Sonnet has followed up its Thunderbolt PCIe expansion cases with new, budget-priced versions called Echo Express SE. The chassis lets users plug PCI Express cards into computers without any expansion ports and communicate with them at high speeds thanks to their Thunderbolt interface. The cases have two such ports, allowing them to daisy-chain up to six devices to a single Thunderbolt port on the host computer.
The Echo Express SE chassis can accommodate one half-length, full-height, single-width x8 PCIe 2.0 card. These may include special-purpose cards used for audio or video capture, 8Gb fibre channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, RAID control, and more.
The aluminum housings also contain a temperature-controlled fan and has an energy saver mode that goes on or off along the host computer. It uses 60W of power.
The Echo Express SE expansion chassis are now shipping, priced at $400.
