ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS Kickstarter - Add Three PCIe Slots to Your Mac

ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS Features

Last year, we already reported about the ANIMAIONIC Mac Mini docking station crowdfunding campaign. Unfortunately, the ANIMAIONIC team didn’t reach their goal, but they continue working on this project. Also, they listened to the customers, and they just launched a new Kickstarter campaign for a more “generic” docking station: the ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS.

Image credit: ANIMAIONIC

The ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS features three PCIe x16 slots (PCIe x4 electrically). It can take any standard single or double width and full-length PCIe cards. The MAXIMUS supports graphics cards, NVME SSD drives controllers, SATA drives controllers, audio/video cards including Blackmagic Design’s cards, network cards, and so on.

Image credit: ANIMAIONIC

To power everything, the ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS features a 1250W power supply. For example, if you want to run three AMD Radeon Vega 56 graphics cards – that draws between 300-370W of power each – the MAXIMUS should handle it perfectly. Below is a graphic comparison made by ANIMAIONIC to compare the results you can get by using the MAXIMUS.

The ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS loaded with three AMD Vega 56 GPU inside vs. standard Mac comparison chart. Image credit: ANIMAIONIC

To connect the MAXIMUS to your Mac, you’ll need three Thunderbolt 3 cables and ports for proper operation. On a 16-inch MacBook Pro that only features four Thunderbolt 3 ports, you better need the horsepower and performance increase to justify buying it.

The ANIMAIONINC MAXIMUS is compatible with the Mac Mini (2018), the iMac Pro, the 16-inch MacBook Pro, 15-inch MacBook Pros after 2016, and 13-inch MacBook Pros after 2017. It should also be compatible with the latest Mac Pro, but it doesn’t make sense so. Of course, your Mac needs to be running on macOS Catalina if you want to run external GPUs.

Image credit: ANIMAIONIC

Price and Availability

The ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS Kickstarter campaign is live until the 19th March 2020. You can already pre-order it for $450.00/€420.00 as a super early bird pledger. There is no information about the possible shipping date at the moment.

As always, please be aware that this is a crowdfunding project and not sold by a retailer, so do your research accordingly. cinema5D does its best to share only the projects that look legitimate, but as with any crowdfunded campaign, there’s always the risk of the product or service never coming to fruition.

What do you think about the ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS? Do you think the performance improvement is worth the cost? Let us know in the comment below!