Magma ExpressBox 3T or Sonnet Echo Express Pro Thunderbolt Expansion Chassis

[Johnny Friday]

the only downer on the LaCie esata Hub is that they are only 3gb connections....My new express 34 card with Sonnet and two Esata ports is 6gb connection....The LaCie would be a great option if they just made it 6gb/sec---so in reality i just don't see a big advantage of this product over the express card. Size in this case to me matters....and not taking up bandwidth on the T-bolt side of things....and having it on the express slot seems better distributed.

[Kwan Khan]

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html .

Once this available.. put two 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 SSD ... + Sonnet EE Pro with RR = best option for now

[Mike Halper]

the only downer on the LaCie esata Hub is that they are only 3gb connections....My new express 34 card with Sonnet and two Esata ports is 6gb connection....The LaCie would be a great option if they just made it 6gb/sec---so in reality i just don't see a big advantage of this product over the express card. Size in this case to me matters....and not taking up bandwidth on the T-bolt side of things....and having it on the express slot seems better distributed.

Yes, but if you're using the Rocket and a 6Gb eSATA controller you're not going to get 6Gb speeds anyway since one Rocket will use up a lot of the 10Gb bandwidth of Thunderbolt as it is. Plus even if I'm only transferring data (no Rocket), I typically need 3 or 4 eSATA ports so I have 2 eSATA hubs which totals 12Gb on their own (3Gb x 4), so 6Gb ports would rarely be taken advantage of anyway. Now if you have 2 Thunderbolt ports it could be different, but I still think there'd be less performance different realized than you may think when transferring data between multiple drives.

[Jean Bernard]

On the magma box, since the TB ports are on a full size slot bracket, I drilled and mounted the HD-SDI connections for the red rocket on the upper half of the TB pci-e bracket, plenty of room on the bracket, and it's recessed so the BNC ports don't get caught on anything.

Got any pictures of this mod Shiblon?

[Jean Bernard]

Thanks for the info Maryem. Are you able to transcode and transfer/backup at the same time without any speed drain? Can you benchmark a test if you have the time please? If power is no issue and if I can find the best card wether Cuda or Quadra I think I will go magma, in fact... I just got on the reserve list. I would like to get some thoughts on Power as well so I don't have to do an expensive experiment. I am sure someone on here has this Cuda/RR/ESata-USB3 setup on Magma and able to chime in. Or can we invite both Magma & Sonnet to shade some lights?

The mini route was just an after though as it seem to be limited to how many slots/size and and all accessories one must add on but I am curious to any comparison.

I am also gearing up for the year of the dragon and SSD/Thunder as well and need to be armed and ready.

Thanks for the insights.

To answer your original question, JB -

I have the Sonnet box, and it's pretty fast...I'm pretty happy with its performance. I used it for the first time on the Audi shoot, and transcodes (in 4K HD) were about 1.5x real time. (This is my guesstimate - I don't have hard benchmarks - but they felt fast!)

If I understand what I have read about Sonnet v. Magma correctly, then Thunderbolt is a bottleneck which doesn't permit a level of throughput beyond what is possible with the x4 lane, so right now, the Magma v. Sonnet debate is a moot point, though down the road, when we have faster Thunderbolt, then the Magma is the speedier choice. There are no published comparisons between these boxes currently, so it is all a bit of theory and speculation.

I'm thinking about what to put in my second lane on the Sonnet chassis and am torn between an esata card, so I can use my old RAID and spending up a bit so that I can use SSD storage - not just for storage but the transfer speeds are truly unbelievable. I had an external 240gb SSD plugged into Thunderbolt for fast transfers on Audi - and it was a huge boost in being to get cards cleaned and back in the field, especially with those long event-driven takes. Sonnet has this SSD/PCi-e card which seems almost ideal: http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempossd.html - a pair of 240gb SSD cards and a Rocket, and you will have a souped-up transfer/transcode/storage station.

However, the jury on the use of Nvidia/CUDA accelerated cards, such as you would use to optimize Resolve or Premiere is still out: there is no clear answer to this question, as far as I can tell. One reduser posted that the Quadra 4000 card for Mac was working but provided no detail, so the report was unconfirmed, and other users chimed in to say that the power draw for these cards isn't there, on the chassis. These cards are not yet listed on the Sonnet compatability chart, so unless someone provides a clear report, we really don't know for sure. The best we have right now is conflicting reports.

