Hello all, I have a Maiwo k1717 with an SN 850X and I just bought another SN 850X on sale for $550. Would everyone agree it makes sense to buy another Maiwo 1717 for $45 instead of buying a new/expensive $300 TB5 enclosure for the purpose 4k video editing? I'm not sure if anything I do would utilize the TB5 speeds at the moment on my M4 MBP Pro, so I think it's best to just run the 40Gbps enclosures for a year and wait for the TB5 enclosures to come down in price. Let me know your thoughts on any new TB5 enclosures that might be worth the upgrade.
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Thunderbolt 3 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosures
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Hello Black Diesel,
Just went through the same decision last week. Adding another external enclosure brought a new issue. To recap what enclosures I am using:
~2@ 8TB WD 850X Black in an Acacias 405ProMax Dual Drive Docking Station w/fan set up as a 16TB DU RAID 0. This is used for photography Data storage. Read speed is 2,8xx, Write is 2,5xx MB/s. This unit has a 100 watt standard size USB-C wall plug for power.
~2@ 4TB WD 850X Black in 2 Maiwo K1717 enclosures set up as a 8TB Disk Utility RAID 0. This is used for all other Data storage. When these are attached to 2 TB ports on my M2 Studio Max, Read speed is 5,4xx and Write speed is 3,3xx.
Because the Dual drive unit with 8TB SSD’s has a (super quiet) fan, it is running 5 to 7 C lower than the Maiwo 4TB SSD enclosures do. Last week I added an additional single 8TB WD 850X Black @$530 to be my external start up drive for my M2 Studio Max. For an enclosure I almost bought another K1717, but knowing the 8TB WD Black run a bit hotter, I instead decided to get an enclosure with a fan and a On/Off switch for it. I went with the Acacias 405Pro M1 at $93. This enclosure is bus powered. Read speeds are 2,8xx and Write speeds are almost identical. I chose longevity of the 8TB SSD's, by running bit cooler, vs a slightly quicker speed.
I hooked up the new enclosure to the M2 Studio and it would not appear on my desktop! After a bit of research, it seems the M2/M4 Mac Studios, just like the new M4 Mac mini, have a somewhat limited ability to run more than 2 USB4 or TB 4/5 enclosures via bus power. My Acacias Dual Drive unit has its own power source, but the Studio still would not recognize the new 3rd drive. I switched the drives around and It would work if I unhooked the 2 Maiwo RAID units and went with the 16TB (powered) Dual drive RAID, the new 8TB in the Acacias 405Pro w/fan and an older Acacias 405 enclosure with a Crucial P3 4TB I use for startup on my 14” M1 MBP. So I can get 3 external enclosures, 1 a dual drive powered RAID, to work off the Studio ports.
The power limitation issue has a few threads on it here at MR, and in all cases adding a powered TB4 or TB5 hub has solved the issue. I have a couple year old OWC TB4 powered hub, which I attached the Maiwo 8TB RAID drives and 1 of my 27” displays to, and now all drives are recognized and working fine. However since the Hub splits 1 TB4 port into 3 the R/W speeds can drop in half, but with 2 working in a RAID 0 assembly, the R/W speeds are back up to 2,7xx-2,9XX MB/s. But not as fast as when both were hooked up to the Studio TB4 ports direct.
As it is now, all 4 of my external enclosures R&W speeds are performing very close to one another, around 29xx- 2,5xx R/W, which is just fine for me. I really don’t need faster right now as is still sooo much faster than my old HDD RAID units. Down the line I want to see a TB5 enclosure/hub that can accept 4 NVM’e 8TB drives (32TB total) and maintain the super high TB/5 speeds. When that happens then I will buy a new Mac Studio with TB5 ports and the TB/5 enclosure. But until then I am happy with my setup.
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Thanks Specfoto, I will go with another Maiwo for now. Where did you find the SN 850x for $530?
B&H at $529.99 and with the Payboo card they pay the state sales tax which is 8.75%. Free ground shipping, normally 2 day express, but for this low price only free ground shipping was included.
Damn, I missed that sale. I use B&H/payboo as well but the current sale price is $549
I wish I'd seen this thread earlier!
Just bought a Samsung 990 Pro (2TB) card and an enclosure the store told me would be perfect for it, a Lexar 300E.
The Samsung boasts read speeds up to 7,450 Mb/s and the Lexar speeds up to 10 Gb /s.
Tested it at home and the read / write speeds are about 980 Mb/s.
It's connected via thunderbolt 4 slot at the back of an M2 Studio, using cable supplied with the Lexar.
I'm obviously misunderstanding these read speed claims somehow.
Meantime the SSD in the Studio is giving write speeds around 6,000 and read about 5,000.
Anyone have any tips?
Just bought a Samsung 990 Pro (2TB) card and an enclosure the store told me would be perfect for it, a Lexar 300E.
