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Are there any competitors to Samsung X5 Thunderbolt3 External SSD?

M

MR_Boogy

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 6, 2012
142
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All my searches for Thunderbolt3 external drives either come back to the Samsung X5 Portable, or a lot of non-Thunderbolt3 drives (USB3.1) like the T7 or similar.

I am considering using an external 1TB SSD as my boot drive so the higher TB3 speed is desirable. I don't need a portable SSD but that's all I can find. Portable drives often come at a premium and the X5 is pricey to begin with so, are there any other options? I wondered if I could buy an enclosure and SSD but I don't really want to get into this if I can avoid it. Does nobody else sell a TB3 external drive?
 
Some I have tested:

I prefer this to the X5 as it doesn't throttle as heavy as the X5 does:

OWC Envoy Pro FX:

Sabrent have a couple of enclosures that are all quite cool - and run pretty cool. I like this dual version....

And if you're after a simple enclosure...

I personally have 3 of these stacked on my desk!
 
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Over here I see:

Samsung X5 1Tb: £274
Vs
Samsung 980 1 TB PCIe 3.0: £102
ORICO Thunderbolt 3 to M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD Enclosure: £130 / Sabrent Thunderbolt 3 Certified M.2 NVMe SSD Tool-Free Solid Aluminum Enclosure: £80

Obviously if I go for a slower 2400MB/s SSD I can save a bit more: WD Blue SN550 1TB High-Performance M.2 PCIe NVME SSD: £84. But that seems quite a performance hit to me.

So some savings to be had.
 
nicho said:
Barely, compared to the X5 (rather than the 980).
Click to expand...
So I see the 980 PRO advertised at ~5000GB/s, the 970/980 at ~3500MB/s, X5 ~ 2800, WD Blue ~2400 so yes you are right- I hadn't realised 980 and 980 PRO were different so thanks for getting me to check :)

Basically, all I am interested in is an external drive on a par with the SSD Apple supply so I don't accidentally cripple my machine using USB3 without realising. This review scored the 2020 27" iMac at ~2500MB/s (https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/apple-imac-27-inch-2020) so it seems to me, any of these would meet that criteria. I don't need to be chasing faster.
 
Bear in mind, you cant expect an external drive, even when connected to a TB3 interface, to give you anywhere near 5000MB/s. You're looking at around 2200-2500MB/s as the upper limit (depending upon enclosure/chipset......)
 
Ifti said:
Bear in mind, you cant expect an external drive, even when connected to a TB3 interface, to give you anywhere near 5000MB/s. You're looking at around 2200-2500MB/s as the upper limit (depending upon enclosure/chipset......)
Click to expand...
Why is that, given TB3 is ~5000MB/s [edit] - is there a bottle-neck?
Does this mean that I might as well get something rated 2400, or are you saying the raw performance will be scaled? I'm certainly not interested in diminishing returns of paying more for a few %.
 
Last edited:
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d000hg said:
Why is that, given TB3 is ~8000MB/s - is there a bottle-neck?
Does this mean that I might as well get something rated 2400, or are you saying the raw performance will be scaled? I'm certainly not interested in diminishing returns of paying more for a few %.
Click to expand...

TB3 is nowhere near 8000MB/s - 40Gbps would be 5GBps (or 5000MB/s).

Problem is... it's nowhere near that either as a large amount is reserved for video. The X5 is around the peak, in terms of what data transfers through TB3 can achieve. It makes no sense to try and go beyond it, except perhaps to account for throttling.
 
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d000hg said:
So I see the 980 PRO advertised at ~5000GB/s, the 970/980 at ~3500MB/s, X5 ~ 2800, WD Blue ~2400 so yes you are right- I hadn't realised 980 and 980 PRO were different so thanks for getting me to check :)

Basically, all I am interested in is an external drive on a par with the SSD Apple supply so I don't accidentally cripple my machine using USB3 without realising. This review scored the 2020 27" iMac at ~2500MB/s (https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/apple-imac-27-inch-2020) so it seems to me, any of these would meet that criteria. I don't need to be chasing faster.
Click to expand...

There's huge differences between SSD in sustained sequential writes. Most cheaper NVMe fail this particular test. When the cache gets saturated the real write speed of the memory cells gets revealed.

For instance the 980 versus 980 Pro shouldn't be viewed like prior generations where there wasn't a major difference between the consumer and professional models besides write endurance. The 980 is much more cheaply built than the 980 Pro. While the 970 Evo was much closer to the 970 Pro.

In a sustained sequential write. Once the cache is saturated. A Samsung 980 will drop to about 430 MB/s. While a 970 Evo will sustain 1,200 MB/s and a 980 Pro will sustain 1,800MB/s then increases to 2,200MB/s for some reason I didn't look into further.

Anyways, I just wanted to make you aware of info beyond the fluff marketing numbers. There's what SSD can do in short bursts or optimal conditions. But when you push it. There's a marked difference between various models. From what I know of Apple SSD. They are generally quite good.

If you want something on par in intensive workloads. I'd be looking at professional models like the 970 Pro or 980 Pro. The 970 Evo being a rare instance of a really good consumer model. Although the 970 Pro has the best write endurance of the three. As it uses MLC memory. The 970 Evo and 980 Pro do not.

There's plenty of other high quality NVMe. I don't mention the 970 Evo Plus. As I recall there are issues with the Evo Plus and Macs.
 
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Remember that that Thunderbolt 3 chip is shared between the two thunderbolt 3 ports in a MacBook Pro. And remember marketing lingo. Thunderbolt 3 and 4 is sold as 40gbps but the math is 20 up and 20 down. I have a Sabrent 4TB Thunderbolt 3 SSD and I love it and it is still very fast. The only way now to get faster right now is to get a motherboard with PCI 4 and M.2 connected directly connected to that motherboard.

