Thunderbolt Enclosure-Are They All The Same?

I recently needed another Thunderbolt enclosure so I decided to try a couple of them to see if they were created equal. Today's Video is a comparison between two different enclosures, the Oriico M224 and Acasis TBU405 to see if they are created equal. In this video, we will see how they differ mechanically and see if they differ in performance.
The links below are Amazon Affiliate links. As an affiliate, I earn a small commission from your purchases without affecting your price. Thank you for your continued support of the channel.
Acasis TBU405: amzn.to/44PaWpx
Orico M224: amzn.to/3OBGdGN

[@leimleim]

Great video my friend. On point, clear and showing the hardware.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank Your. Much appreciated!

[@SeattleCoorain]

thank you for useful review and analysis. Thunderbolt drive enclosures remain somewhat pricey so performance reviews of these products are helpful. In fact I used your amazon link to purchase the Acasis TBU405 after also learning it's Intel controller was rated as being about the fastest available and the enclosure price was actually reasonable compared to others I have purchased. Thanks again. Stay safe.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank you very much and thanks for the feedback.

[@colt5189]

How has the Acasis TBU405 held up? I've been trying to decide on an NVMe M.2 enclosure. Probably a 20Gbps speed rating.

[@SeattleCoorain]

@@colt5189 I like the TBU405 very much: good performance for the volunteer video editing I do for some local non-profit orgs in town, with pretty good heat transfer to the case. That said, I also purchased the TBU405-pro with an internal fan. I like the pro unit even more. I think it runs noticeably cooler for the internal NVME.m2 AND thankfully the fan is very quiet. There is an external pushbutton switch that activates/deactivates the fan. Having Thunderbolt level speeds is a luxury when sloshing around larger files. Regards from Seattle, WA

[@MIN_Tech]

thats what I looking for!!! thanks a lot for sharing awesome video.!

[@MikeFaucher]

Glad you liked it. Thanks for the feedback.

[@RusstafaB]

Just bought an Acasis amazing and very happy with it.

[@MikeFaucher]

Great to hear and thanks for the feedack.

[@alma175w]

Great video. I really agree with your take on the heat dissipation - I'd rather have the case but hot as it tells me the thermal pad is making contact and doing its job. I have two of the Acasis enclosures each with the WD SN850X SSD, and plan to install a more substantial, 1.5mm thermal pad as I don't have a lot of confidence in the thermal pads that came with the enclosures. Read/Write speeds for this set up are closure to 2,850, plenty fast for hosting my Lightroom catalog and a quarterly swap of my images once I've through editing them.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback. Glad you are liking the enclosures. So far they have been great. I am in the process of testing the ZikeDrive which could be a bit faster yet. Thanks again for the input.

[@alma175w]

@@MikeFaucher You’re welcome! I’ll keep my eye out for that next comparison!

[@jim0266]

I'm getting 45-47C heat readings on my two TBU405's with Samsung 970 EOV Plus drives when they are at rest and around 2800 MB/s R&W. Measured heat with Macs Fan Control. Found this on the ACASIS site: "In general, the specified operating range for SSD is usually 0°C to 70°C, which means that most SSD should operate reliably within this temperature range. In addition, SSD operate best at temperatures around 50°C to 55°C." Seems that the included 1mm pad is fine. Would a 1.5mm pad be worth a bit more protection?

[@MikeFaucher]

@@jim0266 The 1.5mm would not really help it stay cooler but transfer heat a bit better during heavy use. I get concerned when things get above 70.

[@jim0266]

@@MikeFaucher Thanks. Next time I do some thrashing on the drive I'll have to take notice of the heat. I think I've seen it in the high 50's before, maybe low 60's.

[@robins2389]

I sat the Orico on top of my Mac mini case and held it in place by attaching the USB cable to one of the wires on the back of the mini. That way it shouldn't move around and mark the case. It made a substantial difference to the temperature of the Orico enclosure as the mini's case conducted some of the heat from the drive enclosure. I could only measure it subjectively, but it went from an idle temperature that felt quite warm to only just luke warm.

[@MikeFaucher]

It's an interesting approach, and it does make sense. Thanks for the feedback.

[@jidofole]

Warm to lukewarm 🤔that’s science bro!

[@MikeFaucher]

@@jidofole Thanks!

[@BenCabell]

Great Review I was considering the Oriico but I HATE those little rubber plugs if you change out your drives they are flying all over the room, maddening!! The screw's in the Acasis are also NOT great. Other vendors have so much better toolless elegant designs these are old cheap boxes with modern thunderbolt controllers. Your review was GREAT!!!

