M3 Ultra / M4 Max Studio and External Drive--How Hot

I am considering purchasing either an M4 Max or an M3 Ultra Studio. Along with this purchase I am considering using a Thunderbolt 5 enclosure for a M.2 NVME SSD for external storage. My concern is that the external Thunderbolt 5 enclosure with accompanying SSD with get too hot and slow down to be useful for extended periods.

For those of you using external memory, what is your storage? What enclosure/M2. NVME SSD are you using? Does it get hot and slow down appreciably? I recognize that Thunderbolt 5 has not been available until recently. You experience with Thunderbolt 3 will suffice.

Thank you in advance for sharing your experience and advice.

Don

We have two G-Speed Shuttle TB3 SSD RAIDs (16TB and 32TB), and I can't recall them getting hot at all. They do have a fan inside, so bear that in mind. We also have a bunch of little 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB G-Tech SSDs, and they get warm but not ridiculous.

All our gear is still limited to TB3, so we're not worried about TB5 "yet."

Hi Marc:

Thank you for you input. I already have a spinning disk mass storage solution for projects that I am archiving. My plan was to use something like a OWC or an Accasis Thunderbolt 5. I would expect these devices to have less cooling capacity than your G-Speed Shuttle and not certain how well they will work. Even though these enclosures are being touted by a number of YouTubers they never really state they are using them for video projects.

Thank you again,

Don

I use an older Acasis with TB 4 for demanding codecs with no issues at all.

Hi Uli:

Thank you for your helpful information.

Don

I have the ACASIS with a fan that works fine. You may want to look at this video from David Harry. He has lots on his site.

Honestly, I went this route with a fan for one of my exclosures and I ditched it because it is noisy when you are used to running a MacBook where there are no fan noises for most work. If I had a big PC sitting beside me, different story. I just found that the fan kicks in early on mine (although it wasn't an Acasis, it was a UGREEN so maybe that's a consideration). The UGREEN was faster than the Acasis, but the fan noise wasn't worth it for me.

Hi Ron and Steve:

Thank you so very much for your input. Ron, how noisy is the Acasis? Does it get hot and slow down?

Don

I have the older TBU405 so fan is not adjustable. The new ones for TB5 have adjustable fan. You can definitely hear the fan if you are close. I have it about 3 feet away and cannot hear it there. My 10G Ethernet switch is much loader from under the desk. I expect if you edit in a quite room with nothing else making any noise you would hear it. To me insignificant in my room and have to move my ear right up to it to hear it. Any audio from video would drown it.

I have had no issues with over heating or thermal slow down.

Good morning Ron:

Thank you for that helpful information.

Don

I ran my TB4 Acasis (without fan) for several hours using the BMD disk speed test - 4GB over and over and did not see a speed decrease. Over 2800 MB/s read and write to a 990 Pro 2TB NVMe (Samsung). The unit got quite hot (not burn your hand hot, but hot). I've never used the Acasis with a fan. The UGREEN with the fan took shortcuts on the enclosure itself whereas the Acasis I am using is a huge block of aluminum relative to the size of the NVMe and with the thermal pads it comes with, I presume it is dissipating enough heat (by design).

Thanks for the additional input Steve.

Don

Thunderbolt 3 is prefered over Thunderbolt 4. Because Thunderbolt four limits storage to just one pcie lane. Thunderbolt 4 was designed more as a dock solution for splitting pcie lanes between devices. Thunderbolt 4 also seems to often default to usb4 performance.
Where as Thunderbolt 3 makes all available lanes usable by a storage device such as NVMe.

Thunderbolt 5 as I understand it behaves like a much improved Thunderbolt 3 storage device (full lanes) but also with the ability to be an effective docking protocol dividing lanes between attached devices. It can also act as a usb connection.

So the moral is choose Thunderbolt 3 or 5 preferably for storage. But Thunderbolt 4 or 5 for docks.


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Hi John:

Thank you for responding. I am uncertain what you mean by "dock". Do you mean the adaptor is attached to a docking station as opposed to being directly plugged into one of the Thunderbolt 5 ports on the computer?

Don

Using OWC Express 1M2 + WD Black SN850X 8TB on my M3 Ultra, with Thunderbolt 5.

Mostly with Red Komodo RAW, Canon C70 RAW and Canon R5 8K RAW footage.

Didn't notice any slowdowns after working on it for 5-6 hours. Using Davinci Resolve Studio 19.1.4. A lot of Edits, a lot of Color and some Audio work.
It does get a little hot, but not so hot that you can't touch it, you just feel that it is hot, but nothing so hot to worry about.
How hot it became it depends on how you use it, and also what nvme you are using.

Here are 2 screenshots of speeds reached with 5GB test file, one after few runs, the other after 10 minutes run, if that mean something to you.

Few runs 5GB

DiskSpeedTest_WD8TB.png (205.03 KiB) Viewed 602 times

10min runs 5GB

DiskSpeedTest_WD8TB_10min.png (204.67 KiB) Viewed 602 times

Obviously it does get more hot with those tests then when working normally, but nothing so hot that you can't touch it.

Very happy with it for now.

Hi Daniel,

Thank you for your very helpful input. Good to read that this passively cooled device works well. Too bad OWC does not sell the TB5 version without the NVM.

Don

Use several nvme enclosures.
Best one concerning heat is the Graugear with built in very quiet fan.

https://graugear.de/en/portfolio-item/u ... -nvme-ssd/