Performance test of Mac Mini M1 w PNY CS3140 in Wavlink TB3 enclosure.

[macjunkie2013]

I tested the speed of the new PNY XLR8 CS3140 1TB M.2 installed in a Wavlink TB3 enclosure connected to my Mac Mini 16/248GB/11.3.1.

When booted on APPLE M1 internal SSD
M1 Internal SSD speed is ~3177 write ~2850 read
TB3 CS3140 SSD speed is ~2701 write ~2539 read

When booted from TB3 SSD
M1 Internal SSD speed is ~3020 write ~2877 read
TB3 CS3140 SSD speed is ~2535 write ~2531 read

This SSD has advertised speeds 7,500MB/s seq. read and 5,650MB/s write. Probably only mounted on an Ryzen X570 will it ever reach that speed. WTF is it so slow on M1 if TB3 is capable of 5000 MB/s? Should it not at least be equal to the M1 SSD?


Tested w the included TB3 cable and Apple TB3 cable, speeds were ~ the same. SSD did get hot to the touch but not crazy hot. Big Sur 11.3.1 installs and runs fine on this TB3 SSD combo.

FYI the enclosure is OK, it has a metal frame and plastic sides. Fairly unremarkable, the included heatsink is a nice bonus. There might be enough room inside for a thin 3rd party heatsink but the included one seems just fine.

It seems to me that:
Between the 1TB PNY CS3140 / Samsung 980 Pro / WD Black SN850 / Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, IMHO it is best to simply buy the cheapest option as performance in TB3 may never reach internal SSD speeds.

The 3 options are not far off from internal will the difference even be noticeable?

 

[Chancha]

A realistic sustained NVMe bandwidth benchmark of anything TB3 related has always been sub-3000MB/s. I myself have never seen my devices exceeding that as well, so your setup is already performing as best as there is possible. AFAIK, there are overheads in the controller and also heat or circuitry related loss in the cabling, so the theoretical 40Gbps is only there in theory.

If you want or need absolute seq. speed for your task, the NVMe needs to operate directly on the logic board of a PC, or at least a PCIe card in a Mac Pro.

For reference: I have a WAVLINK UTE-01 with SN750 1TB inside, I am getting at best 2200 write 2400 read across all my TB3 Macs, including an M1 Air.

 

[Significant1]

Thunderbolt 3 is PCIe 3.0 and after displayport and encodinding are subtracted, 26Gbps==3250MB/s is left as usable bandwith. In other words, your ssd is most likely operating at half speed.

 

[Gnattu]

WTF is it so slow on M1 if TB3 is capable of 5000 MB/s?

But TB3 is not capable of 5000MB/s.... In reality it is capped at ~ 2.8G/s

 

[macjunkie2013]

Does it seem the TB3 slow down is ~ a percentage drop off from the rated SSD speed that gets worse the closer to the potential 2.8G/s TB3 cap?

Roughly guessing:

1. Gen4 SSD's in the 7,000MB/s range would be = ~ 2500MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.
2. Gen4 SSD's in the 5,000MB/s range would be = ~ 2300MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.
3. Gen3 SSD's in the 3,000MB/s range would be = ~ 1900MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.

Assuming, variables such as tempurature and cables are equal, does anyone know if different TB3 enclosures, with different chipsets, would get more bandwidth? What about powered docks?

 

[Significant1]

Does it seem the TB3 slow down is ~ a percentage drop off from the rated SSD speed that gets worse the closer to the potential 2.8G/s TB3 cap?

Roughly guessing:

1. Gen4 SSD's in the 7,000MB/s range would be = ~ 2500MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.
2. Gen4 SSD's in the 5,000MB/s range would be = ~ 2300MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.
3. Gen3 SSD's in the 3,000MB/s range would be = ~ 1900MB/s in TB3 enclosure or dock.

Assuming, variables such as tempurature and cables are equal, does anyone know if different TB3 enclosures, with different chipsets, would get more bandwidth? What about powered docks?

PCIE 4 is double the bandwith of PCIE 3 and backwards compatiable. So mu guess is, that your ssd i simple shifting to PCIE 3 == half the bandwith. How the its controller work and if there is a direct linear correlation between its connection and operation speed I don't know, but I think your numbers indicate it. What I am trying to say is, I think the speed is determined mainly on how your drive perform on PCIE 3 and not the enclosure. That said I think you have very good performance and wonder why you would need more.

 

[macjunkie2013]

Thank you taking the time to explain that, I appreciate it.

You are right, the performance is great. It is easily as fast as my 2010 Mac/XPGSX8200 in read, and nearly 10x faster in write. I am just looking at the numbers and saw a huge gap in advertised speed vs actual in a TB3 enclosure.

For my needs on the Mini, these speeds are great. Most of my work involves 3d game development, so I use my Ryzen WS for that now that Apple has stopped supporting Nvidia.

Cheers