OWC Mercury Helios
Thunderbolt™ 2 Single Slot Expansion Chassis For PCIe Cards
Thunderbolt 2 / Mac / PC
- Features an x16 PCIe 2.0 double width card slot*.
- Daisy-chain support for up to five additional Thunderbolt peripherals
- Near-silent operation
- Plug and Play - no drivers needed.**
Tap Into the Power of PCIe and Thunderbolt 2
The OWC Mercury Helios PCIe expansion chassis gives users of Thunderbolt equipped Macs the ability to tap into a huge variety of pro-level performance PCIe cards, previously the sole domain of desktop workstations. Helios utilizes Thunderbolt 2 and PCIe 2.0 to deliver nearly unlimited expansion potential to your Mac. Get empowered with the flexibility to upgrade the capabilities of almost any workflow or workstation.
Expansion Comes Standard
Helios features one half-length (up to 7.75"), full-height, double-width x16 PCIe 2.0 slot to provide a vast array of expansion options. And two Thunderbolt 2 ports means that Helios will support up to an additional five daisy-chained Thunderbolt peripherals.
Helios is fast and flexible with phenomenal throughput up to 20Gb/s. The perfectly simple solution to add high-performance PCIe cards made for video production, transcoding, audio processing, data storage and much more. Finally the functionality and productivity gains of these PCIe cards are easily accessible through your ThunderBolt connection.
Helios supports a huge variety of PCIe cards, including:
- Fibre Channel.
- 10GbE Network Interface Controller.
- Video capture.
- Digital audio.
- Solid State Drive.
- SAS controllers such as the OWC Jupiter.
- FireWire, USB 3.0, or eSATA host adapter cards.
Other Outstanding Features:
- Automatically powers on/off with your computer.
- Hot-pluggable - no need to power off to connect and disconnect devices.***
- Bus-power support for one Thunderbolt device.****
- Rugged yet lightweight aluminum housing goes anywhere your work takes you.
* Thunderbolt limits PCIe x8 and x16 cards to x4 data lanes.
** Thunderbolt-aware drivers may be needed for PCIe card.
*** If any devices are connected to the PCIe card, make sure to properly remove them before disconnecting Helios.
**** Thunderbolt bus-powered device must be the last device on the chain.
If your OWC or NewerTech brand product should require service during the warranty coverage period, we are committed to delivering the fastest possible service.
Upon receipt of your unit, OWC will make every attempt to service it and arrange shipping back to you all within 48 weekday (Monday-Friday) business hours, excluding U.S. national holidays. This warranty service timeframe does not include data recovery attempts, out of stock items/components, or upgrade/product replacements.
Please allow up to seven additional business days if requesting optional OWC Level 1 Data Recovery services.
Read additional information.
OWC's Step-by-Step Install Video