Computex is an opportunity for certain brands to show products that are sometimes innovative… and sometimes a little bizarre. MSI’s M.2 Xpander-Aero Slider Gen 5 is in between, but the idea could perhaps give Apple ideas for a Mac Pro or Mac Studio. Indeed, the PCI-Express expansion card allows you to connect two M.2 SSDs with the possibility of hot swapping them. A concept that is similar to the hard drive drawers that some may have known in the last century.
MSI’s card looks like a graphics card from a distance with its PCI-Express 16x interface (limited to eight lanes), huge fan and thickness (it requires two slots). But it is there to interface two M.2 22110 SSDs which slide into the card from the rear. 22110 SSDs are rare but the slots are generally compatible with the short versions, like the 2280 (80mm) or even 2242 (42mm, you get the idea). The two SSDs each have four PCI-Express 5.0 lines, which allows speeds of around 16 GB/s maximum with a suitable SSD. They are not strictly speaking external since they depend on the card, but the removable side is interesting all the same, like a memory card.
The presentation sheet spotted by our colleagues atITHome indicates that the fan is slaved to the SSDs, that it does not rotate in the absence of the latter and that it can be activated (or deactivated) manually. Please note, cards of this type are generally based on the Bifurcation in PCI-Express, which allows you to hardware divide an 8x connector (here) into two independent 4x devices. Although it is an effective and inexpensive solution, it requires explicit support from the motherboard – absent from Mac Pros – and is inoperable with Thunderbolt. Indeed, the standard supported by Intel and Apple only cables four lines, which reduces the very concept of bifurcation to nothing.
