Multiple pci chassis on mac book pro.

[SplitTheDifferenceAudio]

Is it possible to have multiple thunderbolt chassis connected to a mac book pro?

I currently have a sonnet express iii chassis with 3 hdx cards.

I'd like to get a video card for my system to handle the video in pro tools better. Can I hook up another single card chassis to my mbp for the video card?

ProTools Ultimate 2021.3
HDX3
MBP 2015


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[Obsidian Dragon]

Technically this should work per the thunderbolt specifications. I would connect one chassis on the left and the other on the right of your MacBook Pro as there are two Thunderbolt busses with two port each. The two ports on the left are on the same buss and the two ports on the right are on the same buss. Putting both chassis on the same side may place too much demand on the buss and overload the maximum throughput or slow things down undesirably.

[SplitTheDifferenceAudio]

My 2015 MBP only has the 2 thundbolt ports on the left. It would only cost me about $60 to try this so Ill probably go ahead and give it a shot.

I eventually want to get a newer mac mini to replace the mbp.

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[Obsidian Dragon]

Sorry, I assumed you had a 2017 or newer MacBook Pro with the 4 thunderbolt 3 ports. With the 2015 Macbook Pro, both thunderbolt 2 ports are one the same buss so having your Sonic Express III with the 3 HDX cards and another thunderbolt chassis for a graphics card may be pushing it. It may depend on the graphics cards extra demand on the buss. You may get the benefit on the discrete video card but suffer on the data throughput to your HDX cards. In my opinion, that may not be worth it. Thunderbolt 2 is not as fast as thunderbolt 3 or 4.

The new M1 based Mac Mini has 2 thunderbolt 4 ports but again they are on the same buss, The M1 chip has an 8 core graphics processor onboard, so Protools should be happy. Keep in mind that the new release of Protools 2021.3 that just came out supports Big Sur but is still not certified for the M1 Macs yet. Several folks here are running M1 Macs with Protools 2021.3 with 3rd party interfaces just fine. The issue is that Avis had not released drivers for HDX cards that work with the M1 based Macs yet, so that is not working.