Thunderbolt 3 vs USB 4 External SSD | M1 Mac

so what in the world is going on with the m1 thunderbolt speeds and is this whole usb 4 the same as thunderbolt 3 when it comes to performance i have seen some numbers on some forums i think we need to clear some things up i've done some testing so let's go ahead and unpack this one and i'll share with you my testing on the thunderbolt 3 enclosure which i've tested before and also a usb 4 enclosure that i have but with one really important message when it comes to your buying decision so stay tuned for that got the pencil out so i'll see you in there what is going on you beautiful humans welcome back to the channel and yes today we're going to get a little nerdy together especially on these m1 max and what's happening with the ports so i do actually want to give a shout out and thanks to egpu.io for that teardown that they did on the mac mini and it resulted in a little bit more clarification on those thunderbolt controllers as the jhl 8040r that's a mouthful but they were also known as burnside bridge and when we say controllers in this case we're actually talking about a retimer which these are also set up as two dedicated thunderbolt 3 usb4 ports now based on my research that retimer that's placed near the actual port helps clean up that communication between the point of entry into the computer and of course the controller on the die of the chip now in this setup on the die it's also needing those retimers as close i mean as close as possible so that's actually what they're going to have to figure out i think in future iterations when i say they i mean apple they're really going to have to figure this out because as those demands on the i o increases i really think there are going to be more issues so not to get too thick into it here because i think we've already started to do that but thunderbolt 4 as it's been tossed around is really just thunderbolt 3 that's still 40 gigabits per second but it has more strict requirement on what is actually considered the minimum functionality loving using these air quotes but the latest iteration here from apple and you've also heard the term usb4 which i've personally said to myself my colleagues and friends how usbc is going to just completely simplify things when it comes to all of our devices and i'm going to rescind that statement i should have never said it i should know better and that's just how i'm going to leave it so this usb4 is actually a new thing here and thanks to apple and that marketing confusion what we're really hearing and seeing it seems that it's basically got some sort of modified version of thunderbolt 3 on the m1 chip specifically and of course i will get into that in another video because this modified version seems to really rely on the help of those powered hubs but moving back to the controllers themselves like the actual controllers we've got displayport up to 1.4 cool loving it usb 3.2 gen2 yep like that too however it seems that the uh 20 gigabits per second which is what we should be getting apparently is optional with apple and that's where i'm having issues when it comes to that throughput and even the usb 3.1 gen2 where i should be getting 10 gigabits per second as i do on my intel machine over there however apple seems to be keeping us closer to about five thanks apple so with thunderbolt 3 being up to 40 gigabits per second and then intel having given this protocol to the usb promoter group and then throwing that usb 4 label on it and throwing that into the mix which is supposed to give us the same 40 gigabits per second but what it is is that it's also compatible with thunderbolt 3 which seems obvious however it's also compatible with those usbc devices which should be good that i keep saying usbc is just going to clear things up now of course i'll discuss the benchmarks because what it comes down to for my previous and really my current use case to truly take full advantage and to saturate that bandwidth and the previous use was the egpu which i used again on my intel macbook pro but when it comes to these thunderbolt enclosures and the pcie ssds this is actually where that saturation is helpful and something that i'm also wanting to experiment with and i'm working with someone on right now are the raid setups to really take full advantage and to saturate uh and get that full speed or full throughput but pivoting over to these enclosures i still think that the fledging setup is awesome and the controller in that is the alpine ridge which this is exclusive to thunderbolt 3 whereas with the acacis usb4 this enclosure has the titan ridge controller which has the same thunderbolt 3 protocol or thunderbolt 3 speeds display 1.4 but more importantly it also has that fallback to that usbc option i did do a test with this and the functionality on my ipad air gen 4 that has usbc it's recognized and it does work now at the end of the day when it comes down to how fast the you know these benchmarks are and all these numbers it really comes down to the programs themselves so how fast that program is going to read and write regardless of the synthetic benchmarks and yes i did run some synthetic benchmarks so let's get into it now when it comes to these results i did a couple of comparisons because i have the thunderbolt 3 enclosure from fledging and the usb4 from acasis i also have the western digital sn750 at one terabyte and the silicon power which is a gen 4 chip but also one terabyte so the western digital sn750 in the thunderbolt 3 enclosure blackmagic read and write was about 2501 and 24.76 now aja was 26 53 and 1780 whereas the crystal disk 2868 and 1577. it's interesting some of these numbers that you get because i do see people throwing around just the black magic speed test and like oh this is i'm getting the throughput getting the saturation that i'm supposed to get now not to get all my soapbox too high here now the usb4 enclosure using the sn750 blackmagic read and write was 2746 and 2570 whereas the aja 2926 1785 and crystal disk 31 18 and 11 26. now