[@MikeFaucher]

Thank you for the feedback and I agree on the rubber feet.

[@colt5189]

What NVMe M.2 enclosure would you recommend? I'm looking at 20 Gbps speed.

[@user-hb9fp4vs2f]

The true test is "what's the sustain read/write" speed. These quick test only tell one side of the story.

[@MikeFaucher]

You are right and I have tested them with large amounts of data. Thanks for pointing that out.

[@hamishthecat4370]

Amongst others I ordered the Acasis unit with screws securing the case together and received the tool less model, don't drop the tool less unit on a hard surface it will fly apart all over the place.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback.

[@Chris-Lynch]

You want the enclosure to get hot. The Heatsink isn’t a bad thing provided you buy some conductive adhesive or pad to make it contact the case. Also - always put some under the m.2 to connect it to the motherboard (also make it spread wide so it touches either side. Lastly if you feel up to it (although do this first) unscrew the motherboard and try to get it well thermally connected to the case on the other side). I have one now that I can feel getting warm in my hand almost instantly it’s under load - that’s a good thing, and it frequently hits 3,200 on read in black magic (that’s not supposed to be possible)!

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the input. Great results.

[@Chris-Lynch]

@@MikeFaucher np! (I know you’ll know all this but for everyone) I was going to add that if you buy a case with a fan make sure you leave some room for air to get through and the best way is by using tiny heatsinks (under the motherboard as that’s where most models put the fans) but above is ok too, best in fact provided you give the air a clear way in and out through the Heatsink grating all the way. It’s a lot of hassle for no real noticeable benefit over one without a fan left on a solid metal surface. Mine is actually sitting on 0.5mm conductive film connected to a big copper heatsink (all on a big sheet of aluminum I had) a gold bar would be ideal but I understand if that’s out of your price range 😜 However it’s noticeably cooler to the touch with a fan in so it’s definitely the way to go with portable drives. If you don’t have a fan and it’s getting too hot to comfortably hold then you did a great job - but you now need to think about where to put the drive to cool it as best you can. Mine just always sits behind my Mac min 2 pro (in the setup described) and seems to transfer files as quickly as the on chip storage. That’s the downside of system on chip - you can’t upgrade it. And memory & storage basically become level 3 & level 4 cache such that the M2 8Gb 256Gb is actually half the speed of the M2 16Gb 512Gb (I’d argue 16Gb isn’t enough either but it’s not worth the upgrade of 400USD or GBP (I despise the way Apple ignores the fact there’s an exchange rate that makes the £ worth 70¢ but not according to them! It was 2:1 about 15 years ago when they first started bringing out the really good stuff (it was much cheaper to import from the US even if you did have to pay Duty and tax!) - anyway, it’s absolutely necessary to have 16Gb of what is basically L3 cache and it’s arguable over the L4 cache but get one of these drives to keep permanently behind any Mac with Thunderbolt 3/4 and use it to run programs or files from (unless you have PCI-E 4 M.2 NVME etc. in the computer already). Most windows laptops will have hopefully at least 512Gb although it may be SATA (limited to 6 Gb/s). Buy a PCI-E card (after checking you have PCI-E 4 - probably not worth the fuss if you still have PCI-E 3) with ngff m.2 slots on it and the card should have at least 4 PCI-E lanes per m.2 slot. You can tell from the length of card (I’ll let you google it) however you may not be able to use all 16 on some motherboards if the Graphics Card is already using 16. But one m.2 pci card will almost certainly have 4 PCi-E lanes. Then you can add extremely fast storage (provided you put a good heatsink on the m.2) possibly even faster than the m.2 slots on the board because unfortunately MB makers don’t make giving them proper cooling very easy - the inside of my case is a mess where I packed in conductive paste under the cover you have to put back on because it’s below the graphics card - and I only finally got it running full speed when I got my hands on 2 long heat pipes and stuck ithem down with thermal adhesive above the aluminum contact to the m.2 and then finally I could give it a good heatsink right in front of the main air intake. Heat pipes are a marvel and not just solid copper (look up how they work). And it made all the difference now the drives ran to their rated maximum! It never ceases to amaze me how many reviews I’ve watched where they don’t seem to appreciate just how important cooling is. There’s a great set of hot swap vertical stands for USB 3.2 (10Gbs) made by graugear that exploit the vertical wind tunnel effect the heat will cause just with a plastic surround chimney and low power fan (unfortunately only the single seems to be available in the UK) they also make a very good fan case for USB4 too that uses heat pipes so all you need to do is get the connection from the chips to the heat pipes and that’s all you’ll need to do, but anyway, I was watching a review where the guy admitted he’d been sent the product and then proceeded to go on about how it wasn’t worth bothering with a heatsink of any type!!! You’ll maybe get away with it at 10Gb/s because that’s probably what they throttle down to without cooling but not any faster. If I was from Graugear watching that I’d never be sending him anything again!

