- Posts: 735
- Joined: Tue Jul 24, 2018 11:58 pm
- Location: The Netherlands, Haarlem
- Real Name: Eric-Jan van den Bogaard
You got me curious. I am always looking for more speed. I was going to say that you would be hard pressed to get drives that fill a USB-C pipeline since it can handle 10Gbps (1.2GB/s) and an SSD tops out at 550MB/s. But there are M.2 drives that can do 1.8GB/s.
I saw an interesting array from OWC that houses four M.2s. In theory that would top out at 7.2GB/s (57Gbps) but the OWC site claims 2.8GB/s (22Gbps) - just slightly over a TB2 data rate of 20Gbps (2.5GB/s).
You can connect Thunderbolt 3 devices to TB2 (generally). Per OWC: 'Moreover, the OWC Express 4M2 is backward compatible with Thunderbolt and Thunderbolt 2.'
Thunderbolt 2 devices can definitely be connected to TB3 hosts. I don't see any reason why the Shuttle would not work on a newer laptop with the Apple TB2<->TB3 connector. If you are thinking of buying a new Mac, take the shuttle with you to the store and ask to plug it in.
Do you have more than one thunderbolt 2 controller in your laptop? (Probably not since it is a 13".) Would there be enough bandwidth in the TB2 controller to handle the shuttle and a fast SSD? Between that and the fact that you only have 8G of ram, I would lean towards an upgrade. The 15" (if I understand things correctly) have 2 Thunderbolt 3 controllers (each with two ports) so you get maximum speed by using one from either side of the computer. Then you could use an M.2 array and the Shuttle without filling the pipe. You could then also add an eGPU for even greater performance.
You have started me thinking about upgrading my SSD array (top data rate of 1.2GB/s) to an M.2 array (claimed rate of 2.8GB/s).