You did not tell us what computer you plan to use this with? Assuming an M1 Pro/max or M2 pro/max, of the items you listed, I recommend the ACASIS TBU405 enclosure and FireCuda 530 SSD. FireCuda 530 has a very good endurance spec. The Sabrent TB3 enclosure uses an older controller and is slower compared to the TBU405.
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Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures
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Macs don’t support 20Gbps via USB 3.2 Gen 2x2, so you’ll only get 10Gbps with a 20Gbps enclosure. It’s either 40Gbps via Thunderbolt 3/4 or 10Gbps via USB-C.
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Looks like I may have found a possible solution for my Samsung X5's overheating and slowdowns! I had an old GeForce graphics card, so I removed the huge heatsink, cleaned it with alchool and have just placed the X5 on top of the heatsink (the side that usually gets hotter). Before this speeds were totally unstable and slowing down to literally hard drive speeds because of the thermal throttling. Since I placed the X5 on that huge heatsink its speeds seem very stable. Reads are always at the expected max of around 2800 MB/sec while writes somewhere between 1200 and 1500 MB/sec, which is far from the expected max of 2300 but still A LOT better than before and I can see a dramatic difference when for example restoring a large Postgres database locally.
Since this seems to be helping a lot already, next thing I want to do is buy some thermal pad and stick it between the X5 case and the heatsink so it transfers the heat even more easily. I don't care if it looks weird since it's hidden behind the displays and anyway this is the boot drive for my M1 mini, it stays always at home (I have a T5 that I could move around if needed, but never happened so far).
Any suggestion for a thermal pad considering that I would use it between the X5 case and the heatsink, so not directly touching the chips? Also is my assumption that this would help transfer the heat even better, correct?
Thanks!
Since this seems to be helping a lot already, next thing I want to do is buy some thermal pad and stick it between the X5 case and the heatsink so it transfers the heat even more easily. I don't care if it looks weird since it's hidden behind the displays and anyway this is the boot drive for my M1 mini, it stays always at home (I have a T5 that I could move around if needed, but never happened so far).
Any suggestion for a thermal pad considering that I would use it between the X5 case and the heatsink, so not directly touching the chips? Also is my assumption that this would help transfer the heat even better, correct?
Thanks!
Sorry, it's for use as main drive with the M1 mini first gen. Thanks for the clarification about the controller. For now I am taking notes because I may be able to avoid replacing the X5 I currently have after all, see my last post.
Someone please explain this: I just tried using Trim Enabler, toggled it on, rebooted and for the first time ever I saw the FULL max speeds of 2836 MB/sec for reads and 2370 MB/sec for writes with my Samsung X5!!!!
Before this writes never went above 1500 and it only happened a few times. I waited a minute and repeated the test and writes were back at 1500 my this was the first time I ever saw 2300.
How is this possible considering that TRIM support, according to System Information, was already enabled for the X5?
Before this writes never went above 1500 and it only happened a few times. I waited a minute and repeated the test and writes were back at 1500 my this was the first time I ever saw 2300.
How is this possible considering that TRIM support, according to System Information, was already enabled for the X5?
First MacRumors post . . . wanted to thank everyone who has contributed to this thread, and summarize what I learned (which culminated in my recent enclosure and NMVe purchase):
What I ended up buying (which I never would have discovered without this thread):
Acasis TBU42 hub (spent $20 extra for Acasis 65W power supply)
WD_Black SN770 1TB
I get BlackMagic speeds between 2700-2800 MB/s for both read and write with this setup and my Mac Mini m2 Pro.
I have my Mac Mini, a large UPS, and all the cord tangle very hidden away. The only thing that pokes out of that hidden mess is my Acasis TBU42, from which I power things like my iPhone, Apple Watch, kindle, etc.
Minor comment about TBU42 - the site says that it only supports Thunderbolt - it's ambiguous what that means. Turns out that if you use the USB-C ports it is Thunderbolt only, but if you use the USB-A port it does allow data communication so you can back up your iPhone - found this out experimentally as what it does with my iPhone varies depending on whether I hook it up to USB-C (power only) or USB-A (power + data).
- NVMe SSDs are so fast that they exceed the limits of Thunderbolt 3 (or 4)
- The following is needed to achieve (close to) Thunderbolt 3 max speeds of nearly 3000 MB/s
- Thunderbolt 3 or 4 ports on both sides
- Thunderbolt 3 or 4 cable
- Your computer system must support PCI Express
- 4 lanes in SSD enclosure
- Sufficiently cooled enclosure so that throttling does not automatically kick in
- Be sure to get an SSD brand that works well with Mac OS and with the enclosure you choose. Samsung Pro and Western Digital's WD_Black series are both SSDs models that successfully work flawlessly and near top possible Thunderbolt 3 speeds with Macs.
