OWC Debuts New Thunderbolt 3 Products: SSDs, PCIe Expansion Chassis, Six-Bay RAID, and External GPU

OWC has announced that it will be debuting a range of new Thunderbolt 3 products at the 2017 NAB Show this weekend in Las Vegas.

Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3
First up is the Envoy Pro EX, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with Thunderbolt 3. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC's existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 starts at $199.99.

Mercury Helios 3
OWC's new Mercury Helios 3 is a PCIe expansion chassis with a dedicated cooling fan and two Thunderbolt 3 ports. It can accommodate a half-length, full-height, double-width PCIe card. OWC said it will be available in the second quarter of 2017. Pricing was not disclosed.

Other products include the Helios FX external GPU powered by Thunderbolt 3, ThunderBay 6 six-bay RAID with Thunderbolt 3, and Mercury Viper portable Thunderbolt 3 SSD suitable for daisy chaining. OWC said the ThunderBay 6 is coming in late 2017, but no word on pricing or availability for the other products.

OWC's previously announced Thunderbolt 3 Dock and DEC for the 2016 MacBook Pro will also be on display at the show.

Tags: Thunderbolt 3, OWC

Top Rated Comments

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H3LL5P4WN

34 months ago

"Other products include the Helios FX external GPU powered by Thunderbolt 3..."

Why is the most important announcement here barely a footnote?

Rating: 13 Votes

OldSchoolMacGuy

34 months ago

Love OWC and have been a friend of Larry for more than 20 years, but I feel like they do more announcing of products than actual releasing of them.

Rating: 7 Votes

justperry

34 months ago

Wow, SSDs with speeds up to 40GB/s. Thats almost twice the speed of the RAM. Not bad!

Gb/s, not GB/s.

Rating: 6 Votes

justperry

34 months ago

First up is the Envoy Pro EX with Thunderbolt 3, a pocket-sized, bus-powered SSD with desktop-class performance and speeds up to 40 Gb/s. Storage capacities will start at 240GB. As it remains a prototype, no release date was specified. OWC's existing Envoy Pro EX with USB 3.0 ('https://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/ENVPROU3S240/') starts at $199.99.

I can tell you this, it won't be 40Gb/s, there are no SSD's with that speed, the bus (Thunderbolt 3) has the bandwidth but that's just it.

Rating: 4 Votes

MikhailT

34 months ago

One thing I don't like about OWC is that they list the throughput of the connection to tell you what speeds you can get... which is total BS. Sure TB 3 can do 40 Gb/s but an SSD can't. Not even freaking close. At best its shady marketing, at worst its an out right lie. Stupid things like this have kept my money in my pocket when it comes to OWC.

While I agree with you that it is marketing BS on OCW side for their own SSDs and their SSDs aren't going to be doing 40GBps, you are incorrect that an SSD can't do it. Sure, it can. Kingston has an upcoming data center SSD that can push nearly ~7GBps. ('http://www.thessdreview.com/featured/kingston-dcp1000-nvme-ssd-reaches-7gbs-worlds-fastest/')

40Gbps TB3 is around ~5GBps but less than that due to overhead.

Last year's Samsung 960 Pro PCIe SSD can do about 2GBps. Put 2 of them in Mercury Helios 3 with two PCIe slots and you can get it close enough to the max TB3 speed.

Intel's Optane SSD today ('http://www.anandtech.com/show/11209/intel-optane-ssd-dc-p4800x-review-a-deep-dive-into-3d-xpoint-enterprise-performance/2') is already doing 2GBps at low depth and that's just the first-gen.

Rating: 4 Votes

brentsg

34 months ago

I can't believe we haven't seen any Thunderbolt 3 docks with Thunderbolt 2 ports on them. The new stuff is great, but many of us still have TB2 products in use.

Yeah I know Apple made adapters, but I'm having to move away from OSX sadly.

Rating: 3 Votes

WhoDaKat

34 months ago

Rating: 3 Votes

leman

34 months ago

Gb/s, not GB/s.

Ups, I was totally sure I saw GB/s. Still respectable SSD speeds ;)

Rating: 2 Votes