I've had a number of SSDs over the years and what has been exiting the past couple of years is the increases in speeds of external SSDs with Apple supporting USB4, Thunderbolt 3, 4 and now 5. One of the areas that I've been trying to find a solution for is Thunderbolt 3 on my iMac Pro. I wanted a solution that would provide good performance on USB 3.1 Gen 2, USB 3.1 Gen 2x2, Thunderbolt 3, USB 4 and Thunderbolt 4 as I have various devices with various levels of support.
The trickiest thing has been the iMac Pro because it supports Thunderbolt 3 but some enclosures try to drop you down to USB 3.1 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) rather than Thunderbolt 3 if they see it. On Thunderbolt 3 Macs, you get bumped down to USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps). Thunderbolt 3 can set aside bandwidth for other things like displays so you may not get full 40 Gbps depending on your hardware.
I've tested various enclosure and returned a few. One note on Amazon for many enclosure is that This is a frequently returned item. One Acasis Thunderbolt 3/4/USB4 gave me 10 Gbps, similar to the Orico in the chart below. But I bought a cheap Orico enclosure (31% off at Amazon) and a 990 EVO Plus (37% off) and finally got some decent speeds on the iMac Pro. The overall results were interesting on the various devices that I tested the combination on.
For some reason, Windows can really crank up the read speeds but tank the write speeds to around 5 Gbps. It something that I want to look into though I can just use a Mac to write stuff to it. The read speeds are basically best case.
As you can see, the SATA3 speeds are awful but exactly what you would expect as the enclosures are typically USB 3.1.
The Windows read speeds of 1,055, 1,906, and 3,829 are consistent with 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps and 40 Gbps so I'm really happy with that. I will try to figure out the issue on write speeds. The 990 EVO Plus does not have cache and uses system RAM so it's possible that there is a bandwidth or similar issue on writes.
The Orico USB4 uses Thunderbolt 3 on the iMac Pro - it's somewhere between 20 Gbps and 30 GBps. I was getting SATA3 speeds with every other enclosure that I tried. In general, it's getting harder to find Thunderbolt 3-only enclosures as companies have moved on to Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4. I wanted something that would run well on all of these interfaces and the Orico does the job. The only negative about the Orico is that it can disconnect transferring 40 GB which happened to me with a few tests. I generally don't transfer that much so it shouldn't be an issue in practice. It is a cheap enclosure that will work well enough for what I plan to use it for.
I'd guess that something with a design like the OWC 1M2 would do a better job at dissipating heat but the 1M2 didn't provide satisfactory results on the iMac Pro. It's great on anything with Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 though.
The trickiest thing has been the iMac Pro because it supports Thunderbolt 3 but some enclosures try to drop you down to USB 3.1 Gen 2x2 (20 Gbps) rather than Thunderbolt 3 if they see it. On Thunderbolt 3 Macs, you get bumped down to USB 3.1 Gen 2 (10 Gbps). Thunderbolt 3 can set aside bandwidth for other things like displays so you may not get full 40 Gbps depending on your hardware.
I've tested various enclosure and returned a few. One note on Amazon for many enclosure is that This is a frequently returned item. One Acasis Thunderbolt 3/4/USB4 gave me 10 Gbps, similar to the Orico in the chart below. But I bought a cheap Orico enclosure (31% off at Amazon) and a 990 EVO Plus (37% off) and finally got some decent speeds on the iMac Pro. The overall results were interesting on the various devices that I tested the combination on.
For some reason, Windows can really crank up the read speeds but tank the write speeds to around 5 Gbps. It something that I want to look into though I can just use a Mac to write stuff to it. The read speeds are basically best case.
As you can see, the SATA3 speeds are awful but exactly what you would expect as the enclosures are typically USB 3.1.
The Windows read speeds of 1,055, 1,906, and 3,829 are consistent with 10 Gbps, 20 Gbps and 40 Gbps so I'm really happy with that. I will try to figure out the issue on write speeds. The 990 EVO Plus does not have cache and uses system RAM so it's possible that there is a bandwidth or similar issue on writes.
The Orico USB4 uses Thunderbolt 3 on the iMac Pro - it's somewhere between 20 Gbps and 30 GBps. I was getting SATA3 speeds with every other enclosure that I tried. In general, it's getting harder to find Thunderbolt 3-only enclosures as companies have moved on to Thunderbolt 4 and USB 4. I wanted something that would run well on all of these interfaces and the Orico does the job. The only negative about the Orico is that it can disconnect transferring 40 GB which happened to me with a few tests. I generally don't transfer that much so it shouldn't be an issue in practice. It is a cheap enclosure that will work well enough for what I plan to use it for.
I'd guess that something with a design like the OWC 1M2 would do a better job at dissipating heat but the 1M2 didn't provide satisfactory results on the iMac Pro. It's great on anything with Thunderbolt 4 or USB 4 though.
