Sonnet today announced that it added another model to its Echo family of Thunderbolt expansion chassis for PCIe cards, the US$339.95 Echo Express SE. The new, lower cost device enables the use of a variety of PCIe adapter cards, originally designed for use in desktop computers, with any computer equipped with a Thunderbolt port.

According to Sonnet CEO Robert Farnsworth, the Echo Express SE was designed for users needing a simple way to connect an adapter card to their computer, and supports the majority of Thunderbolt-compatible PCIe cards. It weighs in at 2.4 pounds and measures 5.7 inches wide by 8.8 inches long by 2.9 inches tall.

The new chassis supports a single half-length (up to 6.5 inches long), full-height, single-width, x8 PCIe 2.0 card and ships with an external 60W power supply. Like the other Echo Express expansion chassis, the SE has dual Thunderbolt ports to support daisy chaining of devices, and features a temperature-controlled fan to help keep hot-running cards cool; when not needed, the fan slows down to a whisper. The SE also conserves energy by powering on and off with the computer to which it’s attached.

The Echo Express SE enables the use of Thunderbolt-compatible professional video capture, audio interface, SAS and SATA HBA, 8Gb Fibre Channel, 10 Gigabit Ethernet, and RAID controller cards with the iMac, Mac mini, MacBook Air, and MacBook Pro computers equipped with a Thunderbolt port. The list of compatible cards is available on Sonnet’s website. More information on the product and compatible PCIe expansion cards is available at http://www.sonnettech.com/product/echoexpressse.html .