With its external SSD (M.2) enclosures, Asus relies on extra robustness, IP68 rating and strapping options. This is also more rare than with flash drives. The mounting of the SSD itself is along the lines of modern Asus motherboards. The subject of the analysis will first be the TUF Gaming A1, the cheaper of the pair of available enclosures. However, it too already supports USB 3.2 gen. 2 with Type-C connectivity.
The Computex tradeshow this year seems to involve various anniversaries for many companies. In the case of Asus, the company is celebrating 20 years of its “premium” gaming brand, ROG. We visited the booth Asus has at the trade show as well and will show you some of the new hardware the company brought to its booth—because of this anniversary, much of it is quite extraordinary and forms a celebratory lineup called ROG Edition 20. Read more “The most interesting (and craziest) Asus hardware at Computex”
Failures of the 12V‑2×6 power cable (formerly 12VHPWR) have become the scourge of recent GPU generations. Especially for Nvidia cards pushing this power standard, but also for a few Radeon models using these connectors. Various attempts to work around or mitigate the risks have popped up; this time, Asus is introducing the Equalizer special‑purpose cable for its power supplies, that aim to prevent connector melting in several ways. Read more “Asus ROG Equalizer: Robust 12+4pin connectors that don’t burn?”
It wants to go head‑to‑head with the Phanteks T30-120 fan, while also having a slight edge in every respect. That’s Asus’s marketing—and now comes reality in HWCooling’s in‑depth analysis. The ProArt PF120 fans are truly something exceptional and worth paying attention to. High cooling efficiency and elegant daisy‑chaining are just the beginning. The overall design of Asus’s fans is impressive. Read more “Asus ProArt PF120: The most efficient fan at low noise level”
What’s the controller chip on this enclosure?
I’ve had really bad luck with Jmicron JMS583…won’t go above 17-41mb/s with my Teamgroup MP44 SSD. Unless it’s realtec 9210 or ASMedia, the incompatibilities and poor implementations would make it worthless.
I don’t know what controller the TUF Gaming A1 is built on. We didn’t make a note of it during the analysis and we don’t have this SSD enclosure in the testlab. Anyway, the achieved transfer speeds are at the limit of the bandwidth of the used interface (USB 3.2 gen. 2).
It uses Realtek RTL9210B: https://img.unikoshardware.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/TUF_A1-1.jpg
As far as I know, none of these controllers are completely free from incompatibilities, though most of the time they work ok. I have an enclosure using JMS583 which works fine for me.
JMS583 seems to have some revisions that fixed issues from earlier batches. In some cases, firmware upgrades may help too.
Thank you for adding useful information. 🙂
Thank you for the information.
I got an Aliexpress Coolfish NVMe JMS583 case for 13 euros, which is very particular in the way it’s meant to be connected to reach acceptable speeds & it does not support TRIM & can’t function as boot device (supposedly Jmicron 583 supports TRIM & Boot, so bad implementation? )
Both important for me….
…speeds are good, temps are good, but with no TRIM, I can only use it for individual transfers rather than keeping it connected 24/7…
…updating to the latest firmware didn’t fix the lack of TRIM support…
Another user purchased the exact one from the same seller and it came with Realtek 9210 chip; supports TRIM, Volatile Cache & no issue with the cable (also purchased it for just 5 euros…that luck is frustrating, no? ).
And I see most reputable manufacturers use Realtek 9210b & ASMedia, at least for their higher-end products…so I’m going that route.
From what I’ve happened to read, Realtek 9210 chip with early firmware revisions had issues with NVMe SSDs larger than 2TB (disconnection issues). Newer
I use HDSentinel to see what controller-chip the enclosure uses. Other software don’t show the user this information