But Thunderbolt 5 should be faster. We will soon have to move to fiber optic cable with faster data transfer. Like they put on Cisco routers GBIC connector with multi-mode cables.
 
nicho said:
TB3 is nowhere near 8000MB/s - 40Gbps would be 5GBps (or 5000MB/s).

Problem is... it's nowhere near that either as a large amount is reserved for video. The X5 is around the peak, in terms of what data transfers through TB3 can achieve. It makes no sense to try and go beyond it, except perhaps to account for throttling.
Click to expand...
Doh, brain-fart on that one I did know it was 5000 :)


@velocityg4 thanks this makes sense. I reckon my usage is rarely going to be sustained writes. Probably larger reads then lots of itty bitty writes/reads. I'm not a performance user I just want to avoid any really obvious bottle-necks, and equally avoid spending $$$ on something I can't use.

In terms of the original question sounds like I can save a bit with a DIY enclosure if I want to boot off the external drive.
 
d000hg said:
Doh, brain-fart on that one I did know it was 5000 :)


@velocityg4 thanks this makes sense. I reckon my usage is rarely going to be sustained writes. Probably larger reads then lots of itty bitty writes/reads. I'm not a performance user I just want to avoid any really obvious bottle-necks, and equally avoid spending $$$ on something I can't use.

In terms of the original question sounds like I can save a bit with a DIY enclosure if I want to boot off the external drive.
Click to expand...

You just want one with a good cooling design. My Crucial X8 gets piping hot.

For general tasks the 980 is quite good. It's what I use in my latest build. I was just letting you know the downside as you wanted Apple performance. As I recall when I investigated the iMac Pro SSD. It seemed like they may have been using Enterprise class memory. Which may or may not be the case.

Although besides some heavy sustained workload, something with a really high queue depth or mixed random read/write. You aren't likely to notice a difference between an el cheapo NVMe and a top performance model. Heck, you won't notice much difference between a decent SATA model and an NVMe in most uses.
 
22.5 Gbps read/write is about the max you can get from Thunderbolt (2800 MB/s). Some devices connected to some computers using some benchmarks might be able to do 2900 MB/s.
40 Gbps write can only be reached if you add DisplayPort output.
40 Gbps read is not possible.

Reading or writing data to two devices connected to two ports of a discrete Thunderbolt controller (Alpine Ridge, Titan Ridge, maybe Maple Ridge?) has a total limit of ≈23 Gbps (test this using ATTO Disk Benchmark or RAID 0). This is not true for integrated Thunderbolt controllers (Ice Lake, Tiger Lake, M1 Mac).
 
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I bought a used 500GB X5 and put a Samsung 980 1TB in it, I paid 90 for the X5 and I paid 120 for the 980 which I had lying around from a failed hackintosh I was working on. I love the drive looks great and I get about 1800 R/Ws on it with my M1.
 
d000hg said:
So I see the 980 PRO advertised at ~5000GB/s, the 970/980 at ~3500MB/s, X5 ~ 2800, WD Blue ~2400 so yes you are right- I hadn't realised 980 and 980 PRO were different so thanks for getting me to check :)

Basically, all I am interested in is an external drive on a par with the SSD Apple supply so I don't accidentally cripple my machine using USB3 without realising. This review scored the 2020 27" iMac at ~2500MB/s (https://www.tomsguide.com/reviews/apple-imac-27-inch-2020) so it seems to me, any of these would meet that criteria. I don't need to be chasing faster.
Click to expand...
I have the 980 EVO Pro 2TB in an ORICO T3 enclosure as my Startup drive......works very very well!!!
 
The Samsung X5 has terrible cooling and will throttle hard when it reaches higher temps (which doesn't take long with NVMe SSD's).
I thought it was great originally, but now there are other drives that are so much better - there is a reason why they cost more though!! The Glyph Atom Pro is still king IMO, although naturally costs a lot.
 
velocityg4 said:
There's plenty of other high quality NVMe. I don't mention the 970 Evo Plus. As I recall there are issues with the Evo Plus and Macs.
Click to expand...
What issues have come up? For my new MBP 16 M1 Pro I was considering the 970 Evo Plus 2TB paired with a

M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter Tool-Free, RTL9210B Chips, USB C 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps NVME​

 
InnerSongs said:
What issues have come up? For my new MBP 16 M1 Pro I was considering the 970 Evo Plus 2TB paired with a

M.2 NVME SATA SSD Enclosure Adapter Tool-Free, RTL9210B Chips, USB C 3.1 Gen 2 10Gbps NVME​

Click to expand...

From what I can tell. The issue was fixed with a firmware upgrade. Unless it's been sitting on the shelf a really long time. The one you buy is likely fixed.
forums.macrumors.com

Samsung M.2 970 EVO Plus firmware upgrade problem solved

EDIT : If you buy a Samsung 970 EVO M.2 blade, install it but before formatting check the FIRMWARE revision in " About this Mac/ NVMe "first. It should be 2B2QEXM7. If it is 1B2QEXM7 you will have problems with the blade. ==================================================== I bought a 500gb...
forums.macrumors.com forums.macrumors.com

Also more recently. Samsung had to screw around with the innards of the drive due to the chip shortage. So, whatever issue applied. Wouldn't apply to the new revision. The change also affected performance. In some workloads the drive is considerably faster. But under certain heavy write loads which saturate the huge cache. It's much worse.

Yes, Samsung Is Swapping SSD Parts Too

Component swap done right
www.tomshardware.com www.tomshardware.com
 
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