3 ms·

Or, for the techy detail and practical advice, the first enclosures which make use of USB4 and are faster are based on a ASMedia ASM2464PD controller chipset.

Or, for the techy detail and practical advice, the first enclosures which make use of USB4 and are faster are based on a ASMedia ASM2464PD controller chipset. USB4 ASM2464PD SSD ENCLOSURES [1]: These enclosures sustain higher throughputs compared to older Thunderbolt 3 designs which reserved bandwidth for DisplayPort and legacy USB. Real-world peak throughput is ~3.1-3.8GB/s with the latest Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. Many enclosures since 2020 are marketed as “USB4 compatible” but are based on the older Thunderbolt 3 chips, so you need to pay attention to the fine print. [1] https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enclosure-chipsets-2022/ https://dancharblog.wordpress.com/2024/01/01/list-of-ssd-enc...

pauljara 3y ago
I'm piggybacking off this comment in case people want to purchase one of these enclosures after reading your comment. I've tested a couple of these ASM2464PD enclosures since last November. If you buy one of these you're going to want to flash the firmware to at least the latest ASMedia one from January of 2024. This remedies some "random" unmount issues you could run into, particularly on Apple Silicon Macs. In my case, despite purchasing two identical enclosures, one had the disconnect issue and the other did not. But the firmware update has resolved it fully. Unfortunately, you'll need a Windows PC to flash the firmware. Running the flasher under Windows on Parallels didn't work for me. You do NOT need USB4 to flash the device, just a USB 3.2 USB-C port. A USB-C to USB-A cable may work too but I did not test that scenario. Also, if you have the device plugged straight into your USB4 equipped computer, it will run in USB4 mode and you will easily see 3GB+/s benchmarks. If you have it plugged into a USB4/Thunderbolt 4 dock, it will run in Thunderbolt 3 mode. The speeds in TB3 mode will be limited to about 2.7GB/s or the same as Intel JHL7440 enclosures. So it performs no better than Intel Thunderbolt 3 enclosures in that scenario. However, the ASM2464PD enclosures run HOT. I bought a couple of Maiwo enclosures off AliExpress when you couldn't purchase these at retail in North America. If I had to do it again, I'd buy the OWC version. I've heard the OWC enclosure has extra heatsink accommodations to handle the heat. I bet they'll ship the latest firmware too.

pauljara 3y ago

I'm piggybacking off this comment in case people want to purchase one of these enclosures after reading your comment. I've tested a couple of these ASM2464PD enclosures since last November. If you buy one of these you're going to want to flash the firmware to at least the latest ASMedia one from January of 2024. This remedies some "random" unmount issues you could run into, particularly on Apple Silicon Macs. In my case, despite purchasing two identical enclosures, one had the disconnect issue and the other did not. But the firmware update has resolved it fully. Unfortunately, you'll need a Windows PC to flash the firmware. Running the flasher under Windows on Parallels didn't work for me. You do NOT need USB4 to flash the device, just a USB 3.2 USB-C port. A USB-C to USB-A cable may work too but I did not test that scenario. Also, if you have the device plugged straight into your USB4 equipped computer, it will run in USB4 mode and you will easily see 3GB+/s benchmarks. If you have it plugged into a USB4/Thunderbolt 4 dock, it will run in Thunderbolt 3 mode. The speeds in TB3 mode will be limited to about 2.7GB/s or the same as Intel JHL7440 enclosures. So it performs no better than Intel Thunderbolt 3 enclosures in that scenario. However, the ASM2464PD enclosures run HOT. I bought a couple of Maiwo enclosures off AliExpress when you couldn't purchase these at retail in North America. If I had to do it again, I'd buy the OWC version. I've heard the OWC enclosure has extra heatsink accommodations to handle the heat. I bet they'll ship the latest firmware too.