Adding USB 3.0 (and more) to a 2011 Mac

[joevt]

You have an actual TB case, my NVMe-drive is still in a USB case. The drive itself is capable to almost 3000MB/s in different setup of mine so I guess it might be the USB that slows it down here. Maybe TB case would be faster in my situation too? Well, that is the best I can do with the iMac 2011 and existing gear.

I would use AmorphousDiskMark.app to measure speeds. A 10 Gbps USB drive should be able to get up to 1060 MB/s. iMac 2011 can't get that high because it's limited to Thunderbolt 1 (10 Gbps) and Thunderbolt 1 has more overhead than USB 3.1.

 

[Amethyst1]

Throwing in some more Thunderbolt storage benchmarks: Highpoint RocketStor 5212 (Port Ridge > PCIe 2.0 ×2 > Marvell 88SE9235). That horribly plasticky thing isn't half bad.

Single: 1 TB Crucial BX500:

RAID 0: 1 TB Crucial BX500 + 240 GB KingDian S280:

 

[Amethyst1]

Enter the Matrox DS1: Fresco Logic FL1100 @ PCIe 1.0 ×1. Now where have I seen that before?

One of its two USB 2.0 ports:

It's sole USB 3.0 port: