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OWC's ThunderBay Flex 8 Storage and Expansion Tower for Macs Now Available

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Popular Mac accessory maker OWC today announced the launch of its ThunderBay Flex 8 tower for media professionals, offering eight drive bays, a handful of ports for connecting peripherals, and a PCIe slot for expansion capabilities, all connected to your Mac over Thunderbolt 3.

owc_thunderbay_flex_8.jpg

The ThunderBay Flex 8 resembles a black version of the Power Mac G5 and original Mac Pro design, and it opens up to reveal eight SATA/SAS drive bays capable of accepting both 3.5-inch and 2.5-inch drives, with the top four bays also able to accept U.2/M.2 NVMe drives. There's also a PCIe x16 connector/x4 lane slot for adding cards such as audio/video capture or additional SSD storage.

thunderbay_flex_8_drives.jpg

Near the bottom of the front of the ThunderBay Flex 8 is a string of ports for connecting peripherals, including a pair of 10Gb/s USB-A ports, a 10Gb/s USB-C port, and CFexpress and SD 4.0 card readers. On the rear of the tower are a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports (one upstream and one 15W downstream) and a DisplayPort 1.4 port.

Pricing on the ThunderBay Flex 8 starts at $1,299 for just the enclosure, or it can be ordered with various combinations of drive types and capacities that can push a maxed-out configuration to nearly $8,000.

Note: MacRumors is an affiliate partner with OWC. When you click a link and make a purchase, we may receive a small payment, which helps us keep the site running.

Article Link: OWC's ThunderBay Flex 8 Storage and Expansion Tower for Macs Now Available
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/07/08/owc-thunderbay-flex-8/
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I'm seeing a lot of Thunderbolt peripherals out lately, but ARM Macs are coming which probably won't support Thunderbolt since it's an Intel chipset technology.

Does this stuff fall back to USB 3.1 if Thunderbolt isn't available? I'm just thinking and it would really suck if people invested a lot of $$ into equipment that became obsolete as soon as they upgrade to an ARM-based Mac.
 
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Perhaps they missed the boat by designing it to look like the older Classic Mac Pro and not the 2019 model?

But perhaps not; it would be hilarious and kinda cringe having a little mini me 2019 Mac Pro next to a full size papa 2019 Mac Pro.

Otherwise, pretty cool for people that need the storage. Im using 2x Sonnet Tempo PCI cards loaded with 4 x SSD inside my 2019. Its nice having it all tidy in one box but the OWC unit definitely allows for more flexibility and capacity and is perfect for people that need that.
 
Pretty cool, but it feels like OWC should have waited to design this until they knew what the new Mac Pro was going to look like.

The price tag… well, I suppose for the small target audience, it's fine.
 
Darth Tulhu said:
This design makes me sad for what could have been.

A black Mac Pro like this would've been AWESOME, instead of the silly tube we got in 2013.

I'd take that over the new MP design any day.
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A black one would have been awesome agreed. That said, the 2019 looks pretty nice after having it for a while. It was a bit weird looking at it when I first got it, but it grows on you.
 
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zorinlynx said:
I'm seeing a lot of Thunderbolt peripherals out lately, but ARM Macs are coming which probably won't support Thunderbolt since it's an Intel chipset technology.
Click to expand...

I believe Intel released Thunderbolt to the masses for inclusion into the USB4 specification. There are many references to that effect via google search. But it is also entirely possible for Apple to release an ARM Mac with an Intel chipset dedicated to Thunderbolt 3 like it does today (with an Intel JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 controller, source iFixit) though it could make sense to simply release the first ARM Mac with USB4 and ensure compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 through that.

Apple isn't throwing all Intel chips out of the ecosystem just yet unless they've got alternate implementations of functionality currently provided by Intel outside of the main processor (and embedded gpu).
 
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zorinlynx said:
I'm seeing a lot of Thunderbolt peripherals out lately, but ARM Macs are coming which probably won't support Thunderbolt since it's an Intel chipset technology.

Does this stuff fall back to USB 3.1 if Thunderbolt isn't available? I'm just thinking and it would really suck if people invested a lot of $$ into equipment that became obsolete as soon as they upgrade to an ARM-based Mac.
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I’m quite confident Apple Silicon will definitely support TB3. Pretty sure they would not regress on that. And regarding Thunderbolt devices, a Thunderbolt 3 port can support Thunderbolt and USB devices but a Thunderbolt device can only be used with a Thunderbolt port.
 
