Hello everyone, I'm Nightmare Thunder.
Some time ago, I shared with you 2 mobile SSD enclosures that I recently bought on Double 11, one of which has excellent heat dissipation, but only 10Gbps speed;Although the speed can reach 40Gbps at the fastest, the plastic case does not feel as good as the metal case after all.
Recently, I found that I need to go back and forth between the unit and the home** material is really more and more, and the heat dissipation pressure of the hard disk enclosure is too great when transferring data under high load for a long time, so I took advantage of the end of the year to engage in e-commerce**, and started a green USB4 SSD box that integrates the strengths of all families.
This time the new m2Hard disk enclosure has a 40Gbps rate on the basis of an all-metal shell, and at the same time, it still has the active heat dissipation blessing of a turbofan, which really fills the heat dissipation attributes.
I have measured a one-time write of 700GB data without overheating and speed reduction, which is really very satisfying, today I will share with you the actual experience of this hard disk enclosure, I hope to help the brothers who need to buy a hard disk enclosure.
The packaging content of this green USB4 SSD box is as rich as ever, in addition to the manual and warranty card that were not photographed, it also includes the hard disk box body, Phillips screwdriver, thermal conductive silicone pad, spare fixing buckle and 2 data cables with good workmanship.
One of the data cables is a to C interface and the other is a C to C interface, which is convenient for connecting different devices. One of the more reassuring things about buying storage equipment like Greenlink is that due to the strength of the procurement and sales department, the quality of the wire is generally quite good, at least there is no need to worry about the speed reduction or disk drop due to the wire problem.
It feels like Greenlink's recent new hard disk enclosures seem to be starting to come standard with silicone protective coversIt makes sense to think about it, after all, most of its hard disk boxes are aluminum alloy shells, and with a protective case, they can be better anti-drop and scratch-resistant, which can not only protect the safety of the hard disk case itself, but also avoid scratching other items when carrying.
It can be seen that there are also heat dissipation holes on the side of the hard disk enclosure, and the aluminum alloy shell can also be used for air convection heat dissipation.
Take down the silicone protective case to see the whole picture of the hard disk case, the shell of the entire hard disk case is CNC machined aluminum alloy material, the workmanship is very good, there are no flaws, and the feel is excellent after anodizing, and it is also more conducive to assisting in dissipating the heat emitted by the SSD during use.
The lid on the top of the hard drive case is secured by a screw, and it looks like the lid should be composed of two parts, the top layer is a gray aluminum alloy patch, and the second layer is a groove design similar to an SSD heat sink, which can improve the contact surface with air and improve heat dissipation efficiency.
After taking off the lid, you can see the inside of the hard drive case, I flipped the lid with my hand, it is not too heavy, and I feel that the lower part should not be the copper sheet used.
This enclosure natively supports mNVMe SSD with 2 interfaces, depending on the reserved fixed holes, should support the 4 specifications of 2280 2260 2242 2230. At the same time, the size of the hard disk case is also quite small, which can be grasped with one hand, which is convenient to carry around.
It can be seen that in order to cope with the 40Gbps ultra-high rate, Greenlink also equipped this hard disk enclosure with a turbofan for active heat dissipation, which can strengthen the internal air convection heat dissipation.
The position of this turbofan is very good, the air duct covers the main control chip and other electrical components inside the hard disk box, and you can also see that there are hollow heat dissipation holes at the two short ends of the hard disk box, which is convenient for lateral air convection. You must know that the heating of the main control is actually quite large, and if you do not do a good job of heat dissipation and suppression, you may have the problem of overheating and slowing down for a long time when reading and writing.
When I wrote this, I wanted to remove the PCB board of the hard disk box to see the bottom structure, but just like when I bought the green 10Gbps hard disk box before, the workmanship of this USB4 hard disk box is also very exquisite, and the PCB board is also difficult to disassemble without damage. However, when I looked back at the product page, I found that the main control should also be covered by a heat sink to conduct heat to the bottom shell, which is quite reassuring, and it is okay not to dismantle it.
After understanding, the bridge master of this hard disk enclosure is ASM2464 of Xiangshuo Technology. As the latest USB4 control chip to be withdrawn in 2023, the biggest advantage of ASM2464 is that it is extremely compatible, not only compatible with USB4, Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4 and other ultra-high-speed interfaces, but also backward compatible with USB32Gbps specification for 2 x2 as well as USB32 10gbps、usb3.0 5Gbps and USB20 and other specifications.
It is precisely because of the excellent compatibility of ASM2464 that this hard disk enclosure has eliminated the low-cost design of the previous Thunderbolt 3 hard disk enclosure that needs to use Thunderbolt 3 bridge chip + USB3 bridge chip at the same time, and a single main controller can be used with devices with various rate interfaces.
Next, in order to test, I found a 4TB Lexar ARES and plugged it in. This SSD is a full-speed PCIe40 NVMe SSD, which can perfectly bring out the full strength of the USB4 hard drive enclosure.
