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The M.2 2230 has never been a mainstream form factor. However, its compact size has made it a popular choice for embedded and laptop applications where portability is essential. We have been searching for a compact and high-speed storage solution, and we believe this product is the best option available on the market. Plugging in the enclosure reveals what makes it stand out – its 1.3-inch screen. When in standby, the home screen displays whether that power loss protection capacitor is charged, the SSD model currently installed, the remaining life of the SSD, and the amount of data that has been read from or written to the drive since it was powered on. In this review, we are focused on the USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports available in contemporary computing systems. Use the PowerShell command Optimize-Volume -DriveLetter H -ReTrim -Verbose (assuming that the drive connected to the storage bridge is mounted with the drive letter H)
Enclosure, USB 3.2 Gen 2 with 10Gbps Inateck M.2 NVMe Enclosure, USB 3.2 Gen 2 with 10Gbps
ASMedia ASM2142 enabling the USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C port in the front panel of Intel NUC8i7HVK ( Hades Canyon NUC) The second approach started making its appearance with the introduction of the AM4 desktop chipsets from AMD, and the Z390 chipset on the desktop / Cannon Point-H/-LP PCH on the mobile side from Intel. Usually, the number of USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports directly from the PCH is limited, and vendors may continue to use the third approach to enable additional high-speed ports. ASMedia continues to be a popular vendor in the bridge space, as evident from the widespread use of the ASM 2142 in various PCs introduced over the last year.
Our evaluation of the Plugable USBC-NVME had two aspects - the comparison of different USB 3.1 Gen 2 hosts currently in the market, and the comparison of the product itself against the MyDigitalSSD M2X enclosure. Our benchmark numbers have shown that the ASMedia ASM2142 and the Cannon Point-LP PCH's implementation of the USB 3.1 Gen 2 perform very similar to each other. Alpine Ridge / JHL6540 turned out to be an also-ran. To its defense, the DHL6540 / JHL6540 controllers have been around for more than a couple of years now. Evaluation of the newer Titan Ridge controller for similar workloads may yield numbers similar to what we obtained for the ASM2142 and CNP-LP PCH. In the rest of this review, we compare the Plugable USBC-NVME with a host of other storage bridges (including the TEKQ Rapide Thunderbolt 3 enclosure). Note that only the MyDigitalSSD M2X belongs to the same specific category as the Plugable USBC-NVME. The table below presents the detailed specifications and miscellaneous aspects of the units and how they compare. Usually, PC Mark 8 reports time to complete the trace, but the detailed log report has the read and write bandwidth figures which we present in our performance tables. Note that the bandwidth number reported in the results don't involve idle time compression. Results might appear low, but that is part of the workload characteristic. Note that the same CPU is being used for all configurations. Therefore, comparing the numbers for each trace should be possible across different DAS units. Readers interested in looking at all the graphs in one shot can choose the 'Expand All' option in the dropdown menu.
Enclosures for Building A Fast and Reliable Best NVMe M.2 Enclosures for Building A Fast and Reliable
Storage bridges are an indispensable part of today's computing ecosystem. Internal ones may enable different I/O ports in a motherboard, while external ones are responsible for a variety of direct-attached storage units. These may range from low-performance flash drives with an USB interface to full-blown RAID towers interfacing over high-performance links such as Thunderbolt 3. While Thunderbolt 3 remains a premium Intel-only interface for now, USB 3.1 Gen 2 has emerged as a mass-market high-performance alternative. It is available across systems based on chipsets from multiple vendors. In this context, high-speed USB 3.1 Gen 2 storage bridges are interesting to analyze. Today, we look at Plugable's USBC-NVME NVMe SSD enclosure that bridges a PCIe NVMe device (M.2 2280 or smaller) to a USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C interface. Introduction Any difference in power consumption for the same access trace between two different units is down to the storage bridge itself (since the drive used is the same in all cases). Peak power consumption for the USBC-NVME with the JHL6540 and the ASM2142 was around 4.8W (same as the MyDigitalSSD M2X). The USBC-NVME idled at around 1.5W on both of our test systems, compared to the 1.2W number for the M2X (albeit, on a different testbed). We can't reliably conclude whether the difference in the host system (our custom Skylake testbed against the Hades Canyon NUC) is responsible for the lower idle power of the M2X, as it is also possible for the bridge firmware to be slightly different between the M2X and the USBC-NVME. Miscellaneous Aspects and Concluding Remarks It’s worth mentioning that Apple’s M1 Mac range has an underlying issue due to which, your external SSD will not receive it’s maximum speed. Some of the early USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports were enabled by the third approach in the above list. For example, the ASMedia 1142 bridges 2x PCIe 2.0 or 1x PCIe 3.0 lanes to two USB 3.1 Gen 2 ports. Intel's own Alpine Ridge Thunderbolt 3 controller bridges 4x PCIe 3.0 lanes to a Type-C port that can act either as a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C, or, a regular USB 3.1 Gen 2 Type-C host (depending on the downstream peripheral). While it may not offer the highest performance or absolute best value for money, it’s earned its place in my everyday carry, thanks to its minuscule size and great looks.The next screen offers graphs of the drive’s temperature and input voltage, while the final screen allows you to upgrade the enclosure’s firmware. 9to5Mac’s Take
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