Press Releases

Akitio Releases Thunder3 PCIe Box, the World’s First Thunderbolt™ 3 PCIe Expansion Chassis

Brea, CA - August 8, 2016 / ‐‐ Akitio, makers of external premium, high quality computer storage solutions, today announced the availability of the new AKiTiO Thunder3 PCIe Box. The Thunder3 PCIe Box is the industry’s first Thunderbolt™ 3 external PCI Express (PCIe) expansion chassis device and was designed to provide an additional PCIe slot for Thunderbolt 3 computers where there is either not enough space to install another PCIe card or on systems such as laptops where there previously was no option to add a PCIe card.

The Akitio PCIe Box features a 1x16 slot that supports half-length, full-height, double width cards, which can easily be swapped out due to the completely screw-less design of the Akitio box. The 1x16 PCIe slot also supplies up to 25 Watts of power to the card, providing an all-in-one expansion chassis solution. The box has two Thunderbolt 3 ports for daisy chaining up to 6 devices as well as a DisplayPort to easily add an additional monitor to your system. The downstream Thunderbolt 3 port supports Thunderbolt 3 devices as well as USB 3.1 and DisplayPort devices.

The four PCIe Gen3 lanes and the Thunderbolt 3 interface are capable of transfer rates up to 40Gbps (Gigabits per second), providing enough bandwidth to support whichever card is installed into the device as well as any additional devices connected in the daisy chain. The durable and rugged aluminum device makes it extremely portable so that it can easily be taken on location and moved from one system to another.

“Modern computers and especially laptops are often designed to be as lightweight, thin and portable as possible”, said Richard Wright, VP of Sales & Marketing for Akitio. “This often results in the need to add additional devices to either upgrade the specs or add additional functionality and this where the Akitio Thunder3 PCIe box comes in. The incredible 40Gbps bandwidth of Thunderbolt 3 provides our customers with the flexibility to install a plethora of PCIe cards into the Akitio PCIe Box to meet their demanding workflow requirements.”

The Thunder3 PCIe Box gives Sony Vegas and Adobe Premier users the ability to edit and playback multiple streams of HD and/or 4K content with enough headroom to connect up to two 4K displays simultaneously. The Thunder3 PCIe Box can easily be daisy chained to other Thunderbolt 3 devices, such as Akitio’s Thunder3 Duo Pro dual-bay storage, Thunder3 Quad 4-bay storage or Thunder3 PCIe SSD storage with an unprecedented data transfer rate of up to 2500MB/s.

“There has been tremendous industry momentum behind Thunderbolt 3 since we launched the technology a year ago, with all the major OEMs shipping Windows PCs with Thunderbolt 3 ports, unleashing new capabilities that were previously not possible,” said Jason Ziller, Director of Thunderbolt Marketing at Intel. “Akitio’s Thunder3 PCIe Box represents new and creative ways for users to take full advantage of 40Gbps performance and flexible connectivity only available with Thunderbolt.”

The Thunder3 PCIe Box is not designed to support GPU graphics cards and not all PCIe cards support Thunderbolt unexpected cable removal and hot-plug. In some cases, unsupported cards could lead to unpredictable system behavior. Please visit Akitio’s website for a list of compatible cards.

Pricing and Availability

The empty Thunder3 PCIe Box will be available in August 2016 with an MSRP of $299.99 and includes a 40Gbps 0.5m Thunderbolt 3 cable. Additional information can be found at www.akitio.com/expansion/thunder3-pcie-box.

About Thunderbolt 3

Thunderbolt 3 brings Thunderbolt to USB-C at speeds up to 40 Gb/s, creating one compact port that does it all – delivering the fastest, most versatile connection to any dock, display, or data device. For the first time, one computer port connects to Thunderbolt devices, every display, and billions of USB devices. A single cable now provides four times the data and twice the video bandwidth of any other cable, while also supplying power.

About Akitio

Established in 1992, Akitio is an international company specializing in the design, development and manufacturing of premium, high-quality external computer storage products and accessories with an emphasis on Thunderbolt technology. Akitio is a leading Thunderbolt developer and currently have some of the fastest and highest capacity Thunderbolt products on the market. Akitio US Headquarters are located in Orange County, California.

It all starts with Akitio!

Thunderbolt and the Thunderbolt logo are trademarks of Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries.