Sonnet Releases Tempo PCIe Card That Supports Two SSDs

By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Sonnet has released two Tempo PCIe SSD expansion cards.

Sonnet is launching two variants of its Tempo SSD Expansion Cards that allow buyers to mount either one (Tempo SSD) or two (Tempo SSD Pro) 2.5" SSDs. Since the card features a PCIe connector, it enables users to reap the benefit of a SATA3 SSD without needing the requisite SATA3 connector(s) on their motherboard. Sonnet also notes that when mounted in an external enclosure and connected via Thunderbolt, a Mac Pro can boot off the expansion card.

For those interested, the Pro variant allows users to configure the SDDs to run in a RAID-0 configuration for even faster speeds.

At the time of writing MSRP pricing is set at €151 for the Tempo SSD and €303 for the Tempo SSD Pro. No word on availability.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

15 Comments Comment from the forums
  • alidan
    how much speed can a pcie solt handle? because those ssds could get 1000 write speed and i usually see that speed in an 8x card option
    Reply
  • InvalidError
    alidanhow much speed can a pcie solt handle? because those ssds could get 1000 write speed and i usually see that speed in an 8x card optionPCIe 2.0 is 5Gbps per lane so an x4 slot would be 20Gbps or ~2GB/sec after overhead.
    Reply
  • merikafyeah
    That's a pretty looooong card. Any case that can accommodate a card that long would probably be fitted with a motherboard that supports SATA 6.0Gb/s anyways, leaving the target market for this card strikingly thin.

    The non-Pro model already costs close to $200 WITHOUT including the actual SSD, and the Pro model is about $400 dollars! For that money I'd rather get a real PCI-E storage card that isn't limited by SATA speeds, like the OWC Mercury Accelsior:
    http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/PCIe/OWC/Mercury_Accelsior/RAID

    There's also the RevoDrives but I have since sworn not to touch anything OCZ since a number of bad experiences with their SSDs.
    Reply
  • Vatharian
    I completely don't understand the point of this hardware. You want PCI-e SSD? What for? Oh, enterprise? Get FusionIO or Microm. This is full height card, so no 1U and 2U servers. But wait, you can get full total 14 SSDs extra on PCI-e slots on full ATX! Wow, that's fine, for jbods, for 7x150$. So... what do you do? You get 99$ HighPoint RocketRaid 640 that has 4 SATA ports, and hardware RAID 5, then you get 35$ 6-in-1 2.5" dock (Chieftec CTM-1062S), and... you can have for 868$ in total place for 28 SSDs with hardware Marvell-based RAID-5 (and place for two spares), in comparison to 1050$ and 14 SSDs.
    As for OCZs - I've got two Revodrives. The SSDs on it often fell off of their connectors. Result: data loss. After two months the vibration of starting fans and HDDs on power-on was enough to knock it off. Also I had total of 8 different OCZ SSDs, including Vertex 1, 2, 3, Onyx and Agility series. I had to RMA all of them, most of them twice. They were manufacturing fine RAMs, and all of my DDR-2 era machines were on OCZ, but now I'm surprised they still exist.
    Reply
  • Non-Euclidean
    Is there really a market for this?
    Reply
  • fearless1333
    alidanhow much speed can a pcie solt handle? because those ssds could get 1000 write speed and i usually see that speed in an 8x card option
    Some enterprise SSDs go way above 1000 write speed, I wouldn't worry about PCI-E bandwidth bottlenecking the SSDs.
    Reply
  • halcyon
    This device is meant, primarily, for Mac Pro's. ...and, therefore, it can reach and feel several generations back. That's the market for this. A PCIe RAID card that you can slink a couple SATA3 SSDs to.

    Options are good and this provides just another option for the Mac Pro market which is still huge.
    Reply
  • merikafyeah
    halcyonThis device is meant, primarily, for Mac Pro's. ...and, therefore, it can reach and feel several generations back. That's the market for this. A PCIe RAID card that you can slink a couple SATA3 SSDs to.Options are good and this provides just another option for the Mac Pro market which is still huge.The OWC Mercury Accelsior is also targeted towards a Mac Pro market and is a much better buy than these Tempo cards which are basically glorified PCI-E SATA adapters that are still limited by the SATA protocol and overhead.
    Reply
  • alidan
    fearless1333Some enterprise SSDs go way above 1000 write speed, I wouldn't worry about PCI-E bandwidth bottlenecking the SSDs.what i usually see is an 8x paired with ssds, and this appears to be a single lane, which is what i was wondering about, seems like a decent option depending on over all cost and size
    Reply
  • halcyon
    merikafyeahThe OWC Mercury Accelsior is also targeted towards a Mac Pro market and is a much better buy than these Tempo cards which are basically glorified PCI-E SATA adapters that are still limited by the SATA protocol and overhead.While the Accelsior may be higher performing it doesn't offer the flexibility. You can use any 2 SSDs you'd like with the Sonnet.
    Reply