in a previous video we compared four of
the top Thunderbolt 3 portable SSDs that
are capable of read speeds of up to
around 2500 megabytes per second and
while they're all great drives the best
ones here by options were priced up to
$400 we really needed a portable drive
that was as fast as possible so we could
quickly transfer large video files
between computers but as you'll see in a
minute
the other drives we tested have some
major limitations so in this video we're
gonna show you how to build your own
portable SSD that's not only faster than
all the other options but cheaper more
portable future-proof and fully
customizable here's how we did it only
very recently Thunderbolt 3 nvme SSD
enclosures started popping up on Amazon
for much lower prices than before and
what's special about Thunderbolt 3 is
that it allows for read speeds of up to
3000 megabytes per second compared to
regular us PC which only supports speeds
of around 500 megabytes per second per
drive so basically you buy this
enclosure and either reuse an m2 nvme
SSD that you currently own or you buy
whichever one you'd like to on Amazon
which is a freedom that you don't have
when buying a branded portable SSD and
of course you need to make sure that
your computer has at least one
Thunderbolt 3 port which is now
available on most Windows computers and
is a given on any recent Mac so this
custom portable SSD build starts with
the enclosure and this is the one we use
because it's built out of aluminum with
thermal pads that touched the SSDs chips
so the whole enclosure should act as a
heat sink and keep our SSD cool now the
SSD that we used is the saber rocket
once here by nvme SSD what's really
special about it is that it uses PCI
Express 4.0 and if you stick this into a
PC it can get read speeds of up to 5,000
megabytes per second assuming you have a
PCI Express 4 motherboard it does that
by using a new phase on SSD controller
that's incredibly fast now we won't get
speeds that quick using Thunderbolt 3
but the extra tech that's built into
this drive gives it a massive advantage
over other options as we'll show you in
just a minute and the awesome thing
about this drive is that you can buy a
heatsink with it
only ten dollars more which will come in
handy if you ever want to use it in a PC
or if you want to jerry-rig it into a
cheaper SSD enclosure as we'll show you
at the end of this video so now we have
the enclosure in this future-proof drive
for a total of three hundred and twenty
dollars so let me show you how easy it
is to put it together and we'll start
benchmarking in the enclosure comes with
the mini screwdriver so you simply take
the screws out and open it up then grab
the SSD and plug it in which is easy
because it only goes in one way so you
can't mess it up then fasten the SSD in
with the included screw and then screw
in and secure the case and you're done
you've got an external SSD that's
actually more portable than a lot of the
other more expensive options now let me
show you how it compares to those other
branded SSDs in terms of read speed
using the black magic disk speed test
our custom SSD hits 2500 megabytes per
second only being slower than the
Samsung x5 by around 50 megabytes but in
terms of the writing speed this saber an
SSD reached over 2400 megabytes per
second quicker than the rest of the
drives we also stress tests of the
drives because each Drive has a certain
amount of gigabytes it can write at full
speed which is called the SOC cache once
the cache fills up the drives greatly
slow down for the rest of the transfer
like for example the o WC drive went
from riding at a thousand nine hundred
and twenty two megabytes per second down
to nine hundred and fifty after hitting
its thirty gigabyte cache limit this
caused it to be the slowest drive out of
the bunch taking two minutes and 45
seconds to transfer our large 172
gigabyte file now running the same exact
test on our custom SSD the transfer
finished in a shockingly low one minute
in four seconds
completely blowing away all the other
drives here's how it did it the Samsung
Drive had the highest amount of SOC
cache at forty eight gigabytes before
slowing down to the drives normal
writing speeds our custom SSD however
transferred the entire a hundred and
seventy two gigabytes without hitting
any type of cache limit the custom
drives aluminum case did get really hot
which means it's working well as a
heatsink and throughout the entire
transfer the slowest speed we saw was a
split second drop to
twenty three hundred megabytes per
second compared to the rest of the
drives that slowed way down after only
twenty to forty eight gigabytes of
written data so this goes to show that
this custom SSD is much faster than all
of the other options while also being
cheaper but here's what really makes it
great this saber drive has an extended
five-year warranty so if for some reason
that goes bad you can simply take it out
of the case and use the warranty and to
make it even better
this saber and drive has a tbw rating of
eighteen hundred blowing away the rest
of the drives we tested in terms of how
good the warranty is another benefit of
having a custom drive is that if let's
say a couple years down the road phone
about four or five comes out and it
supports double the transfer speeds
simply replace the enclosure with a new
one and now this custom SSD becomes even
faster that's the beauty of having a
custom SSD because you get so much more
freedom to swap the parts out however
you'd like and to make it even better
right now it's cheaper and faster than
the best branded options available we
initially use this SSD in an even
cheaper $77 enclosure but the only issue
was that this drive was slowing down to
a thousand megabytes per second because
of overheating which is why we use the
more expensive enclosure with better
cooling however we use the Sabre it
Rockets heatsink which you can get by
paying an extra ten dollars and those
overheating issues went away the only
problem was at the top of the enclosure
would no longer fit over the heatsink
but if you're the type of person who's
okay with jerry-rigging their stuff you
can grab some gaffer tape and cover it
up or if you have a 3d printer you can
make a larger top cover this will give
you awesome performance for a cheaper
two hundred and seventy seven dollars
instead of three hundred and twenty four
the better enclosure but we thought it
was worth it to spend a bit more for a
more solid solution so no matter which
option better floats your boat
we'll have amazon links to both of these
enclosures down in the description below
along with the crazy fast saber and
rocket SSD and a few other SSD options
that we approve of if you guys enjoyed
this video you can check out that
initial SSD comparison to see the
benefits of the other people options
right over there and if you haven't yet
subscribed you can do so by clicking the
circle
above thanks for watching and we'll see
you in the next video
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