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Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures
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I have the Acasis (TBU405) with a Samsung 980 Pro 2TB and bought an extra pack of 4 thermal pads (70x20x1mm).. I think I used 2 pads on the ssd but just make sure it is nice and snug.
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Thank you very much!
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Great information! Please post your temperatures with the 4TB SN850X once you receive it.
As I posted here, my TBU405 + 4TB SN850X gets anywhere from ~40-49°C idle, and around 62°C when running benchmarks for 10 minutes. I do have a copper heatsink sitting on top of my enclosure, and of course room temperature, location and other factors will affect temps. But it would be interesting to see if the updated version of the Acasis improves temps while still remaining quiet...
You want the case to get hot, it means the thermal transfer is taking place.
Bummer.
Please let us know on how the warranty process and replacement works out for you.
Mine did not respond to being plugged in the other day. After a few attempts it worked as normal, not sure what that was about.
Also make sure to try another Thunderbolt cable as I've heard the included one from Acasis can be finicky, and issues might be resolved by replacing it with another.
I've been using the TBU405 with a 4TB drive for a while now and it's easily my favorite enclosure. The build quality is excellent, with a 1.5mm thermal pad the heat transfer seems excellent and the performance is great.
I'm looking forward to future enclosures supporting USB 4v2 and TB5 80Gbps bidirectional or 120/40Gbps in a 3/1 lane configuration. Hopefully the chipsets will be good out of the gate, but it will probably take some years.
I'm looking forward to future enclosures supporting USB 4v2 and TB5 80Gbps bidirectional or 120/40Gbps in a 3/1 lane configuration. Hopefully the chipsets will be good out of the gate, but it will probably take some years.
So my WD SN850X 4TB arrived, I put it in the TBU-405 Pro M1 for some tests.
Speed:
See the AmorphousDiskMark screenshot(s), I have 2 sticks of SN850X 4TB, the left in dark was tested in just TBU-405 and the right in light mode is the new stick in TBU-405 Pro M1. More or less identical.
(Interestingly I used ATTO Disk Benchmark for testing too and they gave me very different graphs, I suspect I did something wrong or the app has changed something but I didn't investigate further.)
Temps:
The test was done in this environment: everything inside a network cabinet with ambient temp of 31C when the test started, host is Mac Studio, transferring 1.8TB of RAW photos and some Lightroom catalogues from a JEYI with SX8200pro 2TB to the TBU-405ProM1 with SN850X 4TB. (I wish I still have the TBU-405 with me, but it was taken by my colleague on a trip to another country)
I think the image explains better than what I can type, so I will only say the takeaway:
1) the enclosure is bigger than average, at low activity the passive cooling alone is adequate
2) somehow the JEYI starts higher but doesn't get as hot as the Acasis, but it may have to do with one of them reading while the other writing, and of course being different SSDs also
3) I switched the fan on half way, but the fan seems really weak and close to useless. May be if the ambient temp is at room temp or even lower it will matter more, but not for my setting. My Mac Studio have to permanently sit inside a cabinet along with its peripherals.
During the hottest moments I used an IR gun to read the enclosure external temp:
JEYI: 55.2C
Acasis: 43.9C
P.S. the Acasis box came with 2 thermal pads and I had to stack them on top of each other in order for the NVMe stick to touch the chassis
Speed:
See the AmorphousDiskMark screenshot(s), I have 2 sticks of SN850X 4TB, the left in dark was tested in just TBU-405 and the right in light mode is the new stick in TBU-405 Pro M1. More or less identical.
(Interestingly I used ATTO Disk Benchmark for testing too and they gave me very different graphs, I suspect I did something wrong or the app has changed something but I didn't investigate further.)
Temps:
The test was done in this environment: everything inside a network cabinet with ambient temp of 31C when the test started, host is Mac Studio, transferring 1.8TB of RAW photos and some Lightroom catalogues from a JEYI with SX8200pro 2TB to the TBU-405ProM1 with SN850X 4TB. (I wish I still have the TBU-405 with me, but it was taken by my colleague on a trip to another country)
I think the image explains better than what I can type, so I will only say the takeaway:
1) the enclosure is bigger than average, at low activity the passive cooling alone is adequate
2) somehow the JEYI starts higher but doesn't get as hot as the Acasis, but it may have to do with one of them reading while the other writing, and of course being different SSDs also
3) I switched the fan on half way, but the fan seems really weak and close to useless. May be if the ambient temp is at room temp or even lower it will matter more, but not for my setting. My Mac Studio have to permanently sit inside a cabinet along with its peripherals.
During the hottest moments I used an IR gun to read the enclosure external temp:
JEYI: 55.2C
Acasis: 43.9C
P.S. the Acasis box came with 2 thermal pads and I had to stack them on top of each other in order for the NVMe stick to touch the chassis
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Cooling with a fan is by a large part influenced by the amount of airflow that can quickly be brought in and exhausted, these small enclosed boxes with no actual intake or exhaust and miniscule fans are never going to make a meaningful difference.
I figured as much, but I wonder if it could even decrease a degree or two it may already be plenty helpful for really intense usage. But it is quite difficult to test anyway. I am much more concerned by the additional wattage used by the fan that may introduce in-stability for the connection since an NVMe is already pretty high consumption in the context of Thunderbolt devices. The enclosure itself is really well-built though, may bit half a notch above the vanilla TBU-405. So even just using it passively may already be worth the difference.
TG Pro or Drive DX can do this. My test above used TG Pro, but I am just using trial version. I think I will pay for it, this is a small handy app.