- Note: if you get an enclosure that does NOT have Thunderbolt 3 NVMe support, you'll be limited to at most 1/4 of these speeds as it will be USB 3.2 gen 2 (Macs do not support 3.2 gen 2x2)
- External NVMe are surprisingly economical:
- If you want to spend < $150 on an NVMe enclosure, get Acasis or Orico, each of which sell several models that support Thunderbolt 3.
- Though certain SSD models (Samsung 980 Pro, WD SN850x) achieve higher speeds in benchmarks, they cost considerably more and this extra speed is wasted if they will only be used in an external thunderbolt 3 enclosure.
- A particularly inexpensive SSD model that is just about as fast within an external Thunderbolt enclosure: WD SN770 $60 for 1TB, $120 for 2TB.
- There are NVMe enclosures that are way cheaper - even $25 - but they don't support Thunderbolt 3. So if you don't want to spend $100-$150 now on a Thunderbolt 3 enclosure, you start with the cheap NVMe enclosure and switch later if you desire - and just move your NVMe SSD over to the new enclosure.
- For the above reasons, I think NVME is the only sensible external 1GB SSD option for consumers that own a computer system that includes PCI Express and Thunderbolt 3 ports. And my guess is that within a few months, that will be true for 2GB as well, as prices continue to fall.
What I ended up buying (which I never would have discovered without this thread):
Acasis TBU42 hub (spent $20 extra for Acasis 65W power supply)
WD_Black SN770 1TB
I get BlackMagic speeds between 2700-2800 MB/s for both read and write with this setup and my Mac Mini m2 Pro.
I have my Mac Mini, a large UPS, and all the cord tangle very hidden away. The only thing that pokes out of that hidden mess is my Acasis TBU42, from which I power things like my iPhone, Apple Watch, kindle, etc.
Minor comment about TBU42 - the site says that it only supports Thunderbolt - it's ambiguous what that means. Turns out that if you use the USB-C ports it is Thunderbolt only, but if you use the USB-A port it does allow data communication so you can back up your iPhone - found this out experimentally as what it does with my iPhone varies depending on whether I hook it up to USB-C (power only) or USB-A (power + data).
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I spoke too soon in my previous posts and the problem represented and the speeds with the Samsung dropped a lot when too hot.
I just ordered the Acasis and the Firecuda as you suggested. I hope I can get a better and more stable performance with this combo and forget about overheating issues.
When I receive the Acasis+Firecuda, can I use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the contents of the Samsung X5, which I use as main/boot drive, to the Firecuda? Will the new drive be bootable?
I am not sure about CCC. I recall there were some APFS issues a while ago with cloning a boot disk and I do not know what the current status is. You can use CCC or Disk Utility Restore to create a clone if you boot from a different disk.
I changed my order and replaced the Firecuda with the Samsung 980 Pro since I read on Acasis' own website and pdfs that they recommend that SSD for the best results with their enclosure.
Thanks, will try that
They do get excellent results with Samsung 980 Pro. They also get excellent results with a number of WD_Black models, including the less expensive SN770. The English portion of their website is a little out of date - a year ago there was an issue that lowered write speeds on several WD_Black models that has since been corrected, according to earlier posts on this thread. If you go back through this thread, you'll see that a number of posters have all had good results with both Samsung Pro models and with WD_Black.I changed my order and replaced the Firecuda with the Samsung 980 Pro since I read on Acasis' own website and pdfs that they recommend that SSD for the best results with their enclosure.
Thanks, will try that
One thing I prefer about the WD_Black SN770 compared with some of the fastest models is that it runs slightly cooler. But that probably doesn't matter for normal use as all of these highly touted models should be plenty cool with typical use.
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I do not know what the difference in price is for you but incase you are not aware, endurance (TBW) of the Firecuda 530 1TB (1275TBW) is more than 2x the endurance of the 980 PRO 1TB (600 TBW).
Did I make a mistake? I just thought that buying the drive they recommend for their case would guarantee optimal results. The order has been dispatched already..
The 980 Pro is a great drive - your bottleneck won't be the drive, it will be the chipset in the enclosure or the TB3 port itself. I have used 980 Pro's in several external enclosures and they have always been fine, even under sustained read/writes.
I currently have a couple of Glyph Atom Pro Drives as portable units (which I also tend to edit FCPX projects with most of the time), and a few OWC ThunderBlade drives using SoftRAID. Truth be told I rarely use the ThunderBlade drives so may sell one or two at some point.
If I was going to purchase an enclosure right now I'd most likely opt for the Orico in the video I posted a page or two back, along with a 980 Pro or a Sabrent Rocket.
The Sabrent Dual drive enclosure is great too, but I don't like the additional power brick that it comes with - would be perfect if it was a more 'portable' solution.
