By PURPLELEC | 28 February 2025 | 0 Comments
Analysis of External SSD Enclosures: A Comprehensive Look at Chips, Speeds, and Performance
In the realm of external SSD enclosures, the choice of controller chips plays a crucial role in determining their performance. Currently, there are four major suppliers of controller chips in the market, namely ASMedia, Intel, JMicron, and RealTek. Among them, Realtek and JMicron offer a widely - used single - chip solution that allows the use of either SATA or NVMe SSDs. Such solutions are commonly found in enclosures priced in the range of \(20 to \)50, like the Uni model (which I have reviewed). However, these enclosures are limited by the speed of USB 3.x, which poses a certain bottleneck in data transfer. The solutions provided by other suppliers only support either SATA or NVMe SSDs, not both simultaneously.
If you are seeking an external SSD enclosure with the absolute fastest speed in 2024, when used in conjunction with an NVMe SSD, there are two excellent options: USB4 or Thunderbolt 3. Compared to the older Thunderbolt 3 designs (which reserve bandwidth for DisplayPort and traditional USB), these new - generation enclosures can maintain a higher throughput. When using the latest Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs, the actual peak throughput can reach approximately 3.1 to 3.8GB/s. Since 2020, many enclosures have claimed to be "USB4 - compatible", but in fact, they are based on older Thunderbolt 3 chips. Therefore, consumers must pay close attention to the product details when making a purchase. Enclosures based on the ASM2464PD chipset typically have a throughput of over 3.2GB/s. However, these enclosures should not have been sold on the market before July 2023, although some brands had launched crowdfunding campaigns earlier. It is worth noting that in 2023, the number of PCs that could fully utilize these high - speed transfer capabilities was limited. Systems based on AMD CPUs with built - in USB4 running the latest version of Windows 11 seem to achieve the best results when paired with such enclosures. In addition, most of these enclosures adopt similar PCB designs and have almost identical performance characteristics. However, the old firmware included with some enclosures may, in some cases, have a negative impact on performance. To find out if there is a firmware update available for your enclosure, please refer to the firmware section below.
Most Thunderbolt 3 enclosures are based on the older DSL6xxx/JHL6xxx chips (Alpine Ridge). Due to the way the controller allocates bandwidth for DisplayPort and USB traffic, the available speed is limited to 22Gb/s out of 40Gb/s. However, the JHL7440 (Titan Ridge) solution is different. It can increase the transfer speed by approximately 10%, with the actual speed reaching up to about 2.6 to 2.8GB/s. Many enclosures of this type on the market are labeled as USB4 or Thunderbolt 4, but in essence, they are just Thunderbolt 3.
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