Expansion chassis

Magma has expanded its range of PCI expansion chassis to include PCI Express expansion capabilities.

The PCI Express to PCI Express Expansion system provides a simple solution for expanding the available PCI Express slots of workstations and servers.

The system provides an efficient way to maximise a workstation or server’s total I/O capability.

The ExpressBox series provides a path to extend the available number of PCI Express slots while maintaining a consistent server or workstation configuration.

The series consists of a PCI Express host card, a cable and an external chassis. The chassis allows additional full-length PCI Express cards to be added to an existing server or workstation.

The series uses the host system’s BIOS to configure all the external chassis slots. The host computer system will see both the internal and external slots as native motherboard resources.

The ExpressBox series provides three expansion solutions:

ExpressBox4 provides four full-length PCI Express slots in a 2RU industry standard standalone chassis with its own power supply. The PCI Express slots use (x16) physical connectors to provide (x4) speed PCI Express slots.

Host system interface cards include both PCI Express (x8) card for desktop solutions and ExpressCard/34 for laptop solutions.

It provides seven full-length PCI Express slots in a 4RU industry standard chassis with a 500 W power supply.

The ExpressBox7 also uses (x16) physical controllers to provide (x4) speed PCI Express slots. The ExpressBox7 is only supported by the PCI Express (x8) host system interface card for desktop solutions.

ExpressBox7 Universal provides all the features of the ExpressBox7 while providing seven (x8) speed PCI Express expansion slots.