M.2 NVME External Enclosure Shootout for Mac and PC

[@davidryan0808]

what a blast! I lovw how my utube feed always throws awesome channels my way :) I don't even need an enclosure, but could not stop watching...bloody awesome days indeed

[@DrWiggo]

Wow, thanks! And welcome aboard!

[@radoo86]

Thank you! you helped me to make the decision to buy the acasis enclosure and the crucial P3 for the imac. This was the most complete video I have seen so far about the best cases for NVME.

[@DrWiggo]

Glad I could help!

[@kyledupont7711]

What times we live in, you can get astonishing almost PCI Express like speeds through a USB port now. I'm running Linux off an external m.2 enclosure with no problems at all. You could theoretically run your entire system with no hard drives, great for security!

[@DrWiggo]

We truly live in an age of wonders. These external enclosures are only getting better.

[@brentstwocents]

For storage you don't need thunderbolt 3/4 (40Gbps). A USB-C gen 2 that gets close to 1000Mb/s is faster than you ever need. The only benefit to ultra fast drives/enclosures that cap out at 2500Mb/s is for copying data. And really, how often does anyone need to move several TB of data between their computer and an external? People get so hung up on black magic speed tests when the reality is your computer almost never pushes data at those theorectical speeds. Save your money, a USB-C gen 2 enclosure with a inexpesive NVME rated at ~1500Mbps is all you really need to expand the storage of your computer.

[@DrWiggo]

Thanks for the explanation!

[@navid_ahmed]

And the 1000 MBps speed is more then enough even for editing 4k videos.

[@rageUK78]

except the faster speeds would allow gamers to play games directly from the drives etc

[@JeremyDowning-em9xj]

@@rageUK78That is true if the PC has the hardware to support it. For gaming, it should be at minimum a USB 3.1 to load modern games in a reasonable amount of time or handle techniques like loading assets during gameplay in open world games. Even if you have a Thunderbolt port on your PC, you need to make sure the PC can handle the speeds that the SSD card and enclosure advertise. There are a lot of factors to consider including motherboard design, port specs, PCIe capability, and - if you are transferring games back and forth - the specs of the internal drive. Most enclosures have backwards compatibility with older devices, but there's no point buying a shiny new SSD enclosure with Thunderbolt or USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 capabilities unless you're sure your rig can handle it. Long story short, trying to match your PC to its optimal enclosure/SSD is a long story.

[@CalvinWongHKG]

Thx for the hardcore testing with all these combination, more details than chinese sites!

[@DrWiggo]

Happy to help.

[@youjean83]

As an engineer who is using an external drive for his docker and WSL2 setup, I do not recommend going for an external case + m.2 targeting USB-4/Thunderbolt. USB 3.2 2x1 or USB 3.2 2x2 is what you should get. Going faster won’t do you any benefits since there is no way to cool down the controller on the m.2 drives. It will throttle and overall be even slower. Also as of now USB 3.2 2x1/2x2 serves the best compatibility across systems. And yes the USB-4 external cases are faster but, in my opinion, not worth the bang for the buck.

[@DrWiggo]

Great advice.

[@TheRagingSound]

Loved the video!

[@DrWiggo]

Glad you enjoyed it!

[@BojanBojovic]

Thanks. After my BootCamp Windows external SSD died suddenly I forget about opening my iMac and replacing the Fusion Drive with two SSDs as those can die the same way in a machine that needs to be glued on, so the idea now is to use the external Orico and M2 for the system. Orico should arrive soon so I will test if it works well for the OS externally, if not it will be a little bit expensive, but fast Time Machine backup disk. :)

[@DrWiggo]

Let us know if it works as a boot drive. Good luck!

[@franks2524]

I have the 2tb Samsung 990 Pro mvme and it gets a little over the advertised speeds, so either you got a dud or its not in a m.2 4 slot on your motherboard?

[@DrWiggo]

Very possible. I did my testing on the M.2 slot that was accessible without removing the video card, and it is likely the slowest on the mobo.

[@shawnmurray7232]

Didn't catch what software was used for benchmarks.... My 990 Pro 2TB on Gigabyte Z690 Gaming X motherboard M.2 slot = 7129MB/sec read & 6901MB/sec write in Crystal Disk Benchmark (which is what many manufacturers use for their stated drive performance....) with drive 20% full. In my Acasis TBU405 Pro enclosure via Thunderbolt 4 (Maple Ridge PCIeX4 add-in card), I get 3121MB/sec read & 2933MB/sec write, but over USB 3.2 Gen 2, it only gets 1068MB/sec read & 1046MB/sec write. Quite a bit of difference from what you noted.

[@DrWiggo]

I used BlackMagic Design Disk Speed Test. And the conditions weren't ideal, nor scientific, but the relative differences should be comparable (also I found out my PC doesn't have the latest and greatest M.2 slots). I would put more faith in your results than mine.

