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The new Sonnet McFiver comes with internal SSD storage, 10GB of Ethernet, a 10Gbps USB-C slot and two SSD slots for high-speed storage on a single PCIe card for Mac with Mac Pro or PCI-E backup.
Sonnet has long provided Settings for PCIe slots and computer adapter cards, but now the new McFiver offers five interfaces on a full-height PCIe card that doesn’t require external power.
“For most creators, the ability to quickly transfer files – from internal storage, over a network, or from external drives – can be critical to their workflow,” the company said in a statement. “While single adapter cards provide the ability to speed up part of the workflow, installing three adapter cards to get all the interfaces a user needs may not be possible even on systems with multiple expansion card slots.”
Five interfaces on McFiver:
- 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 Gigabit)
- Two USB-C 10Gbps ports
- Two slots for M.2 NVMe 2280 PCIe SSD, single-sided or double-sided
Note that SSDs are sold separately, and Sonnet states that up to 16TB of total SSD storage can be installed on the card. It uses an x8 PCIe 3.0 bridge chip, so no specific hard drives or PCIe partitioning are required to support RAID features.
When placed directly into a similar Mac Pro using a PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 card slot, Sonnet states that “the card-mounted NVMe PCIe SSD can transfer data up to 3400MB/s.”
For every other Mac, and for any computer that doesn’t have PCIe card slots, McFiver can be installed on a separate Sonnet system or with the rest of the eGPU envelope. Echo company’s Thunderbolt PCIe card expansion system comes with “McFiver card interfaces over a single cable” Maco Studio MacBook Pro iMac, more. The total bandwidth available on the card is determined by the Thunderbolt speed.
McFiver is available from Sonnet from the second week of June. It will retail for $399.99.
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