Introduction, Specifications and Packaging
We look at two more ICY DOCK products
Introduction
The other day we took a look at the ICY DOCK ToughArmor MB996SP-6SB and ICYBento MB559U3S-1S. Today we'll move onto a couple of larger products in their lineup:
To the left is the ICYCube MB561U3S-4S, which is a 4-bay eSATA / USB 3.0 JOBD enlcosure. To the right is the ICYRaid MB662U3-2S, which is a 2-bay USB 3.0 JBOD/Big/RAID-0/RAID-1 enclosure.
Specifications
ICYRaid MB662U3-2S
ICYCube MB561U3S-4S (also available in black)
Packaging
ICYRaid MB662U3-2S
The ICYRaid comes with a power adapter, power cord, and 3 foot USB 3.0 cable.
ICYCube MB561U3S-4S (also available in black)
The ICYCube comes with a power cord (power conversion is handled within the Cube), USB 3.0 and eSATA cables. Screws for mounting both 2.5" and 3.5" drives are also included (more on that later).
Both items were well packaged with no shipping damage noted.
UASP is interesting. How do
UASP is interesting. How do they increase throughput? By lowering overhead? 5 Gb/s translates to 625 MB/s. Even with the fastest 2.5″ drive in the world, it managed to cap at 440 MB/s at a not practical high Q depth.
I remember PCIe Gen 1 and 2 had a 20% overhead due to poor encoding. They decreased the overhead to roughly 1.5% with better encoding algorithms. That, of course, increases power consumption.
Can’t they do something similar to that with USB? I understand it has to jump through more hoops to get to the processor since it’s not a direct bridge like PCIe 3.0 (All Intel CPUs, some AMD CPUS) is but surely they can do better than that.
Same story with SATA 3. 750 MB/s theoretical throughput but in practice it hardly ever goes over ~550 MB/s. That’s 35% overhead.
Future SoCs from Intel will integrate PCH into the die, eliminating the need for DMI. Maybe then we’ll see more efficient data transfer rates.
I looked at these today,
I looked at these today, before I knew you had done a review Allyn,
Bit too pricy for me though,so I poped these into my whish list instead
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B00JX7XTOK/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B005OFID5A/
Sorry it’s UK, and one is unavailable, but it’s around half the price of the MB662U3-2S
Have you had any experience of ORICO?
EDIT:
Actually reading around, they seem a little low quality, however I just managed to snag “ORICO 6619US3” a single docking station for £6.01 inc del from amazon, so will try that out.