My biggest takeaway from this was finding out they have USB4 2.0. Come ooooonnnnnnnnn. Wikipedia starts by saying USB4 isn't 4.0 (that'd make too much sense I guess). So disappointing.
It would be comical if it weren't so ridiculous. The standards group is surely aware of how ridiculous it is, yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.
They honestly just need to kill off USB at this point and just let Thunderbolt supersede it. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are literally just implementations of USB4, except the Thunderbolt standards group is doing a hell of a lot better job at naming things and certifying cables than the USB group is.
I don't think you thought your statement through. What you're proposing is a massive mandatory price hike on all hardware just because you're slightly annoyed by naming.
Pricing aside, thunderbolt cables are usually thicker and more rigid. Sometimes you need a thin and flexible cable, cheap USB-C cable is a better choice.
And truly lightweight cables, for slow overnight charging (or for charging of small batteries, e.g. smartwatch scale) have all but disappeared with the shift from A/micro-B to C/C. It's awesome that we have near-universal connector for that wide a range of use cases, but that requires some learning about cable classes beyond the old "does the connector fit?" and that learning process is not over yet. And by learning I don't just mean us memorizing classes, but also an effective narrowing of classes, e.g. no more almost but not quite TB4 compliant ones.
Though poor cables do drop the voltage a bit I feel that the proper approach would be to to just use a weak charger. They are "all" USB-A and there are no lack of USB-A -> C cables.
Agreed. It's fine as a technical name but the consumer name doesn't seem to catch on or even be referenced most of the time. I'm still having difficulty with component manufacturers saying "usb 3.2" which was far as I can tell is 1x5, 2x5, 1x10, or 2x10. Plot twist it's always the slowest one but still, the standards body could've done that better.
Disagree on the replacement with thunderbolt, though. USB historically is very different, and it's USB4 that's a clone of TB3. Agreed the naming is better but a lot of micros have USB and thunderbolt would be ridiculous for them.
It would be a lot simpler if you could just install NVMe drives internally, wired directly to the CPUs PCIe bus with nothing inbetween to slow it down, but alas if Apple let you do that it would cut into their business of selling internal SSD upgrades at a 500% markup.
Thunderbolt 5 is PCIe 4.0 x4 but CPUs now have PCIe 5.0. Thunderbolt will probably always be one generation behind and of course more expensive due to the controller chips.
It's absolutely that high. Upgrading a Mac Mini from 256GB to 2TB is an extra $800, and a high-end 2TB NVMe drive like the WD SN850x is around $150 at retail. Even the 8TB version of that drive is only $650.
That's why external SSDs are so common in Mac setups, even accounting for the additional cost of a Thunderbolt enclosure it's usually still significantly cheaper than getting a bigger internal SSD from Apple.
Using a gaming part is a poor comparison because gaming parts get higher speeds at lower prices by sacrificing longevity/energy efficiency. Clearly not the tradeoff Apple wants to make here.
Which isn’t anything against the SN850x, it’s a great fit for the intended use case it’s just many people assume there’s zero trade-offs involved beyond speed/price/capacity.
Apple is definitely raising storage prices to milk their customers and promote their iCloud cash cow, but it’s still worth considering when looking at ‘gaming’ parts in different situations.
It's a fair comparison. Both Apple's computers and drives like the WD SN850x are using commodity SSD-grade TLC flash; there's no significant difference in quality, performance, efficiency, or durability in the flash itself. It's possible (maybe even likely) that a Mac with 2TB of built-in storage is using literally the same NAND flash dies that show up in a SN850x.
SSD performance and power efficiency are significantly affected by the choice of controller. Apple's Macs have the controller built-in to the SoC, so it's a sunk cost that doesn't really factor in to upgrade pricing.
I said poor not unfair. They might happen to end up with equal price per flash chip, but either could end up being more expensive it’s just not a good yardstick IMO.
Anyway, what you might consider insignificant differences are things companies do consider these worth paying for. You not caring isn’t the same thing as nobody caring.
> significantly affected by the choice of controller
Aka it is more complicated than just slapping different controller on the same chips and calling it a day.
The SN850x isn't a "gaming part", it's a top-of-the-line consumer SSD that uses the exact same type of NAND chips (3D TLC) that Apple uses in its products.
