Thunderbolt 5 BREAKS Apple’s Upcharge | Code builds FAST as internal

[@AZisk]

UPDATE from Kensington: MacBooks support multiple monitors, but ONLY up to 2 from a single Thunderbolt port.

[@Cemilaws]

Threre is no way to run 10GbE adapter with X80 Elite in samsung galaxy book4 edge right ?

[@RickyBoobSticks]

So you have to have a windows computer to get the dock to work with 3 4k monitors at 144Hz using a single cable?

[@willidriver]

Yes, since TB5 can only do two DisplayPort streams. For more you need DisplayPort MST, which MacOS can’t do.

[@RayTube519]

@@willidriver No TB5 is advertised with "up to 3 DP tunnels". And all Intel TB5 controllers have those 3. But the minimum guarantee of TB5 is only 2. Because TB5, like TB4 is not an actual standard, its just minimum requirements on top of USB4, which does not even have a limit on how many DP tunnels can be supported. Intel also launched new TB4 controllers with 3 DP tunnels.

[@MikeD-hx6cw]

@@RayTube519 The minimum guaranteed for Apple, as confirmed by Apple, is 2 display streams. The limitation is with the manufacture not the technology. This shouldn't be a limitation for PCs with TB5 ports, most PCs with Thunderbolt 5 ports will allow 3 display streams which as you mentioned is part of the Intel spec for TB5.

[@andyabajo]

For everyone's information, the OWC TB5 drive has a caching limit of 90GB. This means it can sustain read/write speeds of 6,000 MB/s until the cache limit is reached. Beyond this point, the drive will throttle its performance, reducing read/write speeds to TB3 levels.

[@martinXY]

I came here to say that. Thank-you for this. It's important information.

[@BelfastBiker]

that seems insane.

[@ongjanette]

So what does that mean in real world usage? if I just work with files that are max 2-5 Gb I won't hit that limit? Or do I hit that caching limit if I work on 5Gb files but do it for hours?

[@martinXY]

@ If you’re copying over anything (sequential) bigger than 90 GB, it will keep up at top speed for 15 seconds, then it will slow to about ⅓ of that for the rest of the operation.

[@ongjanette]

@@martinXY okay, thanks! 😊👍

[@chizkiyahuraful9865]

to measurement the time of copy run "time cp " in terminal

[@AZisk]

thanks for the tip

[@ChaseTheSummit]

I returned my OWC Thunderbolt 5 drive after a couple of days. After doing some testing I noticed the write cache fills up within a few seconds and the drive is throttled to around 1.5 GB/s instead of the claimed 6GB/s. If you're only working with smaller files or only test this drive with Black Magic you'll never notice this but if you transfer larger files it will slow down. In my testing my OWC 1M2 enclosure paired with a Samsung 990 is actually faster because it consistently writes at 3-3.5GB/s and doesn't throttle as fast so overall write times are quicker. Long story short: Don't buy into the Thunderbolt 5 hype yet. I'm looking forward to these companies releasing empty TB5 enclosures that we can populate with whatever drive we choose.

[@ai-hb4et]

External is the new Internal! wow, with similar performance, now my mbp M4 pro / max storage options are much clearer: Apple Store upgrade, Internal drive - 2TB at $400, 4TB at $1K, or 8TB at $2.2K (remortgaging territory) OWC Envoy Ultra TB5, external drive - 2TB at $400, or 4TB at $600 Good work Alex, very helpful.

[@PaulSolt]

But how does the internal transfer speed compare? If current thunderbolt 5 drives have a performance drop, does the internal drive suffer that same issue? You might be giving up sustained performance by going external. I’m a big believer in getting 1-2TB of internal. I do video work and I don’t want to be constantly connected to an external.

[@AlecKinch]

Alex, I love how you Actually test things, and Prove things! You were the first channel that I saw prove the SSD upgrades in the silicon, are NOT just storage space but actual speed increases…. Ty ty ty Subscribed for life

[@PrestonKnows]

Spotlight tends to start indexing when you plug in drives, so that could affect speed

[@DavidSVega-cu1dv]

This is exactly what I was looking at when I saw thunderbolt 5 on the Macs! Really exciting to see it in action.

[@dougall1687]

This was for HDMI rather than TB5, but I recall Linus TT doing a bunch of cable tests and finding potential data rate bottlenecks associated with cable quality even in expensive cables.

