What appears to be a London-based hardware startup, ANIMAIONIC has launched two separate but very interesting hardware products for the professional Mac community.
Both are aimed at providing your Mac computers professional-class GPU expansion via external hareware units; both are designed to work in a seamless and beautiful way with a range of Macs.
Product 1—MAXIMUS
ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS an eGPU box glad in a beautiful dark gray metal enclosure with slotted grooves for venting and air-inflow. The product brings three PCIe slots to your compatible Mac computer.
Both single or double width and full length PCIe cards are supported (up to 312 mm) and the unit is designed for use with Apple Mac mini, MacBook Pro 13 and MacBook Pro 15/16 (three Thunderbolt 3 ports required) and the iMac Pro.
ANIMAIONIC MAXIMUS from the side view. Supports 3x PCIe cards slots.
The MAXIMUS unit can enable your Mac to power up with three PCIe cards in various combinations of GPUs, SATA, NVME drives controllers, audio and video processing and more. A built-in 1250W power supply fuels your PCIe cards.
Product 2—Mini
The ANIMAIONIC mini product turns your Apple Mac mini into a professional tool using a single purpose-built external enclosure that houses PCIe slots and dovetails beautifully with the Apple mini itself physically.
ANIMAIONIC MINI is another hardware product in the works oriented at turning the Apple Mac mini into a professional tool.
Functioning as a docking station for your Apple Mac mini, the ANIMAIONIC product is equal in width to the Mac mini and stands about 6 inches tall. The mini slots into a zone at the top. Vented sides reveals where the PCIe card slots are.
The product can support two GPUs and four SSD drives and comes with a built-in SD card reader. As a docking solution it provides the I/O ports found on the mini itself, including Ethernet, Thunderbolt 3, HDMI, two USB 3.1, audio and mini jack.
ANIMAIONIC Shipments
While these are beautifully designed products the company is crowd-sourcing at this current stage. We are unaware of other investment partnerships but have inquired with the company and are awaiting a response.
Another view of the MAXIMUS product under a Mac mini.
The Mini product is slated for Q3-2020 and the MAXIMUS product is slated for shipment in July assuming their funding goals are met.