Like its predecessor, the Power Mac G5, the pre-2013 Mac Pro was Apple's only desktop with standard expansion slots for graphics adapters and other expansion cards. Apple received criticism after an incremental upgrade to the Mac Pro line following the 2012 WWDC. Due to an incompatibility in PCIe addressing schemes, the SOLO, DUO, and QUAD versions of this card are incompatible when hosted by the new Mac Pro (2013). Aside from the new Mac Pro, they are compatible with the rest of the currently shipping Macs and most PCs.
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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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When it comes to supporting the fastest USB drives available, your computer’s USB 3.0 ports are perfectly adequate…for connecting peripherals that don’t depend on the ultimate USB 3.2 speeds. However, common USB 3.0 ports can be underachievers—at 5Gbps, they can’t support the maximum performance from many storage devices, and may not provide enough power to enable them to operate. Atom free download. You need SuperSpeed USB-C®!
The Allegro™ USB-C PCIe(1) card supports data transfers at up to twice as fast as USB 3.0, and can also deliver 15W of power per port to USB-C bus-powered devices (three times the 4.5W specified in the USB 3.0 spec). Don’t settle for mediocre performance or insufficient power for the fastest SSDs—install an Allegro USB-C card to instantly add two Gen 2 USB 3.2 ports to your system and take full advantage of today’s SSD performance.
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Full Power
Expansion Card For Mac Pro 12.9
Sonnet specially engineered the Allegro USB-C card to provide 15W of power through each of its ports. The ports communicate with the host that 3A of VBUS current is available, enabling this Sonnet solution to support USB-C bus-powered SSDs and SSD RAID devices that need 15W during demanding write operations.
The Sonnet Speed Advantage
Expansion Card For Mac Promotion
Featuring the latest high-performance USB 3.2 Gen 2 controller from ASMedia—the ASM 3142—the Allegro USB-C PCIe card supports concurrent data transfers up to 925 MB/s when connected to a two USB-C Gen 2 NVMe SSD devices! Most other cards limit concurrent transfers to half that, a significant disadvantage when time is of the essence.