[@_TT90]

Should be USB-C to DisplayPort. I think only HDMI 2.1 support DSC

[@RayTube519]

No, DSC does not play a role in display support. A USB4 controller as DP In / Out adapters. That is how the DP connections get from the GPU to the TB/USB4 controller and out of it to a output on the dock. These are independent of the TB-ports. So for example the old TB4 Goshen Ridge controller in all existing TB4 hubs only has 2 DP out adapters. Only if one is freed up can the third monitor get its tunneled DP connection from the GPU, to be recognized. This was not an issue, because TB4 only mandated 2 DP connections from the host and basically all TB4 controllers only supplied 2 in practice. With TB5, Intel's own controllers (those for non-Apple hosts) and the one in TB5 docks/hubs has 3 DP In/Out adapters. But Intel TB5 only mandates the same minimum of 2 as with TB4. So it is up to the manufacturer of the PC to declare how many of those they connect or if they build their own controllers, have in the first place. The only purpose of DSC is to save bandwidth once the DP connection is already established or to get more pixels through any already bottlenecking connection. On top of the amount DP adapters being a limit, you can of course also run into bandwidth limits. DP connections will be refused, if they do not fit at all, even at the slowest possible speed. But TB5 is fast enough that with monitors available today, it should be almost impossible to saturate a 80 Gbps connection with only 2 monitors (and TB5 mandates the asymmetric mode that should switch to 120/40 Gbps in just this case to fit more outgoing DP bandwidth).

[@staraffinity]

When you at 0:32 say the transfer speeds in Gigabit (Gb) the writing that comes up shows GB, which= Gigabytes. :)

[@Rushil69420]

It actually spells out "bit" which is not "byte"

[@AZisk]

yep, should be Gbps. good catch

[@utility007]

Most reliable channel on KZbin to make purchase decisions. Thank you ❤

[@johnpp21]

we have to wait for next gen TB5 controllers to use PCIE 5.0 to max out 80Gb/s on pcie tunneling current TB5 controllers is using pcie4.0

[@j340_official]

Pcie4x4 connection is 64 Gbps which is the max PCie bandwidth of TB5. A PCIe5x4 connection will double that to 128 Gbps… so thunderbolt 5 as it is presently implemented will not have the ability to saturate a pcie5x4 link…

[@johnpp21]

​ @j340_official thats the limit of the controller, not the TB5 itself. like in TB3 controllers its limited to 32Gbps because of pcie3.0x4 (TB4 controllers are limited to x1 lane) then as you can see in the video, the TB4 ports in the mac m2 actually manage to do 37Gb/s because of the pcie 4.0x4 from TB5 controller(which is now limited by the TB3/4 bandwidth of 40Gb/s) (which is also the same in ASM2464 controller when you plug into any TB3/4/USB4 port)

[@j340_official]

@ ​​⁠Thunderbolt 5 has 4 lanes each of which support 40 Gbps of data. so in symmetrical mode, that is 80 Gbps up/down. Pcie5x4 operates at 128 Gbps. Thunderbolt 5 with its 40 Gbps lanes doesn’t have the available bandwidth to operate at 128 Gbps up/down.

[@johnpp21]

@@j340_official thats why i said maxing out 80Gbps in pcie tunneling :) like in TB3/4/USB4 host system, the only controller that was able to max out the 40Gbps is the ASM2464 controller which is based on pcie4.0x4 (aside from TB5 controllers)

[@calebleuciuc670]

my dream dock is the Ivank with tb5 and windows support. Currently using the caldigit tb4, love it and work both mac and windows which is important for me. cant wait to see the new releases

[@1001legoboy]

Just stumbled across your videos, very enjoyable. Thank you!

[@AZisk]

Welcome aboard! Glad you enjoyed it.

[@Eldorado66]

Bro probably spends more on Apple products than he makes in revenues from YT😂 great channel and amazing videos though, keep em coming 💪

[@AZisk]

You’re not wrong. Haha

[@FirstLast-nr6gf]

I thought most reviewers get the products on loan from manufacturers. At least some reviewers mention that.

[@AZisk]

@@FirstLast-nr6gfhaha, nope

[@HappyQuailsLC]

Except that cumulative earnings can really add up over the years.