The Samsung boasts read speeds up to 7,450 Mb/s and the Lexar speeds up to 10 Gb /s.
Tested it at home and the read / write speeds are about 980 Mb/s.
It's connected via thunderbolt 4 slot at the back of an M2 Studio, using cable supplied with the Lexar.
I'm obviously misunderstanding these read speed claims somehow.
Meantime the SSD in the Studio is giving write speeds around 6,000 and read about 5,000.
Anyone have any tips?
You are mixing bits and bytes.
If you want faster speeds you need an external NVMe enclosure with either a Thunderbolt 4 or USB4 (40Gbps) connection.
Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 enclosures will provide decent speed sufficient for most usage, >3000 MB/s.
Thunderbolt 5 will provide maximum speed but at considerably higher expense. Also, most Macs do not support Thunderbolt 5. The only ones that do have M4 Pro, M4 Max, or M3 Ultra.
USB 3 not recommended. Much lower speed, and arguably more compatibility issues than Thunderbolt 4 / USB 4 with the most recent Macs.
BTW, for these enclosures, select a design that will dissipate the heat adequately. These SSDs can generate a ton of heat.
i-Tec Post in thread 'Best JBOD Solution for Accessing Multiple SATA III Drives'
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ultiple-sata-iii-drives.2453252/post-33808442
https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ultiple-sata-iii-drives.2453252/post-33808442
I’m a newb to this stuff, but are there any issues running the new version 7 with an M4 pro? I read a couple threads in which people were having issue with version 7 and were waiting on updates. Not sure if it has been updated but please let me know if anyone can confirm if there are any issues running istat menus 7 on an M4 Pro. I just want to use it to monitor temps on my Maiwo k1717 and WD SN850 8TB.
Does anyone know if I should remove the sticker on top of the WD SN 850X to install it in the Maiwo k1717? If I leave it in place, that means I will be installing the thermal pads on top of the stickers, sandwiching it in-between the SSD and thermal pads. I've researched this but there's a lot of conflicting opinions on this. Let me know.
Usually the stickers are heat dissipating. So leave it on.
I've always left the m.2 stickers intact, and applied thermal-pads to satisfaction.
For a CPU, I want a die-on-heat-sink marriage; for an m.2, I just want basic heat-transfer
Thanks for everyone's help here. I'm a total newb when it comes to this stuff but with everyone's help I just assembled my first Maiwo k1717 with the WD SN850X 4TB. I left the sticker on the SN850X and used some thermal pads on top from Amazon. I bought istat Menu 7 for my Macbook M4 Pro. I also formatted the WD SN850X using "APFS encrypted" so I'm not sure if that affects performance or not. I connected it directly to my M4 Pro and used the cable that came with the Maiwo. I got the speeds below from Blackmagic.
As for temps, like Specfoto mentioned you can cool it down a bit by setting it on something metal. My initial idle temp was 45 while sitting on a wood desk. Then I pointed a small usb fan on it and it went down to 42. It went up to 48 after running black magic for 8 minutes. Then I put the Maiwo on top of the aluminum base of my old 27" iMac and temps went down to 39. Then I added the fan while sitting on the iMac base and it's down to 34 at idle.
The read/write speeds did not slow down after running for 8 minutes. Please provide feedback on my speed and temps.
Thanks again for all your help. Now I will assemble my 8TB drive and assume it will run similar speeds/temps.
As for temps, like Specfoto mentioned you can cool it down a bit by setting it on something metal. My initial idle temp was 45 while sitting on a wood desk. Then I pointed a small usb fan on it and it went down to 42. It went up to 48 after running black magic for 8 minutes. Then I put the Maiwo on top of the aluminum base of my old 27" iMac and temps went down to 39. Then I added the fan while sitting on the iMac base and it's down to 34 at idle.
The read/write speeds did not slow down after running for 8 minutes. Please provide feedback on my speed and temps.
Thanks again for all your help. Now I will assemble my 8TB drive and assume it will run similar speeds/temps.
Nice speeds and nice temps. Good work! However, do you really need it to be encrypted? Just curious.
No. The stickers are heat dissipating so actually help rather than cause any hinderance.
Also you will void any warranty by removing the stickers.
Nice work, although unless it's a backup drive, or being used to store documents or other sensitive information, I'd remove the encryption. Nevertheless, those speeds are typically at the upper end of what you can achieve through the TB3 or USB4 interface, so you won't get much better than that without moving to a higher interface (TB5).
I have also a 4 TB SN850X, but inside an Acasis case and my temps are at around 40 °C. The SN850X is my System Drive. If the SSD does not reach around 70 °C on load (throttling), all is fine. I would say your temps are in the green area.
I don’t really need the encryption, so I can get rid of it if it causes issues. Let me know what the negatives are. Thanks.