| ID | | Article Title | Post Date |
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603 | 
| Which HDMI adapter should I use to connect an HDMI monitor to an Echo Express Thunderbolt PCIe Expansion Chassis' Thunderbolt port? | Mar-19-15 |
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661 |
| I'm using OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSDs with a Tempo SSD or Tempo SSD Pro adapter in a Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis and the system hangs after waking from sleep. | Oct-01-16 |
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663 | 
| Is the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 for Mac compatible with Echo Express Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis? | Aug-29-12 |
| No, the NVIDIA Quadro 4000 is not Thunderbolt-compatible. Apple and Intel have prescribed specific connectivity standards for products with Thunderbolt technology interfaces. These include drivers that are recognized by Thunderbolt and allow the product to connect and disconnect while the computer is running (hot plug/unplug). Products with Thunderbolt interfaces are tested by Intel and Apple and certified as compatible with these standards.
For PCIe expansion chassis to function correctly in this Thunderbolt-connectivity paradigm, the drivers for PCIe cards used in the chassis must also be updated to support these requirements. In most cases, each card manufacturer is responsible for updating the drivers for their cards. For the Quadro, it is Apple that controls the driver in OS X.
Intel has required all PCIe chassis manufacturers to agree to list only compatible cards that have been tested to support these standards. Apple has determined that for now, there are several technical reasons why it is not a good idea for a GPU card--including the Quadro--to connect over Thunderbolt. Therefore, GPU cards do not have Thunderbolt-compatible drivers. Until Thunderbolt-compatible drivers are released for GPU cards, they will not work over Thunderbolt. |
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|
675 |
| I installed an LSI 9200 series SAS RAID card in a Thunderbold expansion chassis and now the LSI card doesn't work. | May-22-19 |
| The LSI card probably blew its fuse. LSI seems to be unique in putting a fuse in series on the power input of some of its PCIe cards, which is a non-standard implementation for a PCIe card design. The fuse on the LSI card is sized too low and may sometimes blow at the inrush current the LSI card demands at power up. (In the PCIe specification, it is not the responsibility of the system to limit the inrush current to the card.)
The fuse could have been omitted; it was not. The fuse could have had a higher rating; it did not. The fuse could have been a slow-blow type; it was not. The fuse could have been user replaceable; it is not. The fuse could have been a resettable type; it is not.
From our resellers, we have heard anecdotes of LSI cards blowing their fuse in some systems and not others, apparently depending on how fast the 12V power comes up. Power would generally come up slower in a server in which the motherboard places a low-impedance demand on the power supply. In Thunderbolt expansion chassis, there is no motherboard to draw power, and the power supply voltage comes up rather quickly. This is LSI's issue to solve. |
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|
714 |
| Do GPU cards work over Thunderbolt on Windows? | Nov-02-12 |
| GPU cards over Thunderbolt under Windows are currently neither supported by Sonnet, nor the GPU card vendors, nor Microsoft.
Several GPU cards do seem to work with Windows if you boot the maching with the Thunderbolt chassis attached at boot time. We should also note that Sonnet Echo chassis don't currently provide auxillary PCIe power which several high-power GPU cards require. Furthermore, the power required by the card must to be under the rated power of the chassis less 10W for Thunderbolt, less the power drawn by a subsequent bus-powered Thunderbolt device, if any. Here's an informative link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/pci-express-graphics-thunderbolt,3263.html Bonne chance. |
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|
717 |
| Is the Red Rocket as fast in a Sonnet Echo Express Pro chassis as in a Magma Express Box 3T? | Oct-13-12 |
| Generally, we prefer not to comment on competitor's products, but we get this question so often that we thought it was worth an explanation.
The Red Rocket is a PCIe 1.1 x8 card. In a Mac Pro, it likes to be in an x8 (or faster) slot and will give a warning message if it is not. Does this warning have any meaning in a Thunderbolt expansion chassis, which may have either an x4 or x8 slot?
In a Magma chassis, the connection to a Red Rocket is PCIe 1.1 x8 which has a bandwidth limit of 20Gb/sec. This bandwidth may get as far as the Thunderbolt chip but it is throttled down to the 10Gb/sec bandwidth limit of the Thunderbolt channel dedicated to PCIe. You can't get more bandwidth than the slowest link in the chain. You get transfer, wait, transfer, wait, transfer, wait\u8230 an aggregate bandwidth of 10Gb/sec.
In the Sonnet chassis the connection at the Rocket is PCIe 1.1 x4 which has a bandwidth limit of 10Gb/sec. This bandwidth can be passed through the Thunderbolt chip at full throttle at the same 10Gb/sec bandwidth of the Thunderbolt channel dedicated to PCIe. You can't get more bandwidth than the slowest link in the chain. You get transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer, transfer\u8230 an aggregate bandwith of 10Gb/sec.
If there was any difference in performance, Sonnet would have designed a bridge from Thunderbolt to x8, but Sonnet's tests showed that there was no difference in performance between a Thunderbolt PCIe bridge to x8 and a Thunderbolt bridge to x4. The limit is Thunderbolt, so Sonnet put money into other aspects of the Echo Express Pro (designed and manufactured by Sonnet in California) that provide benefits to the user\u8212 like a rugged chassis, automatic temperature-controlled variable-speed fans, three fans for quieter operation, generous ventilation holes so that a fan card in one of the precious PCIe slots is not required, and a value price point. |
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731 |
| How fast will an SSD be in an Echo Express Thunderbolt chassis using the Tempo SSD, SSD Pro or SSD Pro Plus? | Dec-30-17 |
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