Magma ExpressBox mates PCI Express with ExpressCard

Desktop users longing to take advantage of ExpressCards on their machines have long since been quieted, but for laptopers looking to somehow stuff a PCI Express card into that diminutive slot, your prayer has been answered. Magma's ExpressBox / Express Box Pro allows users to operate a PCIe card up to 6.604- / 12.283-inches in length by handling up to 250MB/sec, providing dedicated power and cooling solutions, and playing nice with Windows XP, Vista, and OS X. The breakout box sports a fliptop lid for quickly changing out PCIe cards, and after installing the appropriate drivers, users will have full functionality of a PCI Express card right on their portable machine. Notably, these iterations only support cards that require 55-watts of power or less, and the company notes that gamers wishing to cram power-sucking GPUs into these boxes need to wait for the next revision before giving it a whirl. Even still, you better need the PCIe portability mighty bad to rely on one of these, as the ExpressBox and ExpressBox Pro will run you a stiff $729 or $749, respectively.

[Via Macworld]

[Samuel McConnell @ May 5th 2007 10:05AM]

I don't understand why it's so expensive. All ExpressCard is is PCI-E and USB 2.0 in a different form factor.

[Paul @ May 5th 2007 10:23AM]

wow... I dont really see where ANYONE would be willing to pay that much for something like this.

It sounds like it needs external power anyway from the above description, which means its not going to be super mobile.

And if its not going to be really mobile, what is the point of hooking it up to a laptop? Especially when this device is going to cost at LEAST if not more than half the price of the laptop.


The only real application I see for something like this is for a company that develops PCI-Express cards and needs a way to move the cards easily between computers. And they only use laptops with Express card slots.

[Sameer Surampalli @ May 5th 2007 10:31AM]

Yeah, it's way to expensive. It's a useful technology, but if it was more adequately priced, it would be more useful.

It's a nice way to upgrade your video card in a desktop-replacement laptop however, which is probably what the technology was meant for.

[Rory @ May 5th 2007 11:54AM]

"The only real application I see for something like this is for a company that develops PCI-Express cards and needs a way to move the cards easily between computers. And they only use laptops with Express card slots."

Applications are limited, but there are other real ones. The lab I work in uses an older Magma PCI-to-PC Card breakout box to house a fiber-optic PCI card used to control twin 250,000fps Photron cameras in a stereoscopic setup. The Magma box essentially lives with the camera in one building and we bring in laptops to run a test, dump the data, and then take our laptops with us to process the data wherever we need to be later in the day. We could use external storage, but when you can easily collect 10-20GB of data in a typical morning, its just easier to have it on the laptop organized in the acquisition software database and take it with you. We also have used it outdoors in the field, and its been reliable to transport a laptop and the Magma in one large Pelican case than dealing with the external KBM cabling of a desktop PC. I agree that it could be cheaper, but when you are using it to control something like our cameras that cost $70,000 a piece, its a drop in the bucket. I don't think this thing is really intended at the home market, but rather Universities and R&D companies who have all sorts of exotic equipment controlled by specialty PCI boards (take a look through a National Instruments catalog if you don't know what I'm talking about), where the cost of the Magma box is nothing if it allows them to take their equipment on the road in a more convenient package.

[Alex @ May 5th 2007 12:24PM]

I could see this selling big to a lot of people if the next revision cost less and supported gaming GPUs... For instance, at college, I've only got a laptop, so this sucka would be amazing.

[futurepastnow @ May 5th 2007 12:59PM]

Expresscard is only a single PCIe lane (x1). You're not going to be able to run a "gaming GPU" through that slot, although for multiple monitors it would work.

[Andrew @ May 5th 2007 12:27PM]

Something tells me you wont be able to use this to power the screen already in your laptop... I may be wrong but how would that even work?

[Alex @ May 5th 2007 2:07PM]

Ah, thanks. I kind of suspected that you couldn't only because if you could, I'm sure someone would have done this by now. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait for that whole external GPU thing from ATI or whoever to catch on, heh.

[Karl @ May 5th 2007 3:34PM]

Yea, that just shows how overpriced this thing is. It's a PCIe to PCIe converter. Wow.

From Wikipedia:
"A connection between any two PCIe devices is known as a "link", and is built up from a collection of 1 or more lanes. All devices must minimally support single-lane (x1) link. Devices may optionally support wider links composed of 2, 4, 8, 12, 16, or 32 lanes. This allows for very good compatibility in two ways: A PCIe card will physically fit (and work correctly) in any slot that is at least as large as it is (e.g. an x1 sized card will work in any sized slot), and a slot of a large physical size (e.g. x16) can be wired electrically with fewer lanes (e.g. x1 or x8) as long as it provides the power and ground connections required by the larger physical slot size. In both cases, PCIe will negotiate the highest mutually supported number of lanes. It is not possible to place a physically larger PCIe card (e.g. a 16x sized card) into a smaller slot, even though the two would be signal-compatible if it were possible."

So it has two ports wired together. Someone should DIY this (I would, but I don't have any PCIe cards to test on. I'm still on AGP, except for my laptop)

[Xchus @ May 5th 2007 1:26PM]

For that price we (gamers) might as well build a PC....

[E71 @ May 5th 2007 2:44PM]

That's the dumbest thing I've seen. Who'd wanna carry that around?

[hobgoblin @ May 5th 2007 3:03PM]

its a small start, but its a start. this may be a more interesting take on the gaming laptop then a mxm board.

im sure there are a way to get 16x or 32x pcie into a expresscard slot. add that and a dvi contact that can take signal in as well as spit it out, and your golden.

hell, lets make the screen detachable, with a fold out stand. or maybe replaceable with a simple cover over the keyboard area and you have quite the portable gaming machine ;)

makes me think of a modern day descendant of the classical amiga 500 :D

[Juaquin @ May 5th 2007 5:18PM]

Once they get the videocard version this might actually go somewhere, but not for that price. Are they kidding?

[Jerrod @ May 5th 2007 5:23PM]

Paul, E71:

There are real uses for these, as Rory mentioned. Just perhaps not for the average Engadget reader... ;-)

We keep a Magma box installed on the instrument rack in our research aircraft, for image and data acquisition cards, etc. When we fly, we hook up to a laptop for data collection with LabView. It's a far better solution than keeping a full desktop installed in the aircraft.

[rosciol @ May 7th 2007 7:24PM]

There's at least one practical application that appeals to a slightly wider user base that no one has mentioned: docking. The video cards in most laptops have okay support for one external monitor, but what if you have a multi-monitor setup at home? As part of a docking station you could have this box hooked up to a multi-monitor video card and then whenever you docked your laptop you'd have full access to a keyboard, mouse, and multiple monitors. I might not pay the price quoted above for that functionality, but being able to add a multi-monitor video card to my laptop is something that I would drop a few shiny nickels for.