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Got excited, then read the price. I'm stuck as I've always used Mac Pro's for work and home, have two 12-Core 2013 Mac Pro's with Dual D700's and an attached Pegasus Thunderbolt 2 array simply for external storage when I made the move from my 2012 Mac Pro's (which I updated with Apple genuine parts - Broadcomm WiFiac+BTLE4.x, Sapphire Radeon PULSE 8GB GPU, SATAIII PCIe SSD boot, USB-C 3.1 PCIe, USB-A 3.0 PCIe, LG BDXL burner yet sold it on eBay when the new Mac Pro was announced - and eBay screwed me as they never set the reserve price and someone grabbed it for $750 - I kept the drives).

Not to go further off topic, but when the new Mac Pro was announced I fell off my chair. Yes, for professionals/editors/etc they'll make their money back, yet for prosumers such as myself who owned Power Mac's and Mac Pro's with 2-3 displays, I need something that can handle post work (film and photography) to replace my trash can Mac Pro. I was hoping Apple would at least include basic internal SATA drives for 4 HDD's given the return to the tower so I could ditch my Thunderbolt arrays but they focused on Afterburner and other upgrades that increased the price as the logic board is the most expensive component. The CPU's, GPU's, SSD's, wifi/BTLE, etc are all standard issue yet the logic board drives that sucker up. $4k base would have been gold. I just cannot justify a $6k base tag especially when I'll still need external storage enclosures. The $2200k MPX module for four drives drives that price up further.

Even with my 25% discount and $1400 trade-in, it's still a hefty price point and doesn't check all the boxes. All in one's are out of the question - I'll never use one for my needs and don't need another displays with my 3 LG UltraFine 5K displays.

OWC makes a decent Thunderbolt 3 4 Bay enclosure for around $400. I've been considering one for a year or so but held off. I don't know what I'm going to do moving forward especially as macOS Big Sur is a headache (I've gone way off topic enough lol). Hackintoshing is a fun hobby but not a solution to this dilemma. I simply cannot understand why Apple didn't build out the new Mac Pro with a wider range of BTO's, allowing those of us the ability to at least grab one at $4k and those who need a heavy lifter could simply BTO a loaded system. Apple would at least be able to sell them in stores and sell more. I know dozens off the top of my head that have backed off because of it. Then the $6k display and $999 stand. Apple's got balls.
 
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anson42 said:
I believe Intel released Thunderbolt to the masses for inclusion into the USB4 specification. There are many references to that effect via google search. But it is also entirely possible for Apple to release an ARM Mac with an Intel chipset dedicated to Thunderbolt 3 like it does today (with an Intel JHL7540 Thunderbolt 3 controller, source iFixit) though it could make sense to simply release the first ARM Mac with USB4 and ensure compatibility with Thunderbolt 3 through that.

Apple isn't throwing all Intel chips out of the ecosystem just yet unless they've got alternate implementations of functionality currently provided by Intel outside of the main processor (and embedded gpu).
Click to expand...

Exactly. It will be a few years before Mac's fully move to ARM architecture, especially as they don't produce powerful enough chipset for their iMac Pro and Mac Pro's which will still use Xeon workstation CPU's for the next 3-4 years. Thunderbolt having been "opened" and included in the upcoming USB4 specification will finally open the door for more Thunderbolt devices and connectivity while [hopefully] lowering price points.
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madmin said:
They missed a trick by not having optional wheels !
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This made me laugh so hard. Thank you. I needed that.
 

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They missed the mark on not including 96W/100W PD for the MBP16,1 users out there for a single cable solution. Looks like a great array for iMac and those working from home for the next 6-12+ months. A similar but smaller unit just for straight M.2 NVMe and 2.5" SATA SSDs would be the only suggestion for a future alternative design.
 
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zorinlynx said:
I'm seeing a lot of Thunderbolt peripherals out lately, but ARM Macs are coming which probably won't support Thunderbolt since it's an Intel chipset technology.

Does this stuff fall back to USB 3.1 if Thunderbolt isn't available? I'm just thinking and it would really suck if people invested a lot of $$ into equipment that became obsolete as soon as they upgrade to an ARM-based Mac.
Click to expand...

forums.macrumors.com

Intel Shares Details on Thunderbolt 4, Launching Later This Year

Intel today shared some new details on the upcoming launch of Thunderbolt 4, which is set debut later this year. While Thunderbolt 4 won't deliver any increase over the maximum 40 Gb/s available on Thunderbolt 3, there are some notable improvements such as universal cables up to two meters...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Thunderbolt 4 will be coming first to Intel's upcoming Tiger Lake processors for notebooks, with separate 8000-series controller chips coming later this year.
Click to expand...
 
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Well that's nice and all but in order to run it, you have to to keep your T2 chip unguarded, or the software doesn't run and you can't use the enclosure, and forget about anything other than Raid 0, the read/write speeds move at a snails pace.
 
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