StarTech.com Thunderbolt 3 PCIe Expansion Chassis, External Enclosure With One PCI Express Slot for Laptops / Desktops, TAA

Product works as described, I am curious if the clearance for using this decklink duo 2 card the connectors seem to be touching ad actually flexing the pcie card. I will probably get an extender ribbon cable and move the card over to the other lane so there is optimal area for cooling etc. needless to say though it works very seem less and well with drivers Installed

Used this in combination with StarTech's parallel port PCIe card to enable a Dell XPS 17 to control a PlasmaCAM machine. Saved us from having to buy a completely separate desktop computer to control it.

Very impressed by the build quality, although I wish the fans were easily user replaceable.[Edit] Apple in its infinite wisdom removed support for the Solarflare drivers needed for the 10Gb SFP+ card I had bought to use this Thunderbolt enclosure. I switched to use a StarTech NVMe PCIe card in this enclosure, moving from a USB 3.2 external enclosure. I hoped to avoid accidental cable removal (annoying to say the least) and to improve speeds. I have attached Black Magic speed comparisons between the two setups. Roughly 129% improvement in read score and 30% improvement in write scores (with 4 GB files). I managed to check off one more compatibility box in the tests. Time will tell if the cable still pops out, but I think Thunderbolt cables are much better in this regard. Also I now have SMART drive statistics including temperature readings for the NVMe drive in macOS!!! This in my opinion is huge. I would probably prefer the 10 GB SFP+ card in the enclosure, but I am not willing at this time to spend at least $150 for a new card. I am getting about 28C temperatures without load and after about a 30sec test with BlackMagic there was no change-- I attached a massive aluminum finned heatsink to NVMe drive on the PCIe card to help. (Sorry, not willing to burn out my NVMe drive for this review with a prolonged burn-in test.)I do have an issue on macOS Mojave using a Solarflare SFN-51xx PCIe 10 G SFP+ card. When creating additional virtual interfaces for VLANs, the interfaces are missing options in the Advanced -> Hardware section. In particular, the Manual selection does not offer Speed and Duplex settings. Might be a macOS glitch, it works on a Mac Pro 5.1, just not on a Mac mini over Thunderbolt with this enclosure. Unable to test with other enclosures.

I have no experience with any bus speed tests, but using this card for a BMD Decklink Duo 2 has been flawless. I’ve bought 4!

I had high hopes for this expansion.My use case is simple:I want to enable Firewire on a new Windows 10 Pro x64 laptop that has USB-C and USB 2.0.The main problem is that no laptops have a viable Firewire-capable hardware interface anymore.It used to be possible to enable Firewire via PCI Express card, and those have gone the way of the Dodo bird also.I have a Allen & Heath ZEDR16 Mixer that is Firewire only. Very nice, very expensive and I'm not able to use it any longer because Firewire compatibility seems to be isolated to only desktop PCIe expansion.I purchased the bundled deal from StarTech. The TB3 enclosure was 'supposed' to be compatible with USB-C (which I do have).I installed the device properly, and it was recognized in Windows 10 Pro x64, and immediately threw up a warning message that 'I may experience limited features due to compatibility issues'. Upon further research, I came to find out the following (via Microsoft)A Thunderbolt host can recognize and use a USB-C device, but a USB-C host cannot use a Thunderbolt 3 device. II confirmed with StarTech that they have no enclosures that are capable of having a PCIe16 card connected to a USB-C host. I asked about PCI Express USB adapters - No. I asked about PCIe enclosure for USB 2.0 - No. I find that really hard to believe.So now I have a $350 door stopper.Seems like StarTech should have mentioned this limitation as THE VERY FIRST THING in the product description.Designed for Apple Mac users who want to expand their systems with a PCIe16 card slot.StarTech makes great stuff - been using their products for a decade.Hardware manufacturers have made a complete mess of the USB standard with so many variations it's impossible to know what works or what compatible with each other (for the average layman). Is it M.1, M.2, USB C, USB 3, USB 3.1, or Thunderbolt 1/2/3?

Worked like a champ after I installed the computers thunderbolt drivers.using it for a PCIe Blackmagic 4k capture card.

Did not work and was sent back within a week and they charged me over $100 for a restocking fee. Beware

This piece works great, except it's so noisy that I'm having to return it. The fan is too loud for my liking. I bought it for a Universal Audio Octo PCIe card, which works perfectly, and there was no hassle getting my PC to detect it. I had an Akitio Thunder 2 chassis originally for my Mac but that is not compatible with my PC laptop (even with a Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter), so I bought this chassis instead. It meant that I couldn't use it on my Mac (trashcan) since my Mac doesn't have a TB3 port, but I still had the other Akitio chassis for the Mac if I needed to swap.I suppose if you didn't care about the fan, you could disable the fan and it would be silent, but is that something that you really want to do? I'd rather get another chassis that is a lot quieter. The Akitio was nice and quiet as well.If you're in a noisy environment and don't care about fan noise, this chassis should work perfectly for you. But if you're in an audio production setting and want things to be as quiet as possible, perhaps this may not be the best choice for you.