Once you've secured your SSD, don't forget to attach the included thermal pad to the SSD. To his credit, the thickness of this thermal pad is in place to ensure a perfect fit with the top cover
Finally, the top cover can be fixed with screws again, and the installation process is very simple.
The device used for testing here is the Zero Tick SER6 Max, configured as AMD R7 7735HS + 32G DDR5 memory + 1T SSD.
To say that the current mini console is really easy to use, although it is only the size of a palm, but the performance is quite good, and it is stronger than many early desktops.
AMD 7735HS This CPU can basically be regarded as an overclocking reskinning version of 6800H, although it is not the top CPU of AMD mobile, but it is already 8 cores and 16 threads, and the maximum acceleration frequency can reach 475 GHz, and there are also two native 40Gpbs USB4 ports on the rear interface, which is just right for testing this hard drive enclosure.
You can also see the details of the SSD body through CrystalDiskInfo, which is very convenient.
First of all, use CrystalDiskMark to test the theoretical performance by default, the sequential read speed reaches 3798MB s, the write speed reaches 3711MB s, and the single-queue 4K random read speed is 6554mb s, already more than the normal 2 in all directionsThe performance of a 5-inch SATA SSD has been improved.
It can be found that in the test results, the write speed of a single queue cannot even reach 2000MB s, and the performance of 4K random write in a single queue is also somewhat abnormal. This is not because there is anything wrong with the hard drive enclosure itself, but because in the Windows system, USB flash drives and portable SSDs will run under the "quick delete" policy by default, resulting in some performance loss.
When switched to the "Better Performance" strategy, the full performance of the main control chip can be brought into play
At this time, the CrystalDiskMark test results are as follows, the single-queue sequential write speed is immediately increased to more than 3000MB s, and the 4K random write speed has also increased by more than 10 times
Let's test the speed of actually copying data in Win11, here I used IOMometer to generate a 30GB file. By default, the write operation to the hard disk enclosure is performed as shown in the following figure, and it can be stable at 13GB s or so:
When the Better Performance policy is enabled, the actual write curve for a single queue can reach 24GB s or so like this:
Fortunately, regardless of whether the "Better Performance" policy is enabled or not, the speed of reading data from the enclosure is fine, or copy this file from the enclosure to the mini host, and the read curve can reach 27GB S or so:
The read and write performance test is complete, so how does this hard drive enclosure perform in temperature control during long-term high-load use?
After all, the configuration of 2 pieces of heat dissipation silicone + fuselage hollow convection design + all-aluminum fuselage + turbofan active heat dissipation is really full in one step, in order to try to suppress the use temperature.
With this question in mind, I wrote more than 700GB of data to this SSD in RAW format through TXBENCH (just stuck in the SLC cache of the 4TB SSD), and recorded the speed and temperature to sort out the following chart:
It can be seen that because the writing process of txbench uses multiple queues, it can perfectly play the extreme performance of this hard disk enclosure. During the entire 700GB data writing process, the Lexar ARES 4T maintained a write speed between 3300-3600MB s, and there was no overheating slowdown. It takes more than 3 minutes to write more than 700GB, and the performance is still quite powerful.
And the temperature performance of the SSD in the whole process is very stable, the highest temperature of the main control temperature has always been suppressed at about 55, the particle temperature is kept at more than 40 throughout the whole process, and at the same time hold the hard disk case with your hand, the surface body temperature is slightly warm, it can be said that the heat dissipation ability is as stable as an old dog, and you can't find a little fault.
PS: Actually, I pinched the stopwatch and wrote for 10 minutes, but the Lexar ARES 4T consumed more than 700G of SLC cache in a little more than three minutes of writing, and entered the direct writing stage of slowdown TLC particles, so in order to avoid misunderstandings among friends who don't know enough about SSD, here we only intercept the fastest SLC slow writing section.So to this extent, we can already make a conclusion about the USB4 SSD enclosure of Greenlink.
The all-aluminum shell of this hard disk case is not only impeccable in terms of feel and appearance, but also with the cooperation of hollow air ducts, turbofans and thermal pads, it can ensure the stable transmission of large-capacity data during long-term reading and writing.
At the same time, as a 40Gbps hard disk enclosure, the actual data reading rate can reach 3-4 times that of ordinary 10Gbps hard disk enclosures, which can greatly save time when transferring data.
Overall, this hard drive enclosure is particularly suitable for two use needs:
One is the need for ultra-high-speed data transfer, such as like me, you need to transfer the clip** material at any time, plus the compatibility is good, whether it is a mobile phone, tablet or computer can be adapted;
The second is the need to transmit data stably for a long time, such as expanding the capacity of game consoles such as PS5, MacBook and IMAC hosts of Apple series, etc.
All in all, this is a hard disk enclosure that basically can't find any shortcomings, and it is recommended that friends who need it start as appropriate.