4 ms·

Feels like it'd just create a market for a big rack-mountable multi-bay PCIe enclosure, with its own internal power supply, that you could connect with one ore

by audunw 7mo ago

Feels like it'd just create a market for a big rack-mountable multi-bay PCIe enclosure, with its own internal power supply, that you could connect with one ore more thunderbolt cable. I don't see any reason why a solution built around a Mac Studio should have to be significantly more cluttered. I don't know if such a solution exists right now, but I'm thinking there's a fair chance it will soon as the Mac Pro disappearing creates a demand for something like it.

bitbckt 7mo ago
The DAD AX32/AX64 is such a thing.
dabockster 7mo ago
Thunderbolt is really an unsung hero here. It is surprisingly nice to be able to move various components around my desk that would have otherwise sat in a huge tower hogging all the PCIe slots they can find.
- randusername 7mo ago
  Agreed, I've been doing experiments and it's wild to me what "just works" in a secondhand eGPU case or music production PCIe boxes. Dual 10G NIC cards, way cheaper than a comparable dongle 36 HDDs in JBOD, absolutely! 12 optical drives, sure!
kllrnohj 7mo ago
The Thunderbolt offerings on the current Mac lineup offer dramatically less bandwidth in total if that matters for a given use case. Thunderbolt 5 is the equivalent of PCI-E Gen 4 x4. So if all 4 of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on a Mac Studio can run at full speed, that's still only the equivalent of a single gen 4 x16 slot. That's less than half the bandwidth of a basic consumer x86 CPU, to say nothing of the Xeon that was in the previous Intel Mac Pro or a modern Epyc/Threadripper (Pro). This is a big reason why things like eGPUs kinda suck. Thunderbolt is fast for external I/O, but it's quite pathetic compared to internal PCI-E.
- NetMageSCW 7mo ago
  Reports as pointed out here have shown that x4 to x16 for most GPUs and common loads is a 1% to 10% loss of performance - hardly pathetic. In many (gaming) cases, it would be unnoticeable.

by audunw 7mo ago

bitbckt 7mo ago

The DAD AX32/AX64 is such a thing.

dabockster 7mo ago

Thunderbolt is really an unsung hero here. It is surprisingly nice to be able to move various components around my desk that would have otherwise sat in a huge tower hogging all the PCIe slots they can find.

randusername 7mo ago
Agreed, I've been doing experiments and it's wild to me what "just works" in a secondhand eGPU case or music production PCIe boxes. Dual 10G NIC cards, way cheaper than a comparable dongle 36 HDDs in JBOD, absolutely! 12 optical drives, sure!

kllrnohj 7mo ago

The Thunderbolt offerings on the current Mac lineup offer dramatically less bandwidth in total if that matters for a given use case. Thunderbolt 5 is the equivalent of PCI-E Gen 4 x4. So if all 4 of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on a Mac Studio can run at full speed, that's still only the equivalent of a single gen 4 x16 slot. That's less than half the bandwidth of a basic consumer x86 CPU, to say nothing of the Xeon that was in the previous Intel Mac Pro or a modern Epyc/Threadripper (Pro). This is a big reason why things like eGPUs kinda suck. Thunderbolt is fast for external I/O, but it's quite pathetic compared to internal PCI-E.

NetMageSCW 7mo ago
Reports as pointed out here have shown that x4 to x16 for most GPUs and common loads is a 1% to 10% loss of performance - hardly pathetic. In many (gaming) cases, it would be unnoticeable.