Sonnet Technologies has announced the Sonnet M.2 8×4 Silent Gen4 PCIe card, the latest offering in the company’s popular family of storage adapter cards that enable the installation of multiple SSDs into a computer PCIe card slot, with the full-height, full-length, single-width x16 PCIe 4.0 card providing eight NVMe M.2 SSD slots that support the installation of Gen4 (and Gen3) PCIe SSDs.
The M.2 8×4 Silent Gen4 PCIe card enables users to mount eight M.2 NVMe PCIe SSDs (sold separately) into a single x16 PCIe card slot using the highest-capacity SSDs, up to 64 TB of storage capacity may be installed. Operating system RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 10, and JBOD configurations are supported, providing users with fadded lexibility in configuring the SSDs for the best performance or data safety, or both.
For users who require very high-speed data transfer speeds for a smoother workflow and need added storage capacity for their computer — such as video editors working with 6K and greater resolution footage — an NVMe M.2 SSD-based upgrade can be important. Many computers do not include slots to support installing M.2 SSDs directly but do include PCIe expansion card slots, while other computers, such as the new Apple Mac Pro with Apple silicon, use proprietary SSDs, limiting the maximum storage capacity natively supported.
Compatible with macOS, Windows, and Linux, the M.2 8×4 Silent Gen4 PCIe card has a high-performance 48-lane PCIe 4.0 switch that provides 16 lanes of PCIe bandwidth to installed SSDs to help ensure optimum simultaneous performance possible from four to eight SSDs. As a result, when installed in a new Mac Pro — which is equipped with PCIe 4.0 card slots — the Sonnet card can support sustained transfer speeds of up to 30,000 MB/s read and 25,000 MB/s write, respectively, with four or more SSDs formatted as a RAID 0 volume.
The card’s passive heatsink is designed to prevent thermal throttling, enabling SSDs to maintain sustained peak performance without relying on fans that can get loud. (Thermal throttling is an SSD protection feature that prevents them from overheating by choking their performance until they cool down.)
The M.2 8×4 Silent Gen4 PCIe Card supports an array of Gen4 (and Gen3) NVMe SSDs (visit the Sonnet website for a list of compatible M.2 SSDs). The card does not require a computer that supports PCIe bifurcation, and is available now (part number FUS-SSD-8X4-E4S) from Sonnet and channel partners worldwide at the suggested retail price of $799.99. Go here for more specifics.
