The following will be shared to highlight the subject's relevance to different communities.

So...

• Data Hoarders - cost effective low entry into thunderbolt expansion Mac or no Mac.
• Apple / Apple Data Hoarders - great alternative to the many options out there and won't break the bank.
• eGPU folk - Once you guys figure out Kexts or system Extensions for AMDs, your ti82 based. enclosures should work.

There is always something new to learn even from already visited subjects, paths and results.

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There will be those that will trash talk Apple and in the point I will make later I would agree mostly.

I have found what I believe would be a Unicorn, as far as pricing and capability and a bit of a sleeper like Saab 92x or Golf GTI.

So long story short of how I arrived at the current setup, I started with:

• Mac mini with a 2 Bay QNAP
• on to a chrome box with 4 Bay QNAP
• to a Mac Pro 2012 with upgrades and housed 8 drives
• HP Gen8 Mini
• Custom PC with server parts
  • then migrated to consumer and shrank the case after being bitten by Lian Li
• Finally back to a Mac and purchased a Thunderbolt drive cage

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So my conundrum wasI wanted to go Thunderbolt, get rid of the PC cases, go back to macOS (virgin) and go small..... and still be frugalish. I ended up purchasing an Akitio Thunder3 Quad. Its a 4 bay Thunderbolt 3 drive cage with a display port. I purchased this rather the the OWC branded one as it was nearly half the price. But as the site states its Windows only.....

With a few tweaks I was able to get it up and running with 40GB upstream. It was not always straight forward and there were shortcuts that could be taken at times.

• To use with Thunderbolt Macs 2014 and prior
  • Use Apple's Thunderbolt 2 to Thunderbolt 3 adapter
  • No software hijinks.
• To use with 2015 Macs (firmware blocks Device until after the OS loads)
  • use the aforementioned adapter
  • Software needed (Sierra through Catalina)
    • 1. Thunderbolt3Unblocker, this requires a replug after restarts
    • 2. tb3-enabler, devices can be left plugged in after restart but requires more work (in Catalina work has to be done in recovery)
    • Only option 1. above works in Big Sur, option 2. is difficult to write read-only OS
• To use with 2016 - intel 2020 Macs (firmware blocks Device until after the OS loads)
  • Software requirements mentioned in 2015 section
  • Use regular Thunderbolt 3 cables
• last note: one can use Purge-Wrangler.sh, it'll automate most of what's needed aside from disabling SIP, it'll even remind you if changes were made after an OS update. Best of all:
  • devices can remain plugged in after a restart
  • Works with Big Sur

The reason for all the hurdle jumping is due to the fact that the Thunder3 was released before Apple finalized their requirements for Thunderbolt 3. The Thunder3 has a Ti82 chipset which Apple actively blocks for what ever reason in favor of Ti83. Personally a dick move as I used the cages with every device mentioned and never had a problem (the output power delivery is only 15W so that's the only downside I can think of).

Now for the interesting part. Remember I said I would only mostly agree with trashing Apple? I believe the blocks may have had to do Intel licensing or whatever agreement they had. I am getting to the reason I believe this. I was searching through the pages of eGPU.io and there were references to the Ti82 chipset and then I stumbled along discussions of the M1 chip.

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This prompted me to reachout to my nearest Microcenter and see if they had any M1 Macs on display.

They were nice enough to allow me to bring one of my 4 cages in sans the drives and plug it in. I feel vindicated in buying the AKitio Thunder3 as the Mac M1 immdiately recognized the hardware and provided d details in relation to upstream. Where as on unmodified macOS it itr would only list the vendor and firmware version. even though the device is still marked unsupported it is recognized just like my Macs at home.

This would explain pre-2015 Macs not having an issue with the cages and 2015 - 2020 they were firmware blocked.

Since its Apple Silicon, whatever "agreements" there were with Intel no longer applied so no need to block a chipset that may not even be in use anymore. So even though there was no real reason to block Ti82, we don't know how beholden Apple was to Intel to put in the effort to block it.

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Thank you to Microcenter for assisting with my little M1 trial. I am fairly confident with the result and will be upgrading to M1s allowing me to get a 5 year minimum out of my arrays before needing to upgrade. YMMV, if further confirmation is needed, one can always buy a Mini from Amazon and return it.

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The Akitio Thunder3 is an excellent bargain for under 300, I purchased all of mine for around $230 average.