It’s amazing how much processing power Mac®, Windows®, and Linux® computers with Thunderbolt™ 4 or Thunderbolt 3 ports offer today's creative professionals. However, these sleek marvels of engineering thinness come at a cost—they lack PCIe expansion slots for adding PCIe cards for connectivity and processing capabilities. Sonnet has a solution–the Echo™ Express SE I Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion system provides a compact, one-slot Thunderbolt expansion system that enables you to connect a single PCIe card to your computer via a single cable.
Plugged into one of your computer's Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 3 ports, this compact desktop expansion system supports one professional PCIe card (video capture, audio interface, 6Gb or 12Gb SAS or SATA host bus adapter, 8Gb or 16Gb Fibre Channel, 10Gb or 40Gb Ethernet, or RAID controller) plus a daughter card.
Use high-performance PCIe cards with any computer with a Thunderbolt 4 or Thunderbolt 3 port.
Supports one low-profile PCIe card.
Offers 2750 MB/s of PCIe bandwidth to the installed card. Learn more about Thunderbolt 3 performance benefits over Thunderbolt 4.
Smallest Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion system available; supports the most popular low-profile, Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe cards at full performance.
One port connects to computer; second port supports daisy-chaining of up to five additional Thunderbolt peripheral devices.
Temperature-controlled, variable-speed fan automatically and quietly cools the card.
Powers on/off automatically with the computer.
Provides robust and secure protection.
Daisy chain port provides up to 15W of power to connected peripherals.
The Echo Express SEL accommodates a wide variety of PCIe cards. Do you have a card in mind but aren’t sure it’s compatible? We’ve put together a list in our supporting PCIe Card Thunderbolt Compatibility Chart (PDF). There you’ll find cards identified as conforming to Thunderbolt technology requirements, and organized by fit and power compatibility with specific expansion system.
Echo Express SEL supports one half-length (up to 6.6 inches long), low-profile, single-width PCIe card; PCIe 1.1, PCIe 2.0, and PCIe 3.0 cards are supported. Many of the most popular Thunderbolt-compatible high-speed networking and storage controller cards are a perfect fit, and even the BlueFish 444 Epoch 4K Neutron video card can be accommodated.
Echo Express SEL is designed to be ultra-quiet so that it can be comfortably used in noise-sensitive environments. The airflow path within the chassis has been specially designed to enable the fan to quietly and efficiently cool the installed card at all times, even during peak operation.
Sonnet includes a 0.7-meter Thunderbolt 3 cable that supports Thunderbolt's full 40Gbps bandwidth, and is fully compatible with Thunderbolt 4 computers. Sonnet also provides a ThunderLok™ 3 Thunderbolt connector retainer clip(1) that prevents accidental cable disconnections—just slide it over one end of the cable, and then plug in the connector and secure it to the chassis by turning a thumbscrew. Because of its unique design, ThunderLok remains on the cable so it won’t get lost when not in use.
