Magma ExpressBox 3T

[Nick Shaw]

I have recently received a pre-production unit of the Magma ExpressBox 3T Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis. Unlike some laptop PCIe Expansion systems, this is able to run 8x PCIe cards like the RED Rocket at full 8x speed. This means I am getting desktop type transcode speeds (4k at 28.5fps and 5k at 23.5 fps) on my MacBook Pro, which I am very pleased about. It's better than my ageing Mac Pro can manage!

[Matthew Riggieri]

Nick

Isn't thunderbolt only 4x anyways?

Matt

[Shiblon Wixom]

Each Thunderbolt channel is a bi-directional PCI-e x4 lane (Aprox. 800MB/s in both I/O directions), the lower end Macs like the MacBook air have 2 channels and the top end MacBook Pro 17" have four thundebolt channels. Some thunderbolt cases only run two channels (PCI-e x4/x4), and some like the magma run four channels (PCI-e x4/x4/x4/x4, or effectively x8/x8) but can scale down to only two lanes if that's all there is.

Also note the current TB cable from apple has a control channel and two pairs of lanes, x5 total.

On my pre-production Magma 3T case with my MBP17 (2011 i7), i can transfer around 450MB/s aggregate between all TB / expresscard connected drives or raid towers, and still get full use of my internal system drive for other work such as color grading or transcoding. I get about the same transcoding rates as Nick, around 30 fps with 4kHD and 24 fps with 5kHD material when using a Red Rocket.

[Grant Limberg]

Just out of curiosity, which MacBook Pro are you running this on?

[Michael Lindsay]

Hi Nick

Have you put anyting else in the expansion box? Or is it in there on its own (no Atto card or BM card for example)

AND is there any clue to when one may buy it??

thanks

Michael

[Nick Shaw]

Just out of curiosity, which MacBook Pro are you running this on?

MacBook Pro 8,3 – Late 2011 17" 2.5GHz i7 with 16GB of RAM
The last of the 17 inch MacBook Pros

Have you put anyting else in the expansion box? Or is it in there on its own (no Atto card or BM card for example

Not yet. I only opened the box today! I'm wondering about trying my Decklink in it, but since I already have an UltraStudio 3D, which is basically the Decklink Extreme 3D in an external Thunderbolt box, I'd probably rather keep things modular. I certainly intend to put an ATTO card in there.

AND is there any clue to when one may buy it??l

I don't know I'm afraid, but contact Magma and ask them.

[Michael Lindsay]

thanks for the info...

[Bob Gundu]

Any updates on testing the ExpressBox 3T?

[Tom.Wong]

I have one myself and love the sucker. few quirks but can be worked around. it's a pre production model so will be going back in for production upgrades eventually.

rocket shows up only as in a 4x slot in rcx, however, i'm really seeing little to no speed difference in transcodes. quad hd footage is faster than real time, full 5k footage is slight slower, average 20-22 fps. all at a 23.98 framebase.

in conjunction i have a atto h680 in there mounting hard drives swimmingly. I've hd 3 g raids hooked up without a hiccup.

plus a decklink card that works all in conjunction.


daisy chain works well too. only hiccup I'm finding is that a reboot or forced shut down prevents the system from recognizing the unit. you have to shut down the laptop, and do a full power cycle on the chassis and boot everything back up together to get it to recognize again. full power cycle meaning fully unplugging the power and letting all the residual power drain out before plugging it back in. might be fixed in the production models, who knows. either way I'm loving it and really when it comes purely downloading large files, a laptop station has very little compromises now.

i'd still prefer a tower for pure horsepower and larger raids, and multi cam but the laptop certainly isn't be very underrated these days.

[Neil W. Smith]

I have one myself and love the sucker. few quirks but can be worked around. it's a pre production model so will be going back in for production upgrades eventually.

rocket shows up only as in a 4x slot in rcx, however, i'm really seeing little to no speed difference in transcodes. quad hd footage is faster than real time, full 5k footage is slight slower, average 20-22 fps. all at a 23.98 framebase.

in conjunction i have a atto h680 in there mounting hard drives swimmingly. I've hd 3 g raids hooked up without a hiccup.

plus a decklink card that works all in conjunction.


daisy chain works well too. only hiccup I'm finding is that a reboot or forced shut down prevents the system from recognizing the unit. you have to shut down the laptop, and do a full power cycle on the chassis and boot everything back up together to get it to recognize again. full power cycle meaning fully unplugging the power and letting all the residual power drain out before plugging it back in. might be fixed in the production models, who knows. either way I'm loving it and really when it comes purely downloading large files, a laptop station has very little compromises now.

i'd still prefer a tower for pure horsepower and larger raids, and multi cam but the laptop certainly isn't be very underrated these days.

Tom,

Have you tried any nVidia GPUs in the Magma 3T with Resolve? ... i know that GPUs are x 16 lanes but was wondering if you get any rendering performance enhancement in Resolve if you have a 480 or 580 or even a Q4000 in the Magma?

I'm specifically thinking of the Retina Display MBP ... we're doing some beta testing at the moment and the performance with the built in nVidia 650M is quite impressive but would love to be able to attach a PCIe Expansion box through Tbolt with a couple of GTX 580s in it :-) ... OK, maybe we start with a single Q4000.

Have also noted the need for total reboot of the system with a long daisy chain of Tbolt devices ... cable management with Tbolt is going to become an issue ... we deseparately need some Tbolt Hub of some kind.

Cheers,
Neil