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Magma announces three-slot Thunderbolt expansion chassis

by Michael Grothaus Sep 7th 2011 at 7:00PM

For those of you who need more expansion than what comes on the latest iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini, you might want to check out Magma's new ExpressBox 3T. The ExpressBox 3T is a Thunderbolt expansion chassis that allows you to connect up to three PCIe cards to any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac.

PCIe expansion cards are typically used by those that do high-end audio, graphics, or video editing. Many professionals will typically buy a MacPro for its expansion slots, but now with Magma's ExpressBox 3T expansion chassis, user can get the same amount of expansion, and throughput, on any Thunderbolt-equipped Mac.

No word yet on what the ExpressBox 3T might cost, but Magma has set up web page with a form interested buyers can fill out to be notified of further details when they become available.



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For those of you who need more expansion than what comes on the latest iMac, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, or Mac mini, you might want to...
 

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Jon Bloom

How about some actual shipping TB products? I mean, other than the Promise RAID boxes. Those are nice, but where are the other TB products?

September 08 2011 at 3:50 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jackson Kavendish

I'd like the option of connecting MacBook Pro's directly to our 20-drive array. I can live with speeds just under the 10Gb/s Max. if it can allow a laptop act like a workstation. We're transitioning to more of an Adobe workflow, so the possibilities of gaining a boost from Open GL cards are also appealing if they would provide a tangible productivity increases.

September 08 2011 at 2:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Adrian von Gegerfelt

Does that mean I can use an even more graphics card on my MBP?

September 08 2011 at 6:06 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Adrian von Gegerfelt's comment
TonyV

In Windows maybe. The drivers for Mac may never exist if Apple doesn't allow it. I sure hope so though.

September 08 2011 at 9:50 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to TonyV's comment
Vaneshi

There was an update to OS X a when they first introduced Thunderbolt that enabled, specific, graphics adapters. It made the Hackintosh crowd really happy, although the most people suspected it was to enable Thunderbolt driven GFX units.

Assuming you fit one of those, specifically supported, cards (most were ATi) or the Nvidia Fermi driver update allows for Thunderbolt connections you should be good to go.

September 08 2011 at 10:24 AM Report abuse rate up rate down
Olliebrown

Drop some Tesla cards in there, fire up the Open CL, nice little super computer!

September 07 2011 at 10:28 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
lewdvig

Probably $999 - have look at their clients LOL.

It would be great is something like this could be made and sold for $200-300. Should be an easy DIY projects once TB to PCIe bridge cards show up on Deal Extreme.

September 07 2011 at 10:11 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
David Helberg

I wonder how this will perform? As much as I love my new Macbook Pro, it definitely underperforms when it comes to gaming under my Windows partition. If I can put in a desktop class graphics card with no downside other than the cost, that would be wonderful. I seem to remember reading that an external Thunderbolt graphics card would have many limitations, though. I just don't remember where I heard it, or whether or not the information was even accurate.

If anyone has any insight, that would be awesome =)

September 07 2011 at 7:17 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
3 replies to David Helberg's comment
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