The Samsung X5 was never supposed to be a mainstream drive - it was more a concept, or a show of what Samsung could achieve. They ended up putting them out for sale after all the interest, but it didn't take off as well as they had expected due to the price, as well as the thermal throttling. I sold my drive only after a few weeks ownership - initial thoughts were fantastic, but as I used the drive and the thermal throttling became apparent, it had to go! Their USB-C drives, by comparison, have sold much better.
I currently have a couple of Glyph Atom Pro Drives as portable units (which I also tend to edit FCPX projects with most of the time), and a few OWC ThunderBlade drives using SoftRAID. Truth be told I rarely use the ThunderBlade drives so may sell one or two at some point.
If I was going to purchase an enclosure right now I'd most likely opt for the Orico in the video I posted a page or two back, along with a 980 Pro or a Sabrent Rocket.
The Sabrent Dual drive enclosure is great too, but I don't like the additional power brick that it comes with - would be perfect if it was a more 'portable' solution.
The Samsung X5 was never supposed to be a mainstream drive - it was more a concept, or a show of what Samsung could achieve. They ended up putting them out for sale after all the interest, but it didn't take off as well as they had expected due to the price, as well as the thermal throttling. I sold my drive only after a few weeks ownership - initial thoughts were fantastic, but as I used the drive and the thermal throttling became apparent, it had to go! Their USB-C drives, by comparison, have sold much better.
Assuming your use case is that of a typical consumer, you'll be fine. The estimated life of an SSD matters a lot for data centers where servers operate 24/7 and are writing to the drive frequently, so SSD life is measured in years. If you use your SSD for typical consumer things, or even a little more that that (if, for example, you do a bit of photo/video editing as a hobby), the SSD life will be measured in decades.
All these different specs comparing the various NMVe drives recommended on this thread are likely to be relevant for cases where the drive is pushed hard in a data center, but likely to be irrelevant for regular consumer use.
I am very disappointed with the X5. It cost me quite a a lot when I bought it and I am regretting buying it. The level thermal throttling and the resulting loss of performance is just plain ridiculous.
I am a backend developer, so I mostly code. I don't do things like video editing etc. The most "disk intensive" operation I do is literally just when I restore production data locally to investigate performance issues and the like. How long can I expect the Samsung 980 Pro to last if I don't do anything that uses the disk too much?
600TBW means 600 Terabytes Written. Supposedly, the typical user writes 10 to 35 GB/day. Let's assume you use more than the average user, and that various software or system advances over the next decade cause even more to be written, so that you write 80GB/day (which you probably won't do in the early years of owning the drive).
80 GB x 365 days is just under 30 TB/year.
So 20 years is about how long you can expect a 1GB Samsung Pro 980 to last. If you got a 2GB Samsung Pro 980, you could double that estimate to 40 years.
That would only happen if you frequently run out of memory, and it would only happen to your boot drive (which for most people is the internal drive, not the external drive). Try leaving an open Activity Monitor on your system for a week and monitor to see how often you see Swap Used above 0. If it is usually 0, and just occasionally some number for Swap that is less than 1GB, then that is normal use and not going to result in much use of the SSD your system boots from.
If, like most people, you boot your Mac OS off your internal drive and are only using your external drive for storing (non-system) files, the external drive will not be used as the swap drive so this issue is not relevant.
I actually boot from the external drive since the internal one is too small. I wish I had spent more money when I bought the mini but I saved on storage at the time. At the moment I am using only a tiny amount of swap but will keep an eye on it, thanks.
You are pretty much spot on with your analysis. Although I would like to point out that if you end up getting a Gen 3 ssd like the SN770 you will most likely not able to get the speed of Gen 4 ssd like the SN850x and the likes. For those where a difference of 300-400MB/s matter, then Gen 4 SSDs are essential, albeit I cannot speak for other Gen 4 SSDs other than the 850X as I own 2 of them with the Acasis TBU405 enclosures. Is it a waste since Gen 4s are capable of hitting 6-7k MB/s, well perhaps. But we choose what is best in our specific situation, and moreover the difference in prices between a Gen3 and Gen4 SSDs is still tolerable. So for those who don't mind then I say why not?
I would also recommend getting enclosures that are screw-in instead of those "screwless" ones (either those that offer slide-in top plate or magnetic ones like your TBU42 etc). The simple reason as some of the members here had mentioned previously is because thermal pads that are provided with these enclosures are typically the 0.5mm and/or the 1.0mm ones, which in most cases do not fully adhere to the top plate/cover of the enclosure fully. The screws allow you to tighten the case together accordingly, ensuring full contact of the thermal pads to the top plate. This is something not possible with the scewless enclosures. But then again such design can only benefit the users with the correct thickness of the thermal pads.