So internally based on TG Pro the fan made no difference but externally the enclosure was cooler? Is that the summation?
The enclosure is quite beefy, and is layered to some degree, so normally it is good that the external is hot since it means heat is being dissipated from the NAND chips / controller, but in this case maybe the Acasis is distributing the heat all over the place before reaching the surface?
Either way I am not seeing performance degrade even when TG Pro reports at 70C+.
If the heat affects to the life cycle of the ssd, how would you notice it?
Is there any public longevity tests available?
(About ssd lifespan in different temperatures)
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Hi folks, I have a Mac Mini M1 (2021) with 16 GBs RAM and 256 internal storage.
I was interested to use an NVMe drive with external enclosure as prices of NVMe drives have dropped big time.
I have my eyes on the SK Hynex 41 Platinum (same drive as Solidigm p44 pro). However I had a few questions for others:
I can get the Samsung 980 PRO for a bit of a cheaper price then the SK Hynex but dont mind paying the premium to have a drive that's overall better and I would use this for other purposes in the future so I'm keeping future proofing concerns in mind. I'm a content creator so I produce lots of videos and do extensive videography work as well as architectural programs so the speed would be very useful. It would make no sense to pay extra for the SK Hynex at this time if I cannot atleast get 2,500+ read and write speeds from it using an external enclosure....otherwise I could just get the S980 PRO or similar.
Thanks so much for your time,
I was interested to use an NVMe drive with external enclosure as prices of NVMe drives have dropped big time.
I have my eyes on the SK Hynex 41 Platinum (same drive as Solidigm p44 pro). However I had a few questions for others:
- Is the SK Hynex 41 Platinum NVMe 2TB drive compatible with Mac Mini M1 processors?
- If its compatible, does the Mac M1 (or above) throttle down the speeds of the Hynix Platinum NVMe drive when its in an external enclosure?
- What external enclosure is rated to work with the SK Hynex 41 Platinum? I was looking at several Thunderbolt 3 40GBps enclosures from Acasis, Trebleet, Yottamaster, Orico, OWC...It's still not clear if I will be able to get the extreme speeds from the SK Hynex 41 Platinum that other people report getting from the Samsung 980 PRO or WD SN850X.
I can get the Samsung 980 PRO for a bit of a cheaper price then the SK Hynex but dont mind paying the premium to have a drive that's overall better and I would use this for other purposes in the future so I'm keeping future proofing concerns in mind. I'm a content creator so I produce lots of videos and do extensive videography work as well as architectural programs so the speed would be very useful. It would make no sense to pay extra for the SK Hynex at this time if I cannot atleast get 2,500+ read and write speeds from it using an external enclosure....otherwise I could just get the S980 PRO or similar.
Thanks so much for your time,
I think the hacktintosh folks have used the P41 for their on-board NVMe boot drive without needing to fix firmware or anything, so it is "compatible".
That said it is a rather uncommon choice for Mac use, since it is not sold everywhere in the US and not often having discounts, unlike Samsung and WD.
The Thunderbolt (3 or 4 is the same) specs limits the potential bandwidth for external enclosures with PCIe gen3 at x4 lanes, and further more with limited data lanes so in practice, you are only ever going to get ~22-28Gbps which is approx. 3000MB/s sequential read and write. So yes it is a limiting factor on the Mac itself, nothing is going to break through that, essentially you are only going to get pretty much less than half the potential performance out of a gen4 NVMe SSD.
That said, many including myself still would prefer to get a top tier gen 4 stick for this purpose because:
1) the gen3 sticks, even by notable brands like Samsung, have all been undergoing shady component changes which downgrades its performance, to the point the Thunderbolt is no longer the bottleneck;
2) the gen4 sticks have gotten incredibly affordable already
3) larger capacity are only available on gen4 choices
You may notice WD SN850X being mentioned more times than others in threads like this one, because it ticks all the boxes mentioned above. Currently this model has almost no manufacturing issues (unlike Samsung), no known component downgrade (Samsung and WD do this, but not on this model), no known firmware upgrade need (970 EVO plus namely), and runs at a so-so decent temp. Most importantly Amazon et al have been discounting the 1/2/4TB heavily in the last weeks. The SK Hynix P41 may be up there as well but there is not enough Mac user data confirming this.
Enclosure wise, you can see the Acasis TB4/USB4 combo series is quite popular here, I got both the TBU-405 and the TBU-405 Pro M1, both run reliably so far. But really anything TB3 enclosure can give you similar performance and temps, as long as they use JHL7440 Intel controller.
Thanks so much! With regards to my second question on Mac speed throttling, I've read from several device accessories makers (like Trebleet) that the Mac Mini m1 can throttle NVMe speeds down for certain drives like WD Black SN700 (see section here for "slow write speed on Mac M1 computers" https://www.trebleet.com/forum/thunderbolt-3-usb-ssd-chassis/latest-ssd-compatible-list ). Since alot of these thunderbolt 3 accessory/enclosure makers like Trebleet, Acasis, etc use the same JHL7440 intel controller, I wanted to know if anyone using any of these thunderbolt 3 enclosures specifically used the SK Hynex P41 Platinum and plugged it into their Mac to test the speeds.
I'd be more than happy to get around ~22-28Gbps , I just dont want to get like 14-17Gbps or lower than other cheaper drives like Samsung 980 PRO or WD SN850X can get the same speeds. I'd rather buy the Hynex but not if I cant get the 22-28Gbps hence my question to those that own it and the Acasis or other Thunderbolt 3 enclosures.
Regarding my third question on enclosures, so does the Acasis work with the Hynex P41 properly as an external drive?