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Crucial P3 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT2000P3PSSD8

What enclosure will fit with a Crucial P3 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT2000P3PSSD8



Mac mini, macOS 14.6

Posted on Aug 20, 2024 5:43 PM

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3 replies

Aug 21, 2024 5:37 AM in response to Gramp Duke

First, no enclosure will give you the full transfer speed of 5000 MB/s on any computer, Mac or PC.


With that said, the next question would be how fast you really want the external enclosure to be which will often depend on which Mac that you have and then what budget you have for the enclosure.


NVMe enclosures can range from $20-30 USD up to as much as $150-180 USD with respective speeds of 500-600 MB/s up to 2500-3000 MB/s with speeds dependent on the enclosure and the model of Mac.


One of the pitfalls of any DIY is that the ultimate speed can depend on the NVMe/enclosure/computer combination. One combo of drive and enclosure may have blazing speeds on one computer and on another may be snail slow or work intermittently.


So, what budget do you have and what speeds do you really want out of the enclosure?

Aug 21, 2024 6:42 AM in response to Gramp Duke

For highest speed, use a Thunderbolt or USB4 40 Gbps enclosure. Note that only Apple Silicon Macs have USB4. That standard came out at about the same time that the first Apple Silicon Mac did.


USB-C (USB 3.1 Gen 2) enclosures are much cheaper (almost as cheap as USB 3 / SATA ones), but will bottleneck speed to 10 Gbps (1250 MB/s) or less. Macs do not support USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 ("up to 20 Gbps") and so if you put your SSD into a USB 3.2 Gen 2x2 enclosure, things will fall back to USB 3.1 Gen 2 speed.


OWC has a USB4 40 Gbps enclosure that can fall back to traditional USB when attached to a system that does not support USB4. As a rule, Thunderbolt enclosures do not have the ability to fall back to USB operation.

Crucial P3 Plus 2TB PCIe Gen4 3D NAND NVMe M.2 SSD, up to 5000MB/s - CT2000P3PSSD8

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