[@YongSiri]

short clear and very useful information that not many do this kind of reviews

[@gaiustacitus4242]

The new TB5 hubs and drive enclosures need to be larger to accommodate fans which can adequately cool them. It doesn't matter how fast they operate in bust mode to make the benchmarks look impressive. What matters is the performance during extended usage and how long the internal components and/or installed drives will last when subjected to 50 C temperatures for hours on end.

[@darylfortney8081]

code compilation also has additional uncertainty in that most compilers cache compilation and don't recompile files that haven't changed since the last compile etc.

[@franksugino7568]

Compiler benchmarks use the clean command to delete intermediate and final (i.e. .obj and .exe) files prior to compilation. This insures a "full run" every time the particular benchmark is run.

[@darylfortney8081]

@ that certainly helps, next is cpu throttling due to heat and variable memory latency due to memory usage and layout, other processes also contribute to variability, there is actually a long list of things that make code compilation a poor metric of external drive speed.

[@yedidiagal]

The Mac-2-Mac communication does not use PCIe Tunneling - it is a native USB4 protocol that runs between the two. It is true that the root port may be a PCIe DMA, but over the USB4 topology it runs without the limitations of PCIe Link

[@soviut303]

The first thing that comes to mind as to why the internal drives on the macs have better random scores is because of the way they split the storage up across multiple chips. I'm speculating, but perhaps you can get higher read speeds when the random data is coming from two separate chips in parallel.

[@toseltreps1101]

almost every SSD does that. get smarter, you really don't know what you're talking about

[@andikunar7183]

Great video, thanks!

[@josh-bodnar]

You are doing gods work here. 🙏

[@musicman0024]

Just got through MacBook Pro M4 Pro w/ Thunderbolt 5 ports. Good to see I will benefit from them. Great video, thank you! Just subscribed.

[@greatpix]

I only recently found your channel and am enjoying it very much as I dive into learning more about Ai image creation on a Mac Mini M4.

[@kimmirossi46]

Excellent video!!! Thank you man!

[@AZisk]

Glad it was helpful!

[@davidtindell950]

Thank You. We like OWC !

[@ShervinShares]

Any temp throttling from the drives getting warm?

[@StefanAlexandruGeogloman]

The new Thunderbolt 5 OWC SSD has an attached cable but it's not really built in. If you open the case, you'll see it's a normal cable with two plugs, only that the plug is connected to the PCB internally. Kinda smart, considering it's more secure but still replaceable.

[@kena9595]

Your research and testing is great and informative. But watching your video is a little distracting because of camera scenes changing in and out. Thanks again for your work.

[@vinitadya]

We need to condition the flash drives before testing by writing random data on the full drive to ensure all writes are rewrites on the flash chips

[@AlmorTech]

If I need to buy a laptop, I just go here and make a decision. Simply the best channel 🤷‍♂️

[@asymmetrx]

Try running OS on this drive pls. I remember your unsuccessful Mac mini test with OS on the external drive. Wonder if it is improved with T5. Because read/write speeds improved a lot as I can see. Thanks!

[@DennisForbes]

You could run the OS transparently through a USB 3.1 port on an external SSD. There are points of diminishing returns where the extreme bandwidth just doesn't really impact the experience, and that is true for the OS short of maybe massive memory paging, which is inadvisable regardless.

[@asymmetrx]

@ I understand that It is possible to run, but last time there was a problem with the swap in his video

[@asksearchknock]

2:28 One quick tip when using iperf3 - if you add the -P you can specify how many parallel streams to run at once… I only found this out when testing a 10gbe network and was seeing lower speeds than expected until I added -P 8 which maxed it out… 😊 speaking of parallels, could you do a m4 Mac mini video showing how it handles virtualisation 😊

[@AZisk]

good tip. I don’t have 10g here yet, but maybe one day

[@SoftwareManiacLSM]