I would also personally recommend getting better thermal pads from reputable third-party manufacturers that are of the size 1.5mm. The ones provided by Acasis suck. It has to be pointed out that the 0.5mm and 1.0mm thermal pads that came with the TBU405 do not make full complete contact with the top plate once fully assembled. I tested installing the included 1.0mm pad with the SN850x fully assembled, THEN removing the top plate after that. The thermal pad was left stuck on the SSD since it had better contact with it, and the imprint left behind by the pad adhesive on the underside of the top plate indicated the contact was not 100%. Getting a 1.5mm thermal pad instead as it allows you to "squeeze" the thermal pad as you tighten the screws of the top plate, thus ensuring better contact. Below is the thermal pad I use.
Thanks so much for sharing these details! Minor correction: SN770 is gen 4, according to Western Digital.
I'm getting close to the Blackmagic speeds you're getting using my TBU42 - I consistently get between 2700-2800 MB/s. According to the Tom's Hardware SN770 review, the reason it costs less is lack of DRAM. Most high-end NVMe gen 4 SSDs include DRAM which increases the price, and usually increases the performance so it could be that the Blackmagic scores exaggerate how good the SN770 is. And, so far as I have been able to learn, Macs do not support host-memory buffer (HMB), though I'm not really sure about this. Maybe someone more knowledgable than I can explain whether Mac's allow for HMB, and usage patterns where lack of DRAM would hurt performance.
If I'm understanding correctly from the Tom's Hardware review, it seems like like lack of DRAM might also account for it running a little cooler than most of the competition. I'm perfectly happy to sacrifice some speed for the benefit of running cooler, especially on idle.
My only real-world test was to copy over thousands of files totaling 170GB from my Mac Mini internal drive to the SN770. Took about 2 minutes, and it was just mildly warm to the touch afterwards. To me, that speed is mind boggling.
The pad Acasis included was thicker than 0.5 mm but it may have been 1 mm. It certainly did not feel like I was compressing something when I closed the door. So I will take your kind advice and get 1.5mm pads. I plan to swap drives in/out over time so I was wondering what pads to buy for future drives, as only one was included.
Again, thanks so much for sharing details. Information about NVMe is surprisingly scarce, so this thread is a real treasure.
Mainstream tech writers have yet come to grips with what the rapid plunge of SSD prices means for the overall market. There are still tons of articles, even ones written in the past couple months, that recommend 1TB drives that are something other than NVMe, sometimes even costing more than the equivalent, much faster, NVMe alternative! If your system is PCI-Express and Thunderbolt 3 (or 4) capable, than it makes zero sense to get anything other than NVMe for 1 TB at this point. At 2 TB, cost comes into play, and certainly you may want to consider much less expensive alternatives at 4TB. But for 1TB: NVMe.
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You are pretty much spot on with your analysis. Although I would like to point out that if you end up getting a Gen 3 ssd like the SN770 you will most likely not able to get the speed of Gen 4 ssd like the SN850x and the likes. For those where a difference of 300-400MB/s matter, then Gen 4 SSDs are essential, albeit I cannot speak for other Gen 4 SSDs other than the 850X as I own 2 of them with the Acasis TBU405 enclosures. Is it a waste since Gen 4s are capable of hitting 6-7k MB/s, well perhaps. But we choose what is best in our specific situation, and moreover the difference in prices between a Gen3 and Gen4 SSDs is still tolerable. So for those who don't mind then I say why not?
I would also recommend getting enclosures that are screw-in instead of those "screwless" ones (either those that offer slide-in top plate or magnetic ones like your TBU42 etc). The simple reason as some of the members here had mentioned previously is because thermal pads that are provided with these enclosures are typically the 0.5mm and/or the 1.0mm ones, which in most cases do not fully adhere to the top plate/cover of the enclosure fully. The screws allow you to tighten the case together accordingly, ensuring full contact of the thermal pads to the top plate. This is something not possible with the scewless enclosures. But then again such design can only benefit the users with the correct thickness of the thermal pads.
I would also personally recommend getting better thermal pads from reputable third-party manufacturers that are of the size 1.5mm. The ones provided by Acasis suck. It has to be pointed out that the 0.5mm and 1.0mm thermal pads that came with the TBU405 do not make full complete contact with the top plate once fully assembled. I tested installing the included 1.0mm pad with the SN850x fully assembled, THEN removing the top plate after that. The thermal pad was left stuck on the SSD since it had better contact with it, and the imprint left behind by the pad adhesive on the underside of the top plate indicated the contact was not 100%. Getting a 1.5mm thermal pad instead as it allows you to "squeeze" the thermal pad as you tighten the screws of the top plate, thus ensuring better contact. Below is the thermal pad I use.
Those speeds are awesome! I ordered the Acasis but would be a bit scared to use thicker thermal pad than those provided in the box. Are you sure the 1.5mm ones would fit? Can thermal pads in general be easily removed?