Akasa AK-ENU3M2-07 USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 SSD Enclosure Review: 20Gbps with Excellent Thermals

Storage bridges are an integral part of today’s computing ecosystem. The bridge is external or internal, and the former bridge enables various direct-attached storage (DAS) units. These range from thumb drives with UFD controllers to full-fledged RAID towers with Infiniband and Thunderbolt links. From a bus-driven DAS perspective, Thunderbolt was limited to premium devices, but a variant of USB 3.2 has emerged as a high-performance alternative to the mass market. USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 delivers the best performance class (up to 20 Gbps) on USB devices without resorting to PCIe tunneling.

Over the last few years, many vendors have announced new products in this 20 Gbps performance class. This includes portable SSDs and M.2 NVMe SSD enclosures. Host support has also started searching. Key challenges for enclosures and portable SSDs that support USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 include power handling and thermal management. The 20Gbps Performance Class PSSD and Enclosure Review has analyzed these aspects (in addition to normal performance figures). The following review shows an evaluation report of Akasa’s AK-ENU3M2-07 (USB3.2Gen 2×2 Enclosure for M.2 NVMe SSD).

Introduction and impression of the product

SSD speed and storage capacity have improved significantly over the last decade, thanks to rapid advances in flash technology and high-speed interfaces / protocols. Gumstick-sized and palm-sized drives that support PCIe 4.0 that can sustain over 7,000 MBps (56 Gbps), starting with 2.5-inch disk drives that could barely saturate the SATA III (6 Gbps) interface in the early 2010s. there is.

These SSDs also form the base platform for portable SSDs. Traditionally, such drives fall into one of six categories, depending on their performance profile and internal components: Recently, we’ve seen direct flash-to-USB controllers in all layers except the best performance layers listed here.

• 2.5GBps + Class: Thunderbolt SSD with PCIe 3.0×4 NVMe drive
• 2GBps + Class: USB3.2Gen 2×2 SSD with PCIe 3.0×4 NVMe drive
• 1GBps + Class: USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD with PCIe 3.0 (x4 or x2) NVMe drive
• Class over 500MBps: USB 3.2 Gen 2 SSD with SATA drive
• 400MBps and above class: USB 3.2 Gen 1 SSD with SATA drive
• Sub 400MBps + Class: Direct Flash-USB 3.2 Gen1 Flash Drive with USB Controller

In addition to portable SSDs, this type of segmentation can also be applied to storage enclosures. Since the mid-2010s, regular streams of SSD enclosures for 2.5-inch, mSATA, and M.2 form factors have been on the market.

Akasa Is a well-known manufacturer of thermal solutions for industrial applications and computing systems for home consumers. Since 2013, we have maintained a lineup of storage bridge products for various market segments. Last year we reviewed a bunch of M.2 SATA and NVMe enclosures and were impressed with our comprehensive line-up to meet different requirements.This review is AK-ENU3M2-07USB 3.2 Gen 2x220Gbps Type-C Aluminum enclosure with internal upstream interface and M.22230 / 42/60/80 NVMe downstream port.

Currently, USB 3.2 Gen2 x2 has two shipping device solutions. Used in portable SSDs such as the Kingston XS2000, the SiliconMotion SM2320 is a native UFD controller and the ASMedia ASM2364 is a better bridging solution for use in enclosures. AK-ENU3M2-07 uses the latter. The enclosure itself is made of sturdy aluminum with ridges to help dissipate heat. One Type-C-Type-C cable with a 20Gbps operating rating is included. The package comes with one thermal gap filler along with a carrying pouch and user manual.

One of the attractive aspects of the AK-ENU3M2-07 is its tool-less nature. To access the internal board to install the SSD, simply loosen the two screws on either side of the Type-C port. They are large enough to loosen the screws without the use of tools. This allows you to slide the bottom panel. The board itself is attached to this panel and does not need to be removed for any purpose. The plastic tabs that hold the M.2 SSD in place are installed in the 2280 holes by default. Rotate this tab along the notch to put the SSD in place and lock it. If you don’t have an SSD in the photo, you can fully remove the tab by rotating it further so that the longer arm of the tab is parallel to the back panel (SSD length to 30mm, 40mm, or 60mm). It is fixed in one of the corresponding other holes). After installing the SSD, you can place the thermal gap filler on top. The gallery below contains pictures of the enclosure and SSD installation instructions.

Evaluate the M.2 NVMe storage enclosure using the SK hynix Gold P31 1TB NVMe SSD. This SSD is used in all related reviews, so you can compare apples between different products.

The table below provides a comparative view of the various storage bridge and PSSD specifications presented in this review.

An important aspect that stands out is how heavy the AK-ENU3M2-07 is compared to other enclosures that use the same bridge tip. The Akasa enclosure weighs 112g, while the Silverstone MS12 weighs only 53g and the Yottamaster HC2 weighs 60g. This can increase the thermal mass of the enclosure, cool the internal SSD, and improve thermal performance. Before we look at benchmark numbers, power consumption, and the effectiveness of our thermal solutions, we’ll show you how to set up and evaluate your testbed.

Testbed setup and evaluation methodology

Directly connected storage devices are evaluated using the Quartz Canyon NUC (basically the Xeon / ECC version of the Ghost Canyon NUC). 2x 16GB DDR4-2667 ECC SODIMM And PCIe 3.0×4 NVMe SSD- IM2P33E8 1TB From ADATA.

The most attractive aspect of the Quartz Canyon NUC is the presence of two PCIe slots (electrically x16 and x4) for add-in cards. If you don’t have a discrete GPU (not required for DAS testbeds), you can use both slots. In fact, to avoid the DMI bottleneck when evaluating Thunderbolt 3 devices, we also added a spare SanDisk Extreme PRO M.2 NVMe SSD to the CPU direct connection M.222110 slot on the baseboard. This allows you to continue to use two add-in cards that operate at x8 (x16 electricity) and x4 (x4 electricity). QuartzCanyonNUC doesn’t have a native USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 port, so Silverstone SST-ECU06 The add-in card is installed in the x4 slot. All devices except Thunderbolt are tested using the Type-C port enabled by SST-ECU06.

The testbed specifications are summarized in the table below.

Testbed hardware is just one segment of the rating. Over the last few years, common direct-attached storage workloads for memory cards have also evolved. High bitrate 4K video at 60fps has become very popular and 8K video is beginning to emerge. Game install sizes are also steadily growing on portable game consoles, thanks to high resolution textures and artwork. With these in mind, the direct-attached storage device evaluation scheme includes multiple workloads detailed in the corresponding sections.

• Synthetic workload using CrystalDiskMark and ATTO
• Actual access trace using PCMark 10 storage benchmark
• A custom robocopy workload that reflects typical DAS usage
• Sequential writing stress test

The next section provides an overview of the performance of the Akasa AK-ENU3M2-07 enclosure in these benchmarks. Before making any conclusions, we also observed some device power consumption and thermal solutions.