So, there is a reality about using external TB5 drives. For the long term, I trust OWC, their quality is amazing (performance, reliability, support, enclosure quality). I have OWC SDs, Thunderbolt/USB SSDs, and the SSX hub with integrated SSD and disk drive for Time Machine. I like the idea, too, of using high-performing TB4/5 SSDs in addition to my machine's internal disk (SSD). Two things: 1. I chose to NOT use their new OWC TB5 drive (cost but also ...) since the integrated TB5 short (and I mean short) isn't going to work. 2. Just like you found, Alex, the performance "can" be exceptional and I wanted to use a couple of external, fast SSDs instead of the Mac's internal SSD. As soon as I add the OWC external TB4 SSDs for Time Machine to backup (I back up everything!), the first collection/baseline works. Then after several hourly backups, TM fails with "can't backup due to error". What?!?! I rebooted and TM started up again with the same result. So, I reformatted the TM backup drive (APFS) and set up TM to backup its internal SSD and my OWC fast TB4 SSDs. First backup collection worked, subsequent updates failed!?!?! Now, it could be due to when the Mac goes to sleep or who knows, but I rebooted, disabled TM, reformatted the TM backup drive and this time ONLY backed up the internal SSD. The initial backup collection and all subsequent updated backups work as planned. Since the use of external disks should/must be reliable, I'm going to have to use them to transfer between machines (not be a master drive). This TM issue has me spooked. Maybe somebody has seen this too? SO for me, getting TB5 SSDs for mainstream use is currently a risk.

[@SoftwareManiacLSM]

BTW, Alex. Every time I think of a tech topic I'd like to learn about, you seem to have a video tutorial on it. Nice that you have a sw dev background, too (and not just running boring benchmarks). Perhaps you should have a handle like: "runs tech tests with a purpose"!

[@drapetomaniack]

Should be able to daisy chain the 3 Thunderbolt monitors one monitor to another… would love for you to test that!

[@LeonChart]

Man you're pure knowledge! Great video! I guess Im still fine with my Lexar 4TB TB4 drive which I got for 230euros + 70 for the case! However 6gb/s is still preeetty impressive!

[@omegamalkior1874]

When is this coming to Amazon??

[@bpavuk]

I found the o1-engineer folder 🌚 you **have** to make a video about it

[@frank93907]

Is there a paper on the theoretical and how they improve on the empirical, idk why but seems cool

[@RobloxianX]

Looks like the perfect Mac is now just a base model M4 Pro MBP. Basically upgradable storage at this point

[@nf6sv]

I just ordered my first thunderbolt 4 dock on Black Friday. The prices are coming down now that thunderbolt 5 showed up. $400 for that Kensington is to rich for my taste. Is good if you need to hook up 3 monitors but I have just 2.

[@goobfilmcast4239]

The big thing about Apple going TB4/5 on entry-level (pro) devices will be the reduction in cost along with a greater variety of fast TB peripherals. As MBs and Minis sell in the mass market, there will be fewer and fewer devices with "legacy" ports. Another reason for the PC Industrial Complex to thank Apple.

[@andrewmacgregor6131]

@AZisk have you throught of using a Mac Mini to build a Thunderbolt 5 switch? I don't even know if what I'm asking is possible. But given that Thunderbolt 5 is faster than ethernet, I'm wondering if it is possible to have say one computer (lets call it Bob) connected via ethernet to get to the internet, but the rest of the computers connected to Bob via Thunderbolt. The idea being that all computers can connect to the internet through Bob's ethernet connection, but that they can all talk to each other at much higher speeds (via Bob) over thunderbolt 5. I guess to do that, a bridge would need to be set up comprising more than two thunderbolt 5 connections, but that's the part where I don't know if it is possible, or if there is an alternate solution.

[@rolandgerard6064]

Best tech channel i know, thanks for your great work.

[@AZisk]

Wow, thanks!

[@me-myself-and-i-u7b]

Alex, SSD speed tests are a little bit off. When you copy file you are performing read from local SSD and write to Thunderbolt SSD. You can simply use dd to do the write process from RAM directly to the SSD and this will give you more correct results.

[@AZisk]

finder overhead. measuring real world file copy rather than exact science. not many people use dd to copy files ;)

[@PendervilleWeddingFilms]

I want to love this dock, but I found a massive issue with it. When I leave my OWC Thunder Bay 4 RAID plugged into it, when my MacBook Pro is asleep, it continuously disconnects and reconnects to the drive. When I wake the computer, I am greeted with 10-20 error messages as if I had unplugged the drive without ejecting it first. I called Kensington support, and it was difficult to understand the representative’s accent, but he said that this is a known problem and there is no fix. 😢

[@petereriksson6760]

Am I the only one bothered by the Play button hanging at an angle? I guess I go suffer from some form of OCD… 😢🤷‍♂️

[@HappyQuailsLC]

A LOT of advertized cables weren't meeting spec for Thunderbolt 4!

[@oneautumnleaf47]

So should we not spend more on internal storage and just get a tb5 external drive?

[@bren.r]

At 13:09, what is the glossy monitor on the right?