[@colt5189]

When you put a pad under the NVMe drive, what thickness do you go with? And regarding putting something under the motherboard, I wonder if thermal putty might work there? I use thermal putty on my GPU and Vram instead pads.

[@owencamo2]

test needs to do include large transfers of over 500GB, thermal throttling will occur. I find that the thermal throttling happens, then i direct a fan to the unit and the throttling disappears.

[@MikeFaucher]

This is a great point and I actually did test it with multiple pass of around 300G back and forth and did see much in the way of throttling. Next round up I will include these results. Thanks for pointing that out.

[@MikeO01]

Hi Mike, I was wondering if a the Acasis (TBU405 Pro) which has a built in fan for cooling, would be any better, or is the the Acasis you tested OK with the temperature, as it would be more handy. Thanks for your thoughts.

[@MikeFaucher]

I tried the pro and was not impressed and I am currently using the standard one which really like.

[@haysoos123]

@@MikeFaucher I have several of the TBU405's running with WD SN850X's, and they get hot but have been stable. I just got the TBU205 Pro in and it's larger of course and has a fan which can only be a good thing. Why were you not impressed by it? The only other tb enclosure I've seen with active cooling is the Fledging one which I love, but they don't seem to make them anymore, which is why the TBU405 Pro should be a great choice.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@haysoos123 Great question. The Pro has active cooling; however, it is coming from the bottom, and most of the airflow is being diverted to the bottom and out the sides of the enclosure. In my testing, heat was almost the same as the standard unit. I also ran into one laptop that would not properly detect the unit or work correctly, as well as disconnect when the fan was on. Overall, I would love to have active cooling, but I would like the airflow to be on the drive. If you are having good luck with it, then that is what is important. Thanks for the feedback and input.

[@Greatermornings]

There is a pro version of the Acasis (TBU405 Pro m1?) which has a built in fan for cooling.

[@MikeFaucher]

I tried it and was not impressed by it so I stuck with the one in this review.

[@colt5189]

@@MikeFaucher Why were you not impressed by the Acasis TBU405 Pro m1? I'm trying to decide on a 20Gbps NVMe M.2 enclosure that is made well and a reasonable price.

[@shreyarajput8344]

Which is faster for my MacBook Pro 2018 & iPad Pro 2022- Oraco 20gb or acassis 40gb enclosure with Samsung 970 Evo Plus 2Tb Or Samsung T7 2Tb For fast & economic

[@MikeFaucher]

The T7 is cheaper but is slower. If cost is a concern I would go with the T7.

[@colt5189]

What brand NVMe M.2 20 Gbps enclosure would you recommend? I know some people complain of certain brand's designs making the drive run hot due to bad heat transfer design.

[@MikeFaucher]

Everyone has a different interpretation of heat. M.2 NVMe drives will run hot whether it is 20 or40 by their design. Controller can easily hit 100C which has to transfer somewhere. The Zike drive is on the coolest I have see mainly due to mass. When you read a complaint about heat, you need to ask two things, first is what is the outer temperature (11-125F is normal) are they running, and secondly, are they running a NVMe drive with chips on both sides as they tend to run hotter based on the heast sink designs having better heat dissapation on single side NVMe such as the Samsung drives. Drives like Sabrent have chips on both sided and the memory ofter does not get goo heat sinking. Hope that helps.

[@Saleh.Al-Ghamdi]

Why did you missed mentioning the drive temperature? Or why you didn’t use Orico Shell to test on the other case to have confidence of the enclosures 😅

[@MikeFaucher]

I tested the outside of both devices. The utilities I have do not meausre nVME on a thunderbolt only native devices. Thanks for the feedback.

[@matheus8530]

Probably a stupid question but why do the enclosures cap to less than USB 3.2 Gen2 speeds? If the enclosure supports TB4 shouldn’t the speeds be near 5000MB/s?

[@MikeFaucher]

Typically USB 3.2 gen 2 taps out 10gig which gives around 800 megs per second.

[@Dylan-od2mp]

Do I still need a heatsink for my NVME M2 when using the Acasis?

