Qwiizlab Fanless 40Gbps USB4 SSD Enclosure with Aluminum Chasiss, Compatible with Thunderbolt 5/4/3. Supports PCIe M.2 NVMe up to 8TB, Gray (SSD Not Included)

It was a breeze to install my Samsung 990Pro 2Tb NVME M.2 SSD inside this enclosure. I needed it to expand the memory of my 2025 Mac Studio. They include small screwdrivers needed to open the enclosure (look inside the box, it might be easy to miss the small plastic containing them). For easier installation including how to properly stick the silicone heat absorbing pads on your SSD, I recommend you follow the YouTube video that Qwiizlab posted on their YouTube page. This was my first time setting up my own external SSD and it was a breeze! I’ve attached photos of the speedtest I did using this external SSD enclosure with my CableMatters thunderbolt 5 cable. By the way, it gets hot during use and even when on standby (which is expected with external SSDs) but never too hot to burn or cause blistering when touched.

UPDATE: As hoped, the thermal pads, with time and perhaps heat cycles, have conformed quite well. After removing the cover (have had the unit for a week or so) the pads have conformed and are no longer causing excessive pressure on the components, and lid - which now closes quite nicely. Increasing rating to 5 stars. Works as expected and adds the necessary extra storage for my M4 Mac Mini base model. As mentioned though, the thermal pads that came with the enclosure just not the right thickness. I put one pad on for starters and it didn't contact the enclosure cover, and neither did the one on the control chip, so I attached the additional pads included for both the memory card and the control chip and with both installed, they were really too thick causing the cover to be difficult to push into position to put the screws in. Over time I suspect the pads will form up well enough and since the case does get warm, I'm thinking there is at least some thermal relief is being provided to the hot parts. I think they should have done the work to figure out the appropriate pad thickness or included additional pads of different thicknesses to correct for any variabillity.

Works well. It does not overheat. I ran a Black Magic speed test on it and I got write 3408 GB/s, Read 3198 GB/s. That is consistent with actual Thunderbolt 4 speeds.

TL;DR: You may need to flatten the thermal pad that you place between the board and the memory so that the memory card does not bend when you screw it down. This is not mentioned in the instructions. Also, Thunderbolt 3 compatibility with non-Macs is not assured (listing says it IS ThunderBolt 3 compatible). If you only plan to use this on a Mac, you probably will be fine, and perhaps OK with a Thunderbolt 4 PC (I cannot test this). This may be an issue with the controller chip (which many other enclosures use); if you must have Thunderbolt 3 speeds to get those transfer speeds on a non-Mac with only Thunderbolt 3, you may need to find a ThunderBolt 3 enclosure. It does work in such a machine, it just falls back to USB3 speeds. It is built well. Can't speak to longevity; check other reviews for that. ----- This enclosure achieved Thunderbolt transfer rates on an M1 MacBook Pro where it was recognized as a Thunderbolt 4 device, and on an older x86 MacBook Pro, it was recognized as a Thunderbolt 3 device. But, I wanted to use this primarily on a Lenovo ThinkPad P53 laptop on Linux and Windows. This laptop successfully recognized an OWC Thunderbolt 3 dock, a DisplayPort monitor attached to the dock, and an NVMe card on an NVMe to PCIe card adapter inserted in the dock, in both Windows 11 and Ubuntu Linux 24.04 (Linux kernel 6.14). But it would not recognize this as a Thunderbolt device; instead it fell back to being a USB drive. Now, as a USB drive, it had respectable speeds, between 800-900 MB/sec, writing zeros to a large file in Linux (with no compression, as far as I was aware). But this was not the Thunderbolt speed that I bought the drive and the enclosure for on this machine and a fraction of what the drive could do on the M1 MacBook Pro. It may be a problem with the compatibility of the controller chip inside. If you search for this problem, you can see others report issues with this chip in various enclosures. Search "ASM2464 devices with older Intel Thunderbolt (3/4) hosts". So switching to another enclosure with the same controller may not help. (I will be looking into Thunderbolt 3 controllers that have USB fallback for non-TB hosts, or a TB4 enclosure with a known TB3-on-PC-compatible chipset.) I have reached out to the company and hope that either they have a firmware update for the enclosure which helps solve this problem or, if they can replicate this or have heard it from others, update the listing with this info. Also, this is not an enclosure you will want if you need to swap drives often. But at Thunderbolt speeds, quick swaps may not really be an option: the drives get hot, and the thermal pads need to be set up well to cool properly. So the extra cover screws are not that much more of a speed bump. Finally, the bottom thermal pad needs to be mashed down, because if you don't, it will be too think and the card will bend when you try to screw it down!!! This may stress memory chip solder joints. Photos show an error message in Linux dmesg when unplugging and replugging the cable as it fails to be recognized as Thunderbolt and successfully (and silently) falls back to USB. Also shown is the problem with the thick thermal pads that need to be smashed thinner. It is not as small as some USB non-TB adapters but the larger size helps dissipate heat for big transfers, which is why you are getting this!!! If you don't need the speed, a USB 3.1 alternative will be more economical. I spent most of a Sunday on this science project to learn why this would not run at TB3 speeds on the machine it was intended for, and wrote this to hopefully save someone else the trouble.

This SSD enclosure provides blazing fast data transfer rates, easy insertion of the SSD module and great heat dissipation with its solid aluminum body. The deep heat fins on the top and groves on the bottom substantially increase the surface area of the aluminum chassis, making it an efficient heat dissipator without using a fan (which can fail or get noisy with time). Even with intense I/O operation, it only gets warm to the touch! Worth every penny to protect my expensive M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD module!

読み書き共に3000MB/s台。最初は900MB/s しか出なかったが、ケーブルを一旦取り外して差し直したら期待通りの速度が出ました。結構暖かくなる場合がありますが許容範囲内だと思います。ヒートシンクが機能している証拠です。上面と底面がなるべき空気に触れるようするために、縦にするかもしくは側面に寝かした方が良いと思います。 色はシルバー系かなと思っていましたが、実物はダークグレイでした。特に気にならないです。また、チップ上に乗せるサーマルパッドが既に貼り付けられていのであれ？と思いました。予備のサーマルパッドとネジ類が付属していて嬉しかったです。

Deze externe ssd behuizing is snel (Thunderbolt 4/usb4), robuust en heeft passieve koeling, waardoor een ventilator niet nodig is. Monteren van de ssd is een eitje m.b.v. bijgeleverde schroevendraaiers. De behuizing wordt tijdens gebruik warm, maar dat is normaal. Top product! Wordt ook onder andere merknamen verkocht, presteren allemaal gelijk.

Bsest enclosure

I like that this model has screws to keep the SSD enclosure secure. The fanless design works well as the heatsink doesn't get overly warm. The performance when connected with my thunderbolt 5 equiped M4 Macbook Pro is more than adequate. No issues with the unit dropping offline like I had with another model SSD enclosure.

Simpel en efficient. Werkt echt goed, snelste drive tot nu toe met deze casino. En de kleur van de led is echt handig om te zien of je een snelle verbinding hebt of niet...! Goed ding dus.