Western Digital themselves are literally calling the WD_BLACK line their gaming line[1], and their page for the SN850X in particular is dripping with "gaming"[2].
Maybe that doesn't make it a bad comparison, but the SN850X is def intended to be a gaming part.
What is a competing part that you think would be more comparable?
Gamers are the ones buying expensive parts so it makes sense to market to that. The next tier after this is basically server-class 10-20k machines which Apple is definitely not competing with (and SSDs are not really that much better in that class anyway). Dismissing SSDs as “gaming” parts as if it’s diminishing the quality misunderstands what’s happening here. It would be one thing if WD was ignoring fsyncs to achieve this performance but gamers don’t care about writes so much anyway and there’s no indication WD did that.
Source: I have the WD and Samsung parts as well as cheapo random SSDs.
The other product lines would be WD Blues (marketed at "creative professionals working with large files") and WD Reds (marketed specifically for use in NAS's), but neither of these really support the argument that the SN850x isn't a good comparison, because both the Blue and Red lines are cheaper and less performant (and the Blues are even rated for less longevity), and just make it seem like Apple is price gouging even more.
The point I was trying to make by pointing out that the SN850x isn't a "gaming part" is that the SN850x is literally the top-of-the-line, most expensive consumer SSD sold by WD, and has practically the same specs as other top-of-the-line, most expensive competing parts like the Samsung 990 Pro. Being one of the most expensive SSDs on the market means that saying that the SN850x is a bad comparison because it's supposedly "lower price" is just false on its face.
Ahh you misunderstood what the lower prices is in reference to. Gaming parts often have a real premium, it’s specifically the price at a specific performance level where they preform well.
To be more clear, getting equal performance without sacrificing anything would raise costs even further.
I personally don’t think anything is a great comparison.
It’s easy to say moderate premium over normal business grade SSD’s but that doesn’t mean any specific number is correct. I’d say the equivalent to a 130$ to 220$ SSD assuming a stand alone equivalent exited, but the actual number depending on info Apple isn’t sharing. And yes the range is both above and below the specific part suggested.
Crush load times and slash throttling, lagging, and texture pop-ins with the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe™ SSD. …
Do more with WD_BLACK Dashboard
The downloadable WD_BLACK Dashboard (Windows® only) monitors your drive’s health, lets you customize your RGB lighting, and, exclusively on the SN850X SSD, enables Game Mode 2.0 to transform your gaming experience.”
> There’s a lot of diversity under that “3D TLC” umbrella.
There really isn't. Apple is reported to use SanDisk 3D TLC NAND chips. SanDisk is owned by Western Digital, and the WD SSDs use SanDisk chips. They're literally the same chips.
There really isn't much diversity in NAND flash product lines. Each generation of 3D NAND from WD+Kioxia basically consists of two sizes of TLC die and one or two sizes of QLC die. For the purposes of this conversation, binning doesn't matter because "SSD grade" is already the top bin. So the only variable on the NAND side for a high-end 2TB drive is the question of whether it's built with the high-capacity die (cheaper per GB), or twice as many of the low-capacity dies (potentially faster if it allows more controller channels to be fully populated, but that's usually not a problem at 2TB).
At what grade? Plus, how much extra endurance is baked in to Apple's drives, i.e. how over-provisioned are they?
My MacBook Air M1 reports 99% health after being daily driven (and some 26TB written to it) at work since 2020 (we got these as soon as they introduced), and I don't baby its drive in any way.
Any decent consumer SSD will be exactly the same, brands such as SK Hynix, Samsung, Crucial, WD, etc. same chips and same performance, much cheaper than the Apple tax.
Samsung 990 is marketed as a PRO part and a reasonable comparison, hell it’s likely a better product than what Apple is shipping. But when a company slaps gaming 30 times on the product page, lists specific features to minimize load times etc it’s clearly targeting a specific demographic who in general wants different tradeoffs.
At scale failures are more than just endurance ratings. Gaming laptops for example often cook their components due to prioritizing performance over long term stability. That doesn’t guarantee early failure, but it reduces the likelihood the system is working in 4 years.
I've been running a Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD for 10 years. It's at 63% health from a S.M.A.R.T. readout. It's been powered on 125 times over ~10 years and transferred 56 TB in that time. It's my main Windows partition and runs WSL 2 where I've built and ran thousands of Docker images. Basically, it hasn't been sitting here unused.