YMMV, with the Magma box, though same rule on the power draw may be cautionary.

We could all use some more user confirmation on the use of CUDA cards in these boxes. Lots of speculation, few data points, right now.

It's kind of an expensive experiment, if you don't already own the card....

I'm also very interested in the Sonnet x mini server setup which you linked to - I already own a mini - but I would love to get a clear report from someone who has used this configuration in a DIT station application. The only issue with this solution is that once you buy the chassis, the mini, the display, the keyboard, and the mouse or touchpad, you might as well just buy the whole iMac. The only reason I'm thinking about the mini chassis is because I already own the mini, display, keyboard, and mouse....

I'm currently running a 27'' iMac as my DIT station, with the Sonnet box and Rocket card. It's not super portable or totally great in the field, like the mac mini - but it is self-contained with a 2k screen, which is really nice for viewing and playback. With the Sonnet box, it is faster than my old tower, for sure.

The big shortcoming on both the mini and the iMac solutions seem to be CUDA acceleration right now. If we can find a way to make that happen - if anyone has any ideas - I wouldn't care if Mac ever released another tower again - the new computers are fast, and Thunderbolt adds a superb degree of flexibility and expansion (even though it is NOT CHEAP right now!!)

anyway - I hope this helps. I am definitely moving everything, as fast as I can afford it, to Thunderbolt and SSD...in the coming era of Dragon, there will be no such thing as too much speed or storage....

[Shiblon Wixom]

Here's a couple of the Mods so far, top case fan and rear Red BNC ports. One note, in order to clear the space between the top of the case and the red rocket card, I had to use a 60 x 60 x 10 mm fan.

[Johnny Friday]

Yes, but if you're using the Rocket and a 6Gb eSATA controller you're not going to get 6Gb speeds anyway since one Rocket will use up a lot of the 10Gb bandwidth of Thunderbolt as it is. Plus even if I'm only transferring data (no Rocket), I typically need 3 or 4 eSATA ports so I have 2 eSATA hubs which totals 12Gb on their own (3Gb x 4), so 6Gb ports would rarely be taken advantage of anyway. Now if you have 2 Thunderbolt ports it could be different, but I still think there'd be less performance different realized than you may think when transferring data between multiple drives.

Understood Mike, but some of us are not running multiple drives at once...so in my case i'm only running one drive to do transfers from SSD and then light color work...so 6gb/sec speed has been essential for me on my tower....and I'd like that to be same on my MBP....That said, there are a wide variety of needs out there. But one question i ask...is this: is 10gb/sec speed the limit ONLY on T-bolt? and then via express port you have additional speed? OR--is the entire system limited to 10gb/sec? I'm assuming that T-bolt gives us up to 10gb/sec speeds and other hard devices: FW800/USB & Express are optional/more transfer speed. Or maybe someone can tell me i'm absolutely wrong....

[Shiblon Wixom]

Thunder Bolt runs two or four channels, each is bi-directional 10 Gb/s and divided into basically x4 pci-e lanes. So you get x8 or x16 lanes in both directions at the same time. When you run the type 2 expresscard slot on a new MBP 17", x1 or x2 of the lanes have to be routed to the expresscard, since it shares the TB controller, you do lose some performance on the back end or the daisy chain of your TB devices/connections, in the case of also using your MBP express card slot. Most devices or cards will also be assigned 1 or 2 lanes depending on bandwidth needs. My Caldigit card uses x1 lane for eSATA (shared between two ports) and x1 lane for USB 3 (shared between two ports), or x2 lanes total. The TB cable also has x1 control channel and a display port channel.

[Corey Robson]

I would agree with others' speed assessment for the Expressbox 3T (pretty damn awesome,) the only thing I'd add is that if you intend to use one or more right on set, the power supply fan is noisy when in a warm environment. That plus 17" Macbook Pro fans running at 5500RPM during transcoding is close to a deal breaker for me on my current job. I replaced the front fan with a quieter model but I can't replace the PSU fan without major surgery to the case & PSU. I have a pre-production model though so hopefully the production version is quieter. Pretty great tool though when a full Mac Pro setup isn't practical.

[Timur Civan]

which esata SAS are you using, Timur? I'm looking for one, but the ATTO is hugely expensive, looking for a cheaper model - what are you using?

Atto, the pricey one. Its very stable. Tom Wong helped me build it.