[@TheEditorify]

Can you run the same SSD test for the Mac Mini. Everyone is doing sequential read/write and video editing test. Noone on KZbin is smiulating random performance. Would really appreciate it if you are able to test the OWC Express 1M2.

[@hanleyleung]

yeah the impact TB5 is going to have for Mac owners is really under looked right now. it's a total game changer and going to remove all the apple epensive SSD anxiety. the performance jump is massive as external ssd makers catch up to it

[@OfficialDJTazer]

@@hanleyleung there’s very few use cases where someone would benefit all that much from TB4 to TB5. You can have a tidier desk, if you have loads of monitors and you can transfer data faster but who really needs more than 3GB a second 👀

[@hanleyleung]

@@OfficialDJTazer video editors working off the external SSD

[@OfficialDJTazer]

@@hanleyleung that’s what I do for a living and the maximum bitrate Sony films at is 75MB. The highest I feel any normal person in the industry would encounter currently is 440MB, which is the speed for 120fps 4K ProRes from an iPhone, of which you could easily get over 4 streams all at once once on Thunderbolt 4 and this is all without proxies.

[@hanleyleung]

@@OfficialDJTazer when different processes are running on videos they will run as fast as they can not at "play rate"

[@hanleyleung]

@@OfficialDJTazer have you run any monitor to see if you are tapping out tb4 as you are working on larger projects? gaming should benefit too from even faster load speeds when you change scenes and need to load in large levels

[@OlaArnold26]

You missed the transfer for the 50GB file on the M4 for the thunderbolt 5 external

[@sentrycod2373]

Can you do a test to find out what range of speeds, are diminishing returns reached?

[@KatyInNH]

I keep wondering if I could put some DVDs on that enclosure and watch while camping on my cross country trip next year?

[@Lewehot]

I remember 35 years ago working with 1.44MB floppies that take 3 minutes to read the entire disk. TB5 is about a million times faster literally

[@gaiustacitus4242]

You could get the total time to read or write a full 1.44 MB floppy in 67 seconds by formatting it using custom code on an Atari ST. If you had the data buffered in memory, then you could format the disk and write the data at the same time. The same technique worked to more than double the read/write speed of HDDs, too. The modified format involved changing the sector interleave to prevent a needless entire rotation of the disk. Changing the sector interleave allowed for the next logical sector (not the next by physical spacing) to be under the head when the read request was issued. With the standard format the read request was issued just after the next sector had passed under the head, thus requiring a read wait until the sector came back around. p.s. - CP/M-68K, the OS under the hood of the ST series computers, allowed for hooking the interrupt and redirecting to your own custom written BIOS routines. This wasn't possible on IBM and compatible computers. I learned to rewrite the BIOS to make my drives run faster because I was too impatient to put up with slow drives.

[@psoon04286]

Lucky you. My 5.25" floppy could only handle 1.2MB😔

[@gaiustacitus4242]

@@psoon04286 The first 5.25" floppy drives I had used hard sectored disks that could store 180K on my S-100 bus CP/M computer.

[@RayTube519]

PCIe tunneling is not used for the virtual network connection. I am actually surprised that it would stick so close to Intel's bandwidth requirement here. The confusion is with external TB/USB4 controllers. Those only have one PCIe port for everything. So the "inter-domain" tunnel that transfers the virtual networking stuff still consumes from the single PCIe port that will also be used to feed the PCIe tunnels, as well as the USB3 controller. But for the CPU-integrated controllers (at least those not from Apple) you have a separate PCIe port for each USB4/TB port (only for the PCIe tunnel), usually a shared USB3 controller, but that is attached to the rest of the CPU on its own. And the inter-domain communication starts from the USB4 Host router, which is again, its own device function (technically its always part of the Host Router, just on external controllers, that is behind the single, shared PCIe port). And as with other PCIe features inside a CPU or chipset, they technically could have any arbitrary bandwidth. On the same chip, there is no strong need to stick to lanes and specific PCIe speeds. That is how the Intel and AMD integrated controllers have had more than the classic 32 Gbit/s of PCIe bandwidth for a long while now, before Intel and others switched to 64 Gbit/s PCIe ports.

[@AbdolHussain]

Please re test using external ssd as internal but with tb5

[@rickdg]

Are there some interesting options for a NAS connected through thunderbolt 5?

