QwiizlabFanless 40Gbps USB4 Thunderbolt External SSD Enclosure with Aluminum Heat Sink Chasiss, Supports M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD up to 8TB (SSD Not Included)

10/10 device. I didn't know thunderbolt devices got this warm/ hot. The heatsink design is a must. Similar to the OWC but cheaper. I do wish the thunderbolt cable was longer and labeled.. it's not an issue for me since I have a print labeler, but I'd be annoyed if I misplaced the cable or mixed it up with a regular USB cable. If you're using regular USB cables the drive won't get hot but you also won't get the fast speeds. Formatting the drive as Fat32 vs Apfs makes a difference but since I have to move files between windows and Mac it has to be Fat32... That being said, it's the fastest drive I currently own. Transferring 100s of files 50gb+ takes a few seconds. Even over USB 3.2 it'd take about a minute. I think an enclosure like this is wasted on 1tb drive or less. 2tb or more. Internal drive Samsung Evo 990 Plus, which is plenty fast.. considering that I was gonna use Fat32 file system this was good enough... Basically the same performance as the most expensive SSD they make. It's a 10/10 enclosure

Update: Stays a little warm while the system is asleep, but doesn't stay hot like when it's in use. Also doesn't disconnect over long sleep periods like a lot of the other externals I have will, which makes macOS happier about not having a drive removed without ejecting.Original:Does certainly stay warm, regardless of if it's in use or not, but so does all my other NVMe fanless enclosures so that just seems to be the nature of the thing.I'll put a note here for other mac users, I decided to go with the WD_Black 850X to pair with this instead of something cheaper because of the fact it was the most battle tested drive in terms of reviews of happy people using them on macOS. I also have a day 1 850X in my windows system too so felt like it was worth the extra money to have something that has a proven track record rather than paring with a chepaer drive despite this enclusure not being able to harness it's full power.I do think the star screws are a little... pointlessly unstandard? I have a dozen of these types of cases and they all use standard phillips screws except this one, but I guess now I have a tiny star head screwdriver?

Using with Mac mini M4, Qwiizlab Fanless 40Gbps USB4 Thunderbolt External SSD Enclosure with Aluminum Heat Sink Chasiss with ASMedia 2463 chip and I have a SAMSUNG 990 EVO Plus SSD 1TB, PCIe Gen 4x4, Gen 5x2 M.2 2280. I have installed macOS 15.4.1 and booting off this setup it is very fast.

It was a breeze to install my Samsung 990Pro 2Tb NVME M.2 SSD inside this enclosure. I needed it to expand the memory of my 2025 Mac Studio. They include small screwdrivers needed to open the enclosure (look inside the box, it might be easy to miss the small plastic containing them). For easier installation including how to properly stick the silicone heat absorbing pads on your SSD, I recommend you follow the YouTube video that Qwiizlab posted on their YouTube page. This was my first time setting up my own external SSD and it was a breeze! I’ve attached photos of the speedtest I did using this external SSD enclosure with my CableMatters thunderbolt 5 cable.By the way, it gets hot during use and even when on standby (which is expected with external SSDs) but never too hot to burn or cause blistering when touched.

I got this to expand the storage on my M4 Mac Mini. Installed with a 2TB WD Black SN770 NVME SSD.I'd wanted to go with the OWC enclosure because of it has the ASM2464PD TB4 controller chip and rave reviews. As fate would have it, the OWC was on back order and the Qwiizlab enclosure (also has ASM2464PD) was in stock and had a coupon code making it much cheaper than the OWC.The enclosure is solid-- metal with passive cooling fins (like OWC) and installing the drive is very straightforward. There is a nice travel pouch in the box, but I have no intention of taking it anywhere.There are a handful of YT videos on how to properly move your Mac's home folder to external storage which I followed. This drive and enclosure work flawlessly. Read/Write speeds average over 3,000 MBs which I believe is on par with or faster than the internal storage of the Mac Mini (I got the 512GB model for only $50 more than the base).I haven't pushed the Mac Mini yet, so I can't speak to how warm the enclosure gets, but currently the Mac Mini is running around 89 degrees F and the enclosure which sits next to it is at 104.Frankly, I think you could go with a slightly slower drive (eg. WD Blue) and save a few bucks as the limitations of the enclosure and interface cap the speed-- which applies to all of these TB4 enclosures. Beyond that, I'm really impressed.