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tevion5

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 12, 2011
1,967
1,603
Ireland
I've just purchased an M2 Pro Mac mini with 1TB of internal storage.

I like to have more than 1TB and I already have a 2TB OWC 4M2 card left over from my Mac Pro which I sold last year.
So I'd like to repurpose that for my new Mac mini seeing as I already have it lying around.

OWC have the Mercury Helios 3S which seems like it would suit my needs:
https://eshop.macsales.com/shop/owc-mercury-helios-3s/thunderbolt-3

I know a TB3/4 connection will bottleneck the top performance of my 4M2 but I can live with that, I'd just like to know I'm getting the best option that makes sense.

Is this the best enclosure I could get for this purpose, or are there others that are cheaper or have more bandwidth / quality etc?
 

joevt

macrumors 604
Jun 21, 2012
6,941
4,241
You can get Thunderbolt PCIe enclosures that have 3 slots but they're much more expensive. Compare with Sonnet Thunderbolt products. https://www.sonnettech.com/product/thunderbolt/thunderbolt-products.html

The OWC Helios 3S is nice because it's easy to open (captive thumb screws), has a large power supply (85W for laptop charging), is full height but half length (long enough for the 4M2), has a DisplayPort 1.4 port (max display bandwidth until Macs with Thunderbolt 5 exist).

I don't think different enclosures will differ much in bandwidth. Your only choices are Titan Ridge or Alpine Ridge based. Titan Ridge has support for HBR3 link rate (DisplayPort 1.4) while Alpine Ridge is limited to HBR2 (DisplayPort 1.2).
 
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tevion5

macrumors 68000
Original poster
Jul 12, 2011
1,967
1,603
Ireland
I don't think different enclosures will differ much in bandwidth. Your only choices are Titan Ridge or Alpine Ridge based. Titan Ridge has support for HBR3 link rate (DisplayPort 1.4) while Alpine Ridge is limited to HBR2 (DisplayPort 1.2).
Thanks for the suggestions!
 
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