haravikk
macrumors 65832
I have an OWC ThunderBay 4 (Thunderbolt 3) for external storage on my Mac Mini, which I got for £371.99 two years ago; due to the cost I ditched my original plan to buy a second enclosure up front (to split disks between two for full redundancy) as that would have put me way over budget.
However, now that I'm looking into getting a second enclosure again it seems like hardly anybody sells these in the UK anymore; the cheapest I've been able to find it is £509.99 on MegaMac.com, but that's a hefty jump in price, when I would have expected it to have fallen by now.
Thing is, even at £372 the ThunderBay 4 was super overpriced for what it is; while I can't fault the performance, for the price I would have expected a far better product. OWC describe it as having "vibration dampening" but what they mean is it has solid rubber feet that transfer every vibration directly into your desk, meanwhile the stock fan is terrible (noisy, fixed speed and doesn't even keep the drives all that cool), so I had to replace the fan with a Noctua NF-A9 (same cooling and near silent with the lowest speed connector), mounted the enclosure on a piece of thick foam with a solid top to reduce vibration, and put a foam dust filter in the front to reduce noise from the front-grille. That makes it a lot more bearable to keep on a desk rather than having to look into getting a long fibre optic cable to hide it somewhere.
So anyway, while I'd be happy to pay the same or less for another, paying £140+ more for one is a tough sell, but it seems like there aren't a lot of other options?
I don't suppose anyone is aware of any good UK sellers that stock these at a more reasonable price, or a good place to look for second-hand models? I've already tried eBay but the only second hand model are the older Thunderbolt 2 models (might suffice, but even these are expensive second-hand). Either that, or are there any other Thunderbolt 3 enclosures I might have missed? Only other one I found myself is a 5-bay Terramaster for £599.99 but that's even more expensive and reviews don't bode well for its reliability.
However, now that I'm looking into getting a second enclosure again it seems like hardly anybody sells these in the UK anymore; the cheapest I've been able to find it is £509.99 on MegaMac.com, but that's a hefty jump in price, when I would have expected it to have fallen by now.
Thing is, even at £372 the ThunderBay 4 was super overpriced for what it is; while I can't fault the performance, for the price I would have expected a far better product. OWC describe it as having "vibration dampening" but what they mean is it has solid rubber feet that transfer every vibration directly into your desk, meanwhile the stock fan is terrible (noisy, fixed speed and doesn't even keep the drives all that cool), so I had to replace the fan with a Noctua NF-A9 (same cooling and near silent with the lowest speed connector), mounted the enclosure on a piece of thick foam with a solid top to reduce vibration, and put a foam dust filter in the front to reduce noise from the front-grille. That makes it a lot more bearable to keep on a desk rather than having to look into getting a long fibre optic cable to hide it somewhere.
So anyway, while I'd be happy to pay the same or less for another, paying £140+ more for one is a tough sell, but it seems like there aren't a lot of other options?
I don't suppose anyone is aware of any good UK sellers that stock these at a more reasonable price, or a good place to look for second-hand models? I've already tried eBay but the only second hand model are the older Thunderbolt 2 models (might suffice, but even these are expensive second-hand). Either that, or are there any other Thunderbolt 3 enclosures I might have missed? Only other one I found myself is a 5-bay Terramaster for £599.99 but that's even more expensive and reviews don't bode well for its reliability.
