OWC has announced the launch of the ThunderBay Flex 8 tower for multimedia professionals, which offers eight drive bays, a wide variety of ports for connecting peripherals and a PCIe slot for further expansion, all connected to the Mac via Thunderbolt 3 .
The ThunderBay Flex 8 resembles a black version of the Power Mac G5 and the original Mac Pro and opens to reveal eight SATA / SAS bays that can accept both 3,5-inch and 2,5-inch drives, the four bays are compatible with NVMe U.2 / M.2 drive. It also includes a PCIe x16 slot to add additional SSD storage or audio / video capture cards.
At the bottom front of the ThunderBay Flex 8 are a number of ports for connecting peripherals, such as a pair of 10Gb / s USB-A ports, a 10Gb / s USB-C port, and a CFexpress card reader and SD 4.0 card readers. On the back there are two Thunderbolt 3 ports (one upstream and one downstream at 15W) and a DisplayPort 1.4 port.
Pricing for the ThunderBay Flex 8 starts at $ 1.299 for the case alone, but it can also be ordered with different combinations of hard drives and capacities that can cost nearly $ 8.000.
