Sonnet launches new four-port USB-C PCI-e expansion card for Mac Pro tower

The USB-C adapter.

Sonnet on Wednesday rolled out two adapter cards, the Allegro USB-C 4-Port PCIe and the Allegro Pro USB 3.1 PCIe, both of which can add powered USB ports to any computer with a PCIe slot, or even Thunderbolt Macs when used in a Thunderbolt-to-PCIe enclosure.

Each USB port on the cards can supply up to 7.5 watts of power and operate at Gen 2 speeds, enabling file transfers up to 10 gigabits per second. An attached SSD for instance can transfer files at 800 megabytes per second, or up to 1.2 gigabytes in conjunction with three other drives.

To use the cards most Mac owners will need an enclosure, but they should work directly with pre-2013 Mac Pro models, which some people have kept alive through upgrades. Neither card requires a power lead supplied from inside the unit, which many inexpensive cards demand.

Apple is working on a modular Mac Pro for launch sometime year, which could potentially support PCIe 5.0 for faster speeds while maintaining backwards compatibility.

Sonnet is selling both cards for $149. At Amazon the USB-C card is the same price, but the USB 3.1 (Type A) version is slightly cheaper at $137.57.

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4 Comments

coolfactor

said about 5 years ago

Cards like this seem like a blast from the past, especially with that L-shaped design. Not Mac-like at all. B)

entropys

said about 5 years ago

Interesting. There are not many build your own cases that come with USB C

mdriftmeyer

said about 5 years ago

This isn't for ``a Mac'', but for any PC with an x4 PCI slot that can take advantage of Thunderbolt inside their operating system's kernel.

In short, for macOS, Linux, Windows, FreeBSD, etc.

Apple is working on a modular Mac Pro for launch sometime year, which could potentially support PCIe 5.0 for faster speeds while maintaining backwards compatibility.

Slow down sparky. The Mac Pro upcoming will work with PCI-E 4.0. PCI-E 5.0 won't show up for another 3 to 5 years.

AMD is the first CPU vendor to support 4.0 coming out this June on their next 7nm Zen2 CPUs. Those Zen2 will be backward compatible with the AM4 chipset and forward compatible with the AM5 chipset that will be the PCI-E 4.0 based motherboards.

elijahg

said about 5 years ago

coolfactor said:

Cards like this seem like a blast from the past, especially with that L-shaped design. Not Mac-like at all. B)

The shape of the card is purely for compatibility with as many devices as possible, and yes whilst it may be an old shape physically, electronically it is not old tech. Just because Apple no longer supports PCI cards themselves, doesn't mean it's old tech. Internally the same interface is used between chips and they're very much current in most PCs. Apple's new Mac Pro will almost certainly have a PCIe slot. In fact not having PCIe was one of the reasons the trashcan Mac Pro flopped