recommended in this thread.

I am using it with a Sabrent Rocket Q4 and a WD SN750 500GB.

I also have an Envoy Express enclosure which is well made and well behaved but slower.

 

[joevt]

Who has one and what PCIe cards do you have installed?

Is there a specific problem you want to solve?

I have several from Sonnet and OWC. You can put any PCIe card in any of them. If they don't fit, use a riser cable. If they need more power, connect an ATX power supply.

You can connect any PCIe card to anything that uses PCIe (M.2, U.2, OCuLink, mPCIe, ExpressCard, Thunderbolt, etc.) with the proper adapter and sufficient power. I have used a GPU connected to a small Thunderbolt to NVMe enclosure connected to a Mac mini 2018.

I suppose an M1 Mac should support any type of PCIe card as long as there's a driver for it. There's no drivers for AMD or NVIDIA GPUs for Apple Silicon though.

Thunderbolt 3 is limited to PCIe 3.0 x4 up to ≈2800 MB/s though maybe benchmarks usually end up in the 2500 MB/s range.

 

[ekwipt]

Yes I’ve got a Highpoint 7101A PCIe card that I’m going to populate with Samsung 1 or 2 to drive. I think I will try Highpoints own Chassis first.

I’m using it for for my audio samples, projects and renders for Logic and Ableton (when Ableton becomes more AS native) as well as a drive for FCP for the off video edit I do at home.
My other idea is to get a Areca Thunderbolt hard drive solution but that’s quite a bit more expensive as I’d rather use large SSDs 8 slots so they add quickly in price.

 

[joevt]

Yes I’ve got a Highpoint 7101A PCIe card that I’m going to populate with Samsung 1 or 2 to drive. I think I will try Highpoints own Chassis first.

I’m using it for for my audio samples, projects and renders for Logic and Ableton (when Ableton becomes more AS native) as well as a drive for FCP for the off video edit I do at home.
My other idea is to get a Areca Thunderbolt hard drive solution but that’s quite a bit more expensive as I’d rather use large SSDs 8 slots so they add quickly in price.

If you already have a 7101A and aren't going to use it in a PC or Mac that has a PCIe slot, then I guess Thunderbolt is the next most convenient way to use it. Just remember that you'll get less than max performance (3500 MB/s?) from an NVMe when connected by Thunderbolt (2800 MB/s).

The Highpoint Chassis seems like a more compact design compared to the OWC and Sonnet solutions. Does it have the height, width, and length to allow a 7101A? Actually yes, and there's an option to buy them together:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/331...a-thunderbolt-3-storage-enclosure-review.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CTH5PND
https://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-rs6661a-nvme-overview.htm

On the low-end, if you don't have a 7101A and you want to connect multiple NVMe, then the OWC Express 4M2 is interesting. Each NVMe is only connected by PCIe 3.0 x1 (811 MB/s each) but you can RAID 0 them together to get the max Thunderbolt bandwidth (2800 MB/s).

OWC Express 4M2 SSD Enclosure - Thunderbolt 3

Four easy-to-access NVMe M.2 SSD slots customizable for any workflow with up to 32TB of capacity and up to 2800MB/s performance. Includes a 1 year warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

RAID 0 also solves the problem of some NVMe's having unexpectedly low speeds (800 MB/s instead of 2500 MB/s) while connected by Thunderbolt. If you don't like RAID 0, 800 MB/s by itself is still pretty good. It's faster than SATA 6G and almost as fast as USB 10Gbps.

 

[ekwipt]

If you already have a 7101A and aren't going to use it in a PC or Mac that has a PCIe slot, then I guess Thunderbolt is the next most convenient way to use it. Just remember that you'll get less than max performance (3500 MB/s?) from an NVMe when connected by Thunderbolt (2800 MB/s).

The Highpoint Chassis seems like a more compact design compared to the OWC and Sonnet solutions. Does it have the height, width, and length to allow a 7101A? Actually yes, and there's an option to buy them together:
https://www.pcworld.com/article/331...a-thunderbolt-3-storage-enclosure-review.html
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CTH5PND
https://highpoint-tech.com/USA_new/series-rs6661a-nvme-overview.htm

On the low-end, if you don't have a 7101A and you want to connect multiple NVMe, then the OWC Express 4M2 is interesting. Each NVMe is only connected by PCIe 3.0 x1 (811 MB/s each) but you can RAID 0 them together to get the max Thunderbolt bandwidth (2800 MB/s).

OWC Express 4M2 SSD Enclosure - Thunderbolt 3

Four easy-to-access NVMe M.2 SSD slots customizable for any workflow with up to 32TB of capacity and up to 2800MB/s performance. Includes a 1 year warranty.

eshop.macsales.com

RAID 0 also solves the problem of some NVMe's having unexpectedly low speeds (800 MB/s instead of 2500 MB/s) while connected by Thunderbolt. If you don't like RAID 0, 800 MB/s by itself is still pretty good. It's faster than SATA 6G and almost as fast as USB 10Gbps.

thank you very much for this, I already have the 7101A, so possibly the best bet is to use the NVME dives as single drives or possibly one big drive and have a another drive as a backup solution.

I agree about the OWC, since they are mostly Mac centric and they take in the different models of Mac hardware (M1 etc)