HighPoint RocketStor 6661A Thunderbolt 3 storage enclosure review: Fast, easy and affordable - berglinsom

At a Glance

Proficient's Evaluation

Pros

• Excellent carrying into action with PCIe SSDs
• Solid construction with captive thumb screws
• Svelte design (for the category)

Our Verdict

HighPoint's RocketStor 6661A Thunderbolt 3 PCIe/NVMe enclosure is a relatively affordable way to add super-fast storage to your system Beaver State laptop. Assuming, of course, you take up a T3 port.

HighPoint's RocketStor 6661A PCIe/NVMe outward reposition envelopment may be a taste of a moniker, merely it's a upside-notch performer and extremely easy to order. At $189 on Amazon, it's to a greater extent basic, but also much inexpensive than the direct competition—Akitio's Node Fat-free (presently $220 on Amazon)Remove not-intersection associate.

Design

The Rocketstor 6661A features tough all-metal construction, including the slip-off cover secured by captive thumbscrews. Not intended for eGPU (external graphics) use, it's antitrust blanket enough for normal-size PCIe card game to fit in its single x16 (sixteen PCIe lanes) slot. The slot is upright the like those you'll bump in a desktop PC, and as with a PC, cards are held in place with a have it away through the upper part of their end bracket.

HighPoint

Though not particularly conspicuous, the 6661A's design is highly efficient and tough.

The 6661A isn't real anything special to consider, merely information technology's beautiful in function. Matte aluminum-monochrome, with an raiment of perforations to circulate air careworn in by the twin microscopic fans—it's along point in terms of thermals. Happening the back are two Thunderbolt 3 ports and the AC power jack up. There's no dedicated DisplayPort porthole atomic number 3 happening the Akitio Node Lite, but you May, course, use the second T3 port to drive a display via an adapter.

HighPoint

Two Thunderbolt 3 ports and the AC jak are all that adorns the back of the 6661A.

Piece there's no happening/off switch, the 6661A will turn itself off and on arsenic it senses power on the Thunderbolt 3 bus.

Performance

I time-tested the Rocketstor 6661A using a 960GB Intel 905P x4 PCIe/NVMe SSD, the duplicate movement exploited in the Akitio Node Lite with Optane. Also included here are the numbers with the 905P affixed internally in our quiz bed. Samsung's T5 is shown to exemplify the speed dispute between non-RAID Thunderbolt 3/NVMe drives and USB 3.1 Gen 2/SATA drives.

IDG

CrystalDiskMark showed several difference betwixt Highpoint's 6661A (red bars) and Akitio's Node Lite, but they were by and large quite pocketable and advisable within the safety margin.

The long and short of it is, in that respect's no performance deviation between the Akitio and HighPoint worth basing a purchasing decision connected. In whatever tests, the 6661A was slightly faster than the Guest Lite, and in others it was slightly slower. These discrepancies are imperceivable subjectively, and well within the border of error for the tests.

IDG

There's not a lot to take from performance-Isaac Mayer Wise between the 6661A (red parallel bars) and the Node Fat-free. Seek times are fantastic with both.

The 905P was slimly faster mounted inside our testbed, but Bolt of lightning 3 again proved it's nearly as fast American Samoa intragroup PCIe. Sorry USB Forum, USB 3.1 Gen 2 is a great interface for many things, merely it's non equally hot as PCIe over a wire.

IDG

No matter what the test, the 6661A and the Node Lite were roughly pulseless flush in performance.

The 6661A doesn't support artwork cards, so its x16 one-armed bandit is really overkill still if you expend something such as Highpoint's 7101A NVMe M.2 4-slot Foray batting order. The two are available together as the 6661A-NVMe (IT should be called the 6661A-RAID) for $550, but Thunderbolt only offers 4 PCIe lanes, and that card showed little real-world carrying into action do good with informal computer software. I butt't commend IT for all the world unusual than increasing electrical capacity. It's a rather expensive option for that alone.

IDG

Along a 2017 Macbook Affirmative, Phonograph record Speed gave the 6661A a very nice score. That said, we've seen better write scores with other drives inside. Intel's 905P was misused in this trial run; you might fare better in terms of unanalyzed throughput with Samsung's 970 Pro or EVO inside.

As all modern Macs have Thunderbolt 3 ports, we besides ran the RocketStor 6661A along a 2017 MacBook Professional, shown above. We're not sure why the write numbers were comparatively slow, but it was the same case with the Akitio Node Lite. We've seen much meliorate carrying into action using other drives in the same enclosures on modern Macs.

Note that you don't need to purpose a drive as pricy as the 905P, laudable as it is. Samsung's 970 Pro (available via Amazon and reviewed here) and 970 EVO (available on Amazon and reviewed here), as well every bit WD's Black NVMe (available along Amazon and reviewed here) are all viable, as well as FAR inferior expensive alternatives. They volition provide the same kind of throughput, albeit slightly slower seeks and operation with smaller files. See the article happening NVMe over Thunderbolt in Macworld for more information.

Termination

There's a great deal to like about the Rocketstor 6661A. It isn't quite an as stylish as Akitio's Node Lite, and lacks that box's DisplayPort port, but it offers the same storage performance, and does so for a lower price. More (surgery better) for less will always garner the buying recommendation. The RocketStor 6661A is recommended.

Note: I've seen complaints online about the 6661A's suitability for some other purposes such as 10Gb ethernet card game. The 6661A is sold equally an NVMe enclosure, and for that, it's top-notch.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/402887/highpoint-rocketstor-6661a-thunderbolt-3-storage-enclosure-review.html

Posted by: berglinsom.blogspot.com

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