why does the nest2 have 4 USB ports and the nest4 does not?
http://squirrelsresearch.com/acorn-nest-x2g/AcornNest X2G allows you to host two Acorn units in any PCIe 2.0 or greater x8 or x16 slot and provides four USB PCIe riser connections for accelerated GPUs without any special motherboard requirements.
versus
http://squirrelsresearch.com/acorn-nest-x4/AcornNest X4 allows you to host four Acorn units in a PCIe 2.0/3.0 x16 or PCIe 3.0 x8 slot without any special motherboard requirements.
It includes an onboard DMA engine to reduce CPU load, as well as advanced Acorn power utilization and performance monitoring.
That doesnt answer the question of WHY. It says that the 2x has USB ports. And doesnt say anything about the 4x lacking them. Why does one have it and the other does not? What was the reason for not including them on the 4x? Why are they necessary at all?
The 2 acorn is better for some boards
the 4 acorn is better for others.
If you have this board
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157801&cm_re=taichi_x399-_-13-157-801-_-Productit has 3 slots so it can not do a lot of gpus only 3
add 2 of 2x nests you can then do 8 gpus
If you have this board
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138449&cm_re=biostar_b250-_-13-138-449-_-Productit has slots so put the 4 acorn nest in and it will work on boosting all the 1x slots.
so the nests work better with different board styles.
makes sense to me.
I would complain that the real problem done with the entire acorn project was that they did not build a few dozen acorns and give demos of their uses
I did not know whether to buy a 2 acorn nest or a 4 acorn nest.
I purchased a 2 acorn nest and a pair of acorns to use in this board
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157785&cm_re=taichi_x399-_-13-157-785-_-Productmy board can run 5 cards right now.
but If I pull a card and add the 2 acorn nest I could do 8 cards So I did buy the correct one for my board.
I got bad vibes with the company's way of demoing the gear. I took a refund.
I will now wait for someone else to show a 2 acorn nest running on a x399 taichi if it seems okay I will try to get some.
I have been doing this game since 2011 well really 2012 and I am tired of the slow roll outs.
I like that they built this.
I like that it may be nice.
I really like that I will let someone else test it out.