SONNET TECHNOLOGIES Echo Express SE IIIe Thunderbolt Three-Slot PCIe Card Expansion System

I'm very disappointed - see my attached photo documentation. Unit Sonnet sent me was poorly packed, the card board is broken on many places, but what's most important - instead of new unit they sent me clearly USED one, DIRTY (I tried to clean that up but it's baked into the surface). And included cable is some poor quality USB-C only and NOT THUNDERBOLT cable, that's why I get in macOS message I should connect it to Thunderbolt port. My MacBook Pro M1 MAX has ONLY Thunderbolt ports. Fortunately I have here also dock from Sonnet so I tried the TB cable from the dock and it works. But overall now I have to invest money to TB cable to be able to use this Sonnet box at all, I have dirty unit and very bad feeling. Very sad Sonnet!!! And now I found the second Thunderbolt port for daisy chaining is NOT WORKING AT ALL despite I have Sonnet 10G connected!!!

I’ve been using this for the past couple of months now and I’m pretty happy with it. I spent the first couple of days doing some troubleshooting with it and after some google searching, I discovered that I didn’t have the latest thunderbolt drivers installed as I had previously thought (so make sure you do that and have the latest bios updates as well). After the driver update, everything was working smoothly...well, almost. The function I had the most trouble with was video capture using a PCIe HDMI capture card. The first one I tried was the Elgato HD60 pro, but had a very difficult time trying to capture an input signal. I tried using a similar card by SIIG, but saw identical results. After I did some reading up on the specs for HDMI and Thunderbolt 3, I came to the conclusion that there’s simply not enough bandwidth to accommodate the HDMI input signal, display port output signal and all USB devices when they're connected. Thunderbolt 3 is advertised to have 40Gbits of bandwidth which is theoretical, while the actual bandwidth is at 22Gbits. 8Gbits is given priority allocation to the first connected display which cuts your available bandwidth to 14Gbits to accommodate the rest of your devices. This might be doable with a video capture card using the HDMI 1.4 spec (which uses 14Gbits of bandwidth), but you’d be pushing your luck if you’re driving an external display while trying to record an incoming HD signal simultaneously. The HDMI 2.0 spec allows for bandwidth usage at 18Gbits which makes using a PCIe based video capture card impossible (unless no other devices were connected), so you’re better off using an enclosure you can dedicate a capture card to or get an external one that connects via USB 3. I went with an external one by Mirabox, which gave me the flexibility to use my pen display, audio interface and remaining USB devices while capturing an incoming HD signal. Would I recommend this enclosure? Yes, to anyone who is looking to assemble a custom Thunderbolt dock as I did.

Passt nur für Karten mit kürzerer Kontaktleiste (sowieso nur eingeschränkte Länge), daher für mich leider nicht brauchbar.

After several problems running ProPresenter 7.8 with our old computer, our church recently upgraded from the 2015 iMac to the new 2021 iMac with the M1 processor. In order to send multiple signals out, the new M1 Mac Mini’s and M1 desktops are limited in outputs. So after lots of research, this chassis was recommended to pair with the Decklink Duo 2. Sonnet Expansion Chassis is so simple for installing other PCIE cards. Fans relatively quiet. I used the Decklink Duo 2, Blackmagic HDMI to SDI 3G converter, and USB PCIE. Now we can send signal to 3 different sources, plus other usb ports, etc. The only negative from when I bought this Expansion Chassis from Amazon, no power source was included. So read the listing as some come with this, others do not and I had to order another chord with enough wattage. Other than that, this has been working excellent! No issues since installing everything!

I bought this a few months ago and unfortunately never really used it. My main reason in buying it was to use it with the Blackmagic Design DeckLink 8K Pro G2, which requires 30w of power. This unit does only 15w so it wasn't working. Even if you use the auxiliary power in the enclosure, it is not enough. Other the an that it looks like a great piece of tech. If anyone knows how I could inreaae the power, then that would be perfect!