Echo Express SE III/SE IIIe Support Library

Description: English user's guide for Sonnet's Echo Express SE III and Echo Express SE IIIe desktop Thunderbolt to PCIe card expansion systems. This is revision J of this manual.

Description: English user's guide for Sonnet's Echo Express III-D desktop Thunderbolt-to-PCIe card expansion chassis.

Description: This is the English language user's guide for Sonnet's Echo Express SE IIIe Thunderbolt 3 to PCIe card expansion chassis.

This is revision A of this document.

This is the Certificate of Conformity for the 120W power supply provided with the Echo Express SE IIIe.

The 12V tolerance is only +/-8%. Sonnet does not recommend attempting to power these units from an unregulated 12V source.

If you feel you need a much quieter fan, the following Noctua fan will have the correct airflow. This fan has a three-pin connector, but it will work connected to the Sonnet two-pin header. Just make sure that the black and red wires get connected to the header.

The problems can be very different (some ports fail, multiple cards in the same chassis have issue, video distortion, video/audio lag, etc.)

Update the firmware on the BMD card to the current version, and the issue in the Echo Express will be resolved on both Windows and macOS.

The problems can be very different (some ports fail, multiple cards in the same chassis have issue, video distortion, video/audio lag, etc.)

Update the firmware on the BMD card to the current version, and the issue in the Echo will be resolved on both Windows and macOS.

When you boot an M1 or M2 Mac with a multi-slot PCIe Expansion Chassis connected —AND— you have a monitor or USB device connected to the downstream port of the PCIe expansion chassis, one of the PCIe cards may not enumerate.

Solution: After booting, Plug in PCIe chassis, monitor or USB device.

The Echo Express SE IIIe comes with a 120W power supply that provides 12V at 10A. The SE IIIe can tolerate 12V +/-8%.

The power budget is:

15W for upstream power delivery to the computer (if your computer is otherwise powered, you do not need)

15W for downstream bus power (if you have no downstream device or a wall-powered downstream device, you do not need)

75W (25W each) for three PCIe cards (you need to budget for your PCIe cards; most cards do not take nearly this much)

10W for internal use (required)

The connector is 5.5mm/2.4mm.

Four spring contacts on connector 2.4mm inner barrel required at 120W.

Two spring contacts on connector 2.4mm inner barrel required at 60W.

When using Matrox Cards in a Thunderbolt Expansion chassis, you need to disable Fast Startup under Windows 10.

To disable Fast Startup, first, open your power options by hitting Windows+X or right-clicking your Start menu and selecting Power Options. In the Power Options window, click "Choose what the power buttons do."

If this is the first time you've messed with these settings, you'll need click "Change settings that are currently unavailable" to make the Fast Startup option available for configuration.

Scroll to the bottom of the window and you should see "Turn on fast startup (recommended)", along with other shutdown settings. Just uncheck this box to disable Fast Startup. Save your changes and shut down your system.

What is the BlackMagic Decklink 8K Pro capable of in Thunderbolt PCIe expansion chassis.

These cards are PCIe 3.0x8 cards and may not achieve maximum bandwidth or number of video channels over Thunderbolt 3, which provides PCIe 3.0x4. Thunderbolt 4 does not help with this since it has PCIE 3.0x1. Thunderbolt 5 is PCIE 4.0x4, and because there is more bandwidth available back to the computer, it does improve the performance. There is not a Thunderbolt chassis available that can give you a PCIe 3.0x8 connection. Here is some independent real world testing data.

Thunderbolt 3

4K60-Up to 2 Streams

4K50-Up to 3 Streams

1080p60-Up to 6 Streams

Thunderbolt 5

4K60-Up to 3 Streams

4K50-Up to 4 Streams

1080p60-Up to 6 Streams

My Black Magic Card is not working.

Can you confirm that only your BlackMagic card is not working? Are other cards working without issue?

If so, make sure that the power cable is connected to the 8K Pro card, and the firmware of the card is updated.
See our tech notes here for more information.

Other customers have claimed that BlackMagic cards may require a firmware update to function well in newer operating systems and with newer computers like M-series Mac computers in Thunderbolt chassis.

These firmware updates may need to be installed sequentially:
Uninstall current desktop video software... Install version 10.10, install driver/firmware, then uninstall.
Install version 11.7, install driver/firmware, then uninstall.
Then install version 12.x, install driver/firmware…
We have seen that this may help with unusual issues like this.

See our tech notes above for more information.

BlackMagic may have more details regarding this than we are aware of.

A customer of ours reported the following:
"Sure enough the fix required plugging in the mini USB port on the side of the decklink card into my computer with the pci card removed from the Sonnet frame. BMD Desktop Video immediately recognized the device as needing a firmware update. Update was completed after a minute and the card functioned properly and was recognized by the software after plugging into the Sonnet enclosure again."