silicon power bouncing over uh to silicon power in the usb 4 enclosure because i've already tested it in the fledging but blackmagic read and write is 2764 and 2653 and of course aja 2871 and 1880. now crystal disk is 30 52 and 1026. now of course when it comes to the benchmarks i don't want to get too far up on the on the soapbox here i get it that is trying to push the thermals all that throughput saturate it and then also fill the cash i understand it's a place to begin i'm just more about what we're doing with the actual enclosure so transfer speeds were interesting so transfer of 150 gigs of data from the extreme ssd and i will link that up so that is not a usb 4 or thunderbolt 3 to the thunderbolt 3 fledging and the sn750 that took about 3 minutes and 58 seconds now the transfer of the same files from the x the extreme ssd to the usb 4 sn 750 that took about four minutes and three seconds but really there were an extra i think three gigs of data in there so about the same now transfer of that same file from the thunderbolt 3 enclosure to usb4 took two minutes and 28 seconds and now i always refer to video editing when it comes to these tests because it's the world that i live in it is a real world use case it pushes the enclosure it pushes the computer and so i have a full 4k timeline with four 4k camera clips three audio tracks with corrections transitions texts luts and a set of ginseng knives to just throw it in there now this is a 16 minute timeline it's based off of a video that i just did and of course when we talk about the original media there were there's no render all of the render files are gone it was just exporting and i did an export to a compressed 4k h.264 compressed for youtube and the reason why i did that is that when i upload my videos to youtube it only takes like a couple minutes for it to process into 4k so this is a compression that i use that does take a little bit more time now the export time on that 4k timeline with the thunderbolt 3 enclosure and the sn750 31 minutes 23 seconds and that export time with the usb 4 enclosure and the sn750 31 minutes and 22 seconds and the export time with the usb4 enclosure and the silicon power 31 minutes and 25 seconds and just for kicks the export time with the extreme ssd was actually 31 minutes and 50 seconds and it's not thunderbolt or usb4 and of course something else that i threw in here that if you're interested you're like well why don't you just edit on the internal i did 31 minutes 23 seconds because this again it's a compressed h.264 4k this is the workflow this was not just rendering or rather exporting an a422 much larger file much quicker and of course the gpu is really hovering at about 50 to 55 so that wasn't fully maxed out the cpu certainly wasn't fully maxed out on that but we were trying to get that saturation and you've got to understand whether thunderbolt 3 thunderbolt 4 usb4 whatever you want to call it it's going to come down to how that's going to read and write to the program so i have plenty of you who have kind of thrown this out about this benchmark and this and that it's like okay but how is it actually working for you in your workflow now something that i needed to share with you and mention about the acacis enclosure is that there was an apparent quality control issue where the the nut that is on the board that helps secure the ssd to it well it was missing now i did reach out because i paid for this my own money on amazon so i reached out to the seller and they had come back and said that they figured out that it was a definitely a quality assurance issue quality control issue uh they figured it out and at first they were just gonna kind of give me a workaround but then after further communication with them i will give it to them good customer service that they said that they have removed those boards those enclosures from amazon and they are redoing them and shipping them to amazon so i just wanted to give you a heads up because i stand by the products that i recommend and that i test so for some of you you might be fine with a workaround however the the retailer has removed them is trying to remedy the situation they are supposed to send me not i'm i paid for it i didn't ask for a refund they're not refunding me the money i just want the enclosure that works i can update you to make sure that everything is a go but what i did see is on amazon that the shipping dates have moved well into like march mid-march and maybe even touching april so if you're interested in this particular enclosure it might take a little bit of time because they have to send everything to amazon so at the end of the day though i can accept these results right now because the massive gain and performance that i'm getting from the cpu and the gpu that 4k timeline that that's laid out in their original media not proxy it's just it's not struggling on the m1 as it does on my intel machine i'll accept that based on the long-term results that i've gotten but what i want to do is ask you for any questions or comments or anything that you want to know or provide to me because again as i said i'm just one man just trying to do this all to help you make that buying decision so go out there and do those things that matter hit me up on twitter or youtube these are the best places to find me so you go do the things keep rocking the faces i will keep creating more content and value for you here and until next time i'll catch you right back here on the next one

Channel: Kevin Ross

Views: 72,050

Keywords: thunderbolt 3 vs thunderbolt 4, thunderbolt 3 vs usb 3.1 gen 2, thunderbolt 3 vs usb 4, usb 4 vs thunderbolt 3, fastest external ssd for video editing, fastest external ssd drive, fastest external ssd thunderbolt 3, USB 4 external, usb 4 external hard drive, usb 4 external ssd, usb 4 external enclosure, Apple silicon, apple m1 review, apple m1 chip, Kevin Ross, best external hard drive for mac, mac mini m1 video editing

Id: Hk6TrXCyExA

Length: 13min 16sec (796 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021