OWC / Other World Computing Express 4M2 USB4 NVMe M.2 External Desktop SSD Enclosure, Silver

2019-11-17T07:08:45

OWC / Other World Computing Express 4M2 Thunderbolt 3 4-Slot M.2 NVMe

Joseph S.

2018-12-13T21:06:36

So let’s say you want really fast external storage. You’ve got the TB3 ports, you want to connect multiple ultra-fast M.2 SSDs to it, and you’d like to pick the SSDs yourself or be able to upgrade when TBs are cheaper down the line. Currently, this thing is basically your only option on the market, which puts it in a league of its own. Plusses: - It holds up to four PCIe M.2 SSDs of your choice - You can address the drives however you want (RAID, JBOD) - Speeds rated to 2800MB/s - Chainable TB3 ports - There’s a big fan pointed right at the drives, reducing throttling - Pretty compact - Built like a tank (you could seriously probably stand on top of it) - Includes a DisplayPort connection, so you can use it to chain a monitor - Comes with the fantastic SoftRAID The fan is particularly great, as M.2 drives are known for thermal throttling if you push them hard, and this is blowing a lot of air right at the top of all four drives. There’s even enough room there to squeeze in a heat sink for each, if you were so inclined and worried ti was still going to throttle. That’s a pretty awesome list of plusses. It’s a little disappointing that rather than one 10Gbit channel per drive (on paper, 1.25GB/s, realistically somewhat less) you only really get 5.6Gbit per drive (700MB/s), but that could be protocol overhead or how M.2 drives work rather than the fault of the case (actually not sure about this), so I won’t count it against it. It’s quite a ways from perfect, though: - The fan is surprisingly loud. It’s FAR louder than the 2.5” 4-drive OWC case fan, and has an annoying sort of buzzing sound in addition to the hum or whoosh you’d expect. Honestly, for $I would expect a much quieter fan. - The bandwidth is split up equally per-drive, which is not made clear on the documentation and I didn’t think through enough to realize would probably be expected. What this means is that if you’ve got less than 4 drives in it you will get much less than the rated 2800MB/s regardless of the individual drive speed. Mine clocked pretty solidly at 700MB/s/drive. - It’s actually kind of large given what’s in it. The drives themselves are microscopic, and while I get that it needs room for electronics and the fan, it seems like there’s a lot of wasted space. - Regardless of whose fault it is, it maxes out at 2800MB/s instead of the 5000MB/s you’d theoretically hope to get from a 40Gbit TB3 port. Additional nitpicks: - While you can easily open the case without any tools using the knurled knobs on the back, to actually install a drive you need to remove two screws and lift the fan out of the way. With that much empty space it seems like there was plenty of room to make it completely tool-less. - It ships with a short 1’ TB3 cable, which feels kinda skimpy. - The external power brick is quite large. For as bit as the case is already, I’d probably rather it was a little bigger and had an internal power supply; it doesn’t matter on the desktop, but as a portable drive lugging the big brick and cord around is messy and unwieldy. Bottom line: Does it do what it says it does? Yes. Do you actually want what it says it does over the alternatives? Depends. If you’re all about speed, you’re probably better off getting multiple “single” TB3 SSDs. With a high-end SSD a single one can probably approach the sequential throughput of this thing fully populated, and with multiple RAIDed together and you’ll get WAY faster speeds even with just two. If you’re all about compactness or portability, again probably better off with multiple non-multi-drive externals, since they don’t have all the empty space and the big brick to lug around. They’re more likely to thermally throttle, I suppose, if the case isn’t a good heatsink. If you’re noise sensitive, this thing is not even an option unless you replace the fan with something better. Get a different external. Which is all to say that it’s a good device, but not nearly as good as I was expecting given my past experience with OWC, and is probably not the best option for a lot of demanding professionals. It’s main plus is future expandability when prices come down.

MARC M.