Is it clear? Apple doesn't publish endurance specs for their drives so there's actually no way to tell. 600x full drive writes (what the 2TB SN850X is specced for) is probably enough for the vast majority of users to never have to worry about it. You can even get enterprise SSDs, which are rated in whole drive writes per day for less than that.
AFAIK the NAND they use on Mac products is not really particularly special, they seem to shift between a lot of different chips (often Kioxia/Toshiba) and many of them seem at best to be middle of the road. A lot of industrious folks were just buying the chips directly and performing SSD upgrades the very hard way, since it was simply worth the savings if you could.
So it’s probably even considerable more than 500%.
Unless you believe that Apple only buys “magic” components like the 8GB=16GB crowd there is nothing particularly special about their storage or memory.
Their SSDs even aren’t that fast. You can get faster ones for $200 (EXCEPT they are 2TB instead of 256GB)
I had two expensive caldigit docks (TS3 i believe). One was warranty replacement for the first one. Each died after about a year.
After that I had an expensive alogic dock. Seemed great when it was working, but after just over a year it went dead (warranty is for two years).
The dock i had is out of stock. After weeks of “checking” I was offered an exchange for a cheaper version (whatever) that doesn’t include features i rely on (3 screens).
As “compensation” I was offered about 30% of the original price, since “the item was used”.
Thanks but no thanks. Standard amortization time for computer equipment is 5 years. And in either case, who has patience to go for weeks without their familiar computing environment? And my cost is replacement of the item, i did not rent it.
I got a Kensington dock sold by amazon at slightly less than the original price of that one, with better features and a brand name that is worth more than the piece of paper it is written on.
I'm using a CalDigit TB4. It's two years old and no issues.
I don't push it too often, but when I do, it's fast enough to play six or more concurrent 1080p video layers in Resolume from a single Gen4x4 NVMe. It's not as fast as my M1's internal storage, but it does the job.
$DAYJOB issues us Mac laptops. (Seems like a waste of money, but it's not MY money.)
So, I've been using a CalDigit TS3 Plus device for the last two or three years. I have USB 3, Ethernet, and DisplayPort going out from it, and a Thunderbolt cable going into it. Other than sometimes having to unplug and replug the DisplayPort cable to get the screen to wake [0], it works fine.
[0] To make this easy, I have an F<->F coupler near the display that doesn't have latches. I just slip out one end of the cable from the coupler and slip it back in. Quick and easy, if slightly annoying that I have to do it at all.
Yep that was my exact story too, before the first sock gave out shortly before warranty, was replaced (at least regarding customer service im happy), and then same exact story with the second one.
Given that i had a third unrelated dock fail recently it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect something on my end might be causing this, but then again that’s the only hardware that failed on me in a while and i don’t do anything that unusual besides having 3x4k screens plugged into it and the occasional mouse charging/flash drive drawing power off it.
In all cases the PSU of the dock died with it (but also the docks themselves) so i suspect current DL chipsets overheat and eventually burn out when pushing clost to their max resolution.
Off topic but why refer to it as $DAYJOB (is it really a variable like that?) rather than just saying “work” or “my job”? I see it all over HN but I’ve actually never understood why people do this. Sorry for veering off topic.
The syntax is written like a bash shell variable, the idea (I assume) is that the actual job itself doesn't matter but the idea of it being something they do for work does (because contextually it means they have less decision power.) So, if it were me, saying I work for Puzzmo is about as useful as me saying I work for $DAYJOB in a sentence like that.
> 2. Don’t expect to run any USB hubs behind any of the USB ports on this dock whatsoever... even if the downstream hub is only powering wimpy devices like wireless mouse dongles. You might not have this problem if you plug the hub into the dock’s extra Thunderbolt port...
I have this device and don't have this problem? I have a couple of self-powered hubs downstream of this thing and have plugged them into the USB-A-shaped ports on the back.
I don't have any downstream Thunderbolt devices plugged into this thing. Maybe that's the major difference between my setup and the author's? (Or maybe I'm running better firmware on this thing than he is?)
I haven't tried any hubs, but my problem was using a 2.5 Gbps USB Ethernet controller off of one of