[@_TT90]

Would love to see the Thunderbolt 4 and 5 external ssd speed while driving 2 4K monitors. Edit: Also if your monitors have DisplayPort you should try that instead of HDMI. DisplayPort 1.2 and up support DSC.

[@nusch_pl]

can you test daisy chaining?

[@Neganur]

Is it not so that TB4 data caps out at around 32 Gb/s due to the rest being reserved for display streams, rather than it being a PCIe limit?

[@andreygritsay762]

Can I attach that TB5 SSD to a MacBook's lid? Purpose is to get better value for price by not updating internal drive but not losing in portability (for example when I go working to a bed)

[@samson5830]

Next time can do RAM disk test on mac how they perform compared to ssd

[@housseinkharroubi5854]

Thank you brother! Not much out there on thunderbolt 5 docks. Thank you for showing is if the dock can do 3 4k monitors, but what i really want to know is if it can handle 2 4k monitors but at 120hz! To me this is the set up i want especially considering the macbook screen is a 120hz and i really want to have that uniformity btw my monitors and my mbp screen…also would be nice to see if both monitors output 120hz with the LID OPEN! Thank you again for your content!

[@MasterChief4U]

It's them Apple Certified 2.1 Ultra High Speed HDMI HDR cables that blows me away; They peg the 48gb speed all day long..

[@yoram_snir]

I got that OWC 2TB drive and wanted to move all my data from an older MacBook Pro that only have Thunderbolt 3, but unfortunately the drive is not mounting on an older Mac like that 🤦‍♂️

[@eduardosanzb]

Curious if using IO uring in combination with TB5 would be faster?

[@dr.mikeybee]

Does this mean that the standard 256GB drive is good enough with an added external drive?

[@greatpix]

I'm still trying to get a firm answer on if the Mac Mini M4 (regular model) can drive a monitor to 4k 240hz or do I have to get adapters and go from one of the Thunderbolt ports to the monitor?

[@dariusz.gardynski]

Can You use Apple AI on macOS booted from an Thunderbolt 5 external driver?

[@garynagle3093]

Holy moly. Tb5 screams.

[@AlWitzell]

Does it make a difference that your TB network says Unknown State because you have all ports on the bridge? Can you see if using one port and having TB say connected would it mke a difference?

[@joshseitz2114]

This is a great video. I'm holding off until I can see the 3 monitors through one cable. Are you planning on doing another video with three dsc capable monitors?

[@AZisk]

just got some news about that. Apparently not possible with MacBooks. pinned a comment

[@joshseitz2114]

@@AZisk That is a huge letdown. It finally looked like we would have been able to use 3 monitors in clamshell mode with one cable based on the 120/40 data of TB5. Do you know if this is just a Kensington thing or every manufacturer?

[@AZisk]

@@joshseitz2114according to kensington it’s an apple thing.

[@tbirdvet]

Saw another test of the OWC TB5 drive. When transferring large files(i.e. 50GB) the speed drops quite a bit probably from the throttling from heat. and then not much better than a TB4 drive at that point.

[@AZisk]

Who's already using Thunderbolt 5?

[@secRaphyTwin]

@@AZisk I'm waiting until they get cheaper

[@bhanuprakashp9616]

Not using as of now.

[@paulhorn24]

Preparing all Investments for future usage of Thunderbolt 5.

[@andikunar7183]

Not yet - just got my M4 Pro MacBook Pro. I use TB4 with my M2 Max MacStudio to expand storage - its easy on a desktop, even got a Twelve South "Rucksack" for my Studio Display.

[@st520]

I pre-ordered the OWC T5 dock and am using their external drive. The speeds are insane. Well worth the price.

[@brandon-22]

how is the heat on enclosure? even for thunderbolt 4 i saw they get very hot unless there bunch of aluminum heatsink which those in video don't have and they don't seem to be actively cooled (defeats purpose of fanless macs). heat comes from the chip inside enclosure itself.

[@AZisk]

i have silicone pads and heat sink in the enclosure. im sure that owc has something like that in theirs too. the whole owc drive feels like a giant heat sink. it’s heavy!

[@mehregankbi]

The reason it took 150 seconds for your dd command to create a 50G file can be explained by the paragraph below from the manual page of random(4). """When read, the /dev/urandom device returns random bytes using a pseudorandom number generator seeded from the entropy pool. Reads from this device do not block (i.e., the CPU is not yielded), but can incur an appreciable delay when requesting large amounts of data.""" and it'd become much much much slower if you used /dev/random

[@fieldsrealestate]

Can you do a video with a Mac mini using a 10 foot usb c / thunderbolt 5 cable to thunderbolt 5 wall jack with 25 foot thunderbolt 5 run to the fastest nvme ssd enclosure to see how fast data transfers?