[@Dylan-od2mp]

I’m opting to use it with the new WD Black SN850X 4TB. But I’m not familiar with heatsinks and installing heatsinks. The 4TB version unfortunately only comes without heatsink..

[@MikeFaucher]

You do use a heatsink with the Acasis as the lid is the heatsink. Get a drive without a heatsink.

[@journeywithdavidh]

99.3F = 37.4C, 110.8F = 43.7C, 105.8F = 41.0C, 118.9F = 48.3C

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the detail.

[@pcfabris]

Try and put a $20 cpu heatsink (with fan connected to a usb cable) on top of the enclosure to cool on the cheap.

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback.

[@tomaszwaszka3394]

If I may, I have one question. Do I need to enable write caching in the disk properties to get fast transfers? I have ADATA SE920. When write caching (write buffering) is disabled transfers are at 250 MB/s. Read about 3800 MB/s.

[@MikeFaucher]

It is usually on by default so I would try it, but 250 seems very low. What computer are you testing this with?

[@tomaszwaszka3394]

@@MikeFaucher Thank's for your answer. I'm on mini PC SER7 7840HS.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@tomaszwaszka3394 try the cache. You should be north of 2100 on that system.

[@tomaszwaszka3394]

@@MikeFaucher With write caching enabled, everything works as it should.(write about 3500 MB/s) The point is: it's dangerous - you can lose your data... as some people claim ((when there is a power failure...

[@MikeFaucher]

@@tomaszwaszka3394 Though possible, you would have to yank the power out, much like what would be done to your system. As long as you properly eject, you should not have an issue. In most systems I have seen, including all of mine, It was on by default, and I never had to change it.

[@colt5189]

Something that's annoying is I've been reading some of these 40Gbps NVMe enclosures aren't backwards compatible with Thunderbolt 3 or say USB 2. Which I'd have to have backwards compatibility as I have several different laptops that have different types of ports.

[@MikeFaucher]

I have not see that and use mine on USB 3 pretty regularly. I assume their may variations on devices and controllers.

[@colt5189]

@@MikeFaucher There are some NVMe enclosures where they give a warning that it only works with Thunderbolt 3/4 and won't work with USB-C. So I'll avoid those as I also have some older computers that have USB-A type ports that I'd want to be able to connect the NVMe enclosure to if needed at some point in the future.

[@hyperseah]

Do these Thunderbolt enclosures work properly on USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 port? Or do they default to 10Mbps?

[@MikeFaucher]

They will default to 10G.

[@hyperseah]

@@MikeFaucher Thank you. I just found the answer online too.

[@GrantSR]

I was kind of expecting you to run a stress test on each, then quickly remove the cover and measure the actual temperature of the drives themselves.

[@MikeFaucher]

I can add that to the next round testing if I do an update. Thanks for the feedback.

[@VJLoki]

I have terrible performance with the 4tb Crucial P3 Plus, dropping to 50MB/s write apparently the way these drives operate don't work well with this enclosure.

[@MikeFaucher]

This does not sound right at all. Have you tried this drive anywhere else or can you try a different drive in the enclosure? To the best of my knowledge, there should not be any compatibility issues but would love to hear about it if you find one.

[@VJLoki]

@@MikeFaucher Seems its the drive itself not the enclosure, the Crucial P3 Plus uses QLC NAND and once writing over a few GB's of data slows to a crawl (sub 100MBps) and is probably compounded by being in an enclosure. The drive was pretty full so cache had run out.

[@MaverickM1]

Keep in mind, some os-es/filesystems are handling folders with thousands of small files very ineffective. The transfer rate is a thing, the filesystem limits can ruin transfer rates any time, mainly on some older filesystems like ntfs or fat32. Try to copy big files (movies or something like that) to see if the file count in folders causing the issue. If the problem occours while copying big files (gigabyte sizes) your drive may defective.

[@MikeFaucher]

@@MaverickM1 Great point. It is worse with USB than thunderbolt. Thanks

[@DaveDFX]

I'm getting faster speeds on my Acasis TBU401 usb4/thunderbolt enclosure than both of your enclosures.

[@MikeFaucher]

What machine are you testing these on and what drive are you using?

[@Tattvadarzin.]

Most of the world uses degrees Centigrade. You might think about catering for non US audiences.

[@MikeFaucher]

Good Point and thanks for the feedback.

[@cloud9photography126]

just run an extra strip of thermal pad between the top of the heat spreader and the case on the orico......problem solved

[@MikeFaucher]

Thanks for the feedback.