Expressbox3t
Latest
Thunderbolt accessories at IDF 2011: Belkin's Express dock, Seagate drives and PCIe expansion cards (video)
Seeing as Wintel fans will soon join in on the Thunderbolt fun, how about a smorgasbord of devices toting the interconnect, conveniently laid out in a two pane vitrine here at IDF? Alongside the usual suspects -- such as LaCie's Little Big Disk, Promise's Pegasus and Sonnet's Echo -- are a few devices we've never seen before, namely Belkin's Express dock, some unnamed Seagate drives and two PCIe expansion chassis from Sonnet and Magma. We're particularly smitten with the latter two -- you know, dreams about extending our future Ultrabooks with some serious external graphics horsepower. Check out the entire spread in our gallery below and the video after the break. Myriam Joire contributed to this report. %Gallery-133792%
Magma announces three-slot Thunderbolt expansion chassis
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.
Magma ExpressBox 3T gives you 3 external PCIe slots over Thunderbolt
Laptops aren't exactly renowned for their expandability, especially those beautiful slivers of aluminum from Apple. (Simply upgrading the RAM on your Air requires you break out the soldering iron.) Magma has a solution, the ExpressBox 3T. This silver case houses its own 220w power supply and a trio of PCIe 2.0 slots. Two of those slots are of the x8 variety (though one can hold an x16 card) while the third is scaled back to x4. And they all talk to your notebook via that wonderful little port known as Thunderbolt. It even comes with a carrying case which, we suppose, makes this hunk of metal "portable," but we certainly wouldn't want to lug it around very often. Sadly there's no info just yet about price or release date, but we do have a gallery of images below and the complete PR after the break. %Gallery-132908%