[@whiteraimentevangelism]

Try the Fanxiang 4 tb m.2 about 5300 MB/s I forget for sure I think I paid about $167 for it or the gamix blade pro 4 tb this is about 5400 MB/s on motherboard good price but more money thN the fanxiang 4 tb. I'm going to try the Gamex Blade Pro in an external enclosure that is Thunderbolt 4 and Thunderbolt 3 and USB 4 Orico brand I think it's pretty small it was supposed to get about 3400 megabits per second or something with the right m.2 in it

[@DrWiggo]

Good advice. Thanks!

[@Fldllse]

Good Review. What I've always been wondering is, these M.2 Enclosures claiming to be 40Gbps capable only get around 3500MB/S speed, when 40Gbps should be 40/8 = 5GBps = 5000MB/s. Still no idea why

[@fleemwings207]

It is the overhead (efficiency) of translating from M.2 to USB/Thunderbolt.

[@DrWiggo]

What he said.

[@brentstwocents]

It's misleading advertsing. The thunderbolt port is capable of 40Gbps, but the actual drive enclosure is not. The reason is big chunks of that 40Gbps bandwidth are reserved for other data streams, such as video. After overhead, the amount of bandwidth available for data is about 22Gbps which will be around 2500Mbps. So when you see an enclosure labled as "Thunderbolt 4 - 40Gbps" they are refering to the port speed not the enclosure speed.

[@samguapo4573]

If you can get 3500MB/s that's already good. I won't complain. I'm currently running on 300MB/s on my external and it gets the editing jobs done. I can only begin to imagine what 2000++MB/s will do for me :)

[@brentstwocents]

@@samguapo4573 Actually a faster drive won't do much for your editing experience. All the heavy lifting takes place in RAM and CPU. If you can scrub your timeline without stuttering and frame dropping, then your SSD is fast enough. Once you get a drive faster than around 500Mb/s you won't notice any difference. Export times might be marginally quicker. If your editing platform is struggling to handle your footage the problem is almost always lack of CPU power, not drive speed (unless you are using a slow spinning HDD).

[@vollandt]

helpful video. better if not if you can show the enclosure while holding it still.

[@DrWiggo]

Sorry about that.

[@elvisvan]

4:26 that ain't "290" it's exactly 299.99 which basically is *300* (consider that 1 cent my tip for them)

[@DrWiggo]

Thanks for the tip. 😀

[@fleemwings207]

It looks like the test PC does not have USB ports with speeds higher than 10 Gbps. My Intel B660 motherboard's fastest USB port is 20 Gbps - so to get faster speeds on the PC, you need AMD 6xx or Intel 7xx series motherboards. MacBook Pros have Thunderbolt and can therefore exploit the 40 Gbps enclosure's speed.

[@DrWiggo]

It's an MSI X570 ACE mobo, so it should be fast enough. I'll do more experimenting (I did try multiple USB ports).

[@fleemwings207]

@@Tegneaufreak Yes, nothing faster than 10 Gbps

[@DrWiggo]

@Tegneaufreak @fleemwings207 And to add insult to injury, you can't install a ThunderBolt card unless the mobo supports ThunderBolt, which this one clearly doesn't.

[@mostwanted2000]

Can you try with ASUS ROG Strix Arion 10gbps?

[@DrWiggo]

I was thinking of a follow up, so yes, I will.

[@allou11]

What about 990 1tb samsung? What do you suggest?

[@DrWiggo]

Based on these enclosures, I’d say get the cheapest Gen4 with speeds above 4000GBS.

[@user-hb9fp4vs2f]

These tests don't mean anything. And don't use these drive for storage of large files or you'll get slower speed than krappy micro SD cards no matter which enclosure you go with. Theyre not designed for storage. Just quick burst performance.

[@DrWiggo]

Agreed, except I always want bigger and faster storage.

[@user-hb9fp4vs2f]

@@DrWiggo They won't give you what you want.

[@Garthinyus]

So what ssd drive is best for storing large files?

[@user-hb9fp4vs2f]

@@Garthinyus samsung 980 ssd pci.

[@Gibbothegreat21]

What's the best setup to boot Window 10/11 with an SSD?

[@DrWiggo]

Sorry, never done that, so can't help. But I think Jayz2cents did a video this year about setting up a new PC that included that kind of info.

[@UndetectedKiller-yi1dy]

First

[@tomaszwaszka3394]

Do you have a PC with USB 4 ??? I think you don't !!! and that's why PC computer (conected with enclosure) in your test is so slow... In most cases PC with good enclosure is faster than Apple. Of course it must be a computer with USB 4 !!!

[@DrWiggo]

No USB4 for me (clearly).

[@tomaszwaszka3394]

@@DrWiggo Most people do not have a USB4 port on their computer. However, for those who have it (just like me), your test is useless. Thank's for your answer anyway