[@AZisk]

you would need to use fiber thunderbolt cable for that. I recently did a video on that. currently it’s thunderbolt 3 so don’t expect these kinds of speeds, but it will definitely be fast.

[@cheongit]

If the K dock needs DSC for 3x4k, have u tested it downwards to say 2x4k plus 1x2k instead?

[@TheRhkdgml]

using APFS or exFAT? and which one do you recommend?

[@j340_official]

Do you know if the drive inside the OWC TB5 enclosure is removable?

[@christopherthake8701]

Great tests Alex. I am curious if you have noticed any difference in timings when copying files through the Finder. I notice that there is some overhead with Finder when copying on my Intel Mac mini, compared to using terminal to copy files. And wondered if you have seen any when using Apple Silicon?

[@AZisk]

this would be a good test. i’m almost certain there is overhead since we’ve got ui rendering processes that need to be spun up, etc.

[@StudioAGK]

But does it support USB3.2 Gen2x2 at 20 Gbs? That is what 1/2 of the external SSDs on the market support,, but thunderbolt 4 macs don't support it.

[@nutzeeer]

but what will i do woth my 100mb/s hdd?

[@FTLN]

What about iops?

[@ErikBiskopst]

Does the T5 disk get hot?

[@rogerrix4127]

I am still curious if Apples Thunderbolt 5 Cable is different in any way from the Thunderbolt 4 cable.

[@AZisk]

😆 me too. video coming shortly on this

[@rogerrix4127]

@@AZisk I will be watching for it. Thanks.

[@aviiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii]

Hi Alex, could you please suggest a lightweight UPS for mac mini m4 that gives me enough time to shut down in case of power failure. I searched for it and found only bulky options which defeats the whole purpose of having mac mini in portable size. Also, I found out that power banks do not support UPS functionality when plugged in.

[@kevinlopota3626]

So what I am taking away from this is that buying a tb3 enclosure for my m4 mac mini will be plenty fast enough for non professional work 😊

[@AZisk]

yes, likely

[@dankokorin]

I love all the content even tho I am not bothered by the topic.

[@alanschmitt9865]

I was under the impression that you didn’t need new cables for TB5?

[@AZisk]

it’s wireless 🤪

[@alanschmitt9865]

@ give it a few years lmao. I guess what I meant is, I’d heard somewhere that because TB5 is being implemented by increasing transfer frequency, TB4 cables could handle it just fine. But I wouldn’t be able to cite a source now. Anywho, good vid as always. Cheers.

[@tk42won]

Thank you for not only measuring sequential speed to mean "better speed" like every other "tech" reviewer out there🤟 Random read is a lot more relevant to the average user. Did you try and look for any difference when closing the lid on the m4 max when connecting monitors? Apple made that a thing with last generation so... 🤷

[@mysterychemical]

I recently bought my first USB 4 cables (total three on sale) 😂

[@tronewsky2]

Have you experienced any problems with your external SSD, such as it disconnecting during operation?

[@kirillivanov7305]

With 1000mb/s usb-c Samsung t7 drive, I've got the same build times as local drive(512 one nand chip). 127-131 sec )) for xcode builds mostly core count matters

[@sergeymikolaitis8205]

will it work twice as fast if you will connect 2 cables between mac's?

[@AZisk]

🤔

[@sergeymikolaitis8205]

@@AZisk 128gbps will be awesome. RAM speeds.

[@tim3172]

Thunderbolt is simply PCIE over USBC. Even *basic* NVME drives can be *much* faster than Apple's during bursty workloads. Mid-level drives are way-way faster than Apple during most workloads. Something like a 990 Pro (~$120 for 2TB + $40-60 enclosure) will blow the $800 2TB Apple SSD out of the water.

[@dotinsideacircle]

what 4TB NVME drives do you recommend? Are there any 8TB NVME drives that you recommend too? Are the 2TB NVME drives usually faster or that does not apply to SSDs?

[@jeetshah8513]

Wrong amazon link for thunderbolt 5 SSD, that's thunderbolt 4

[@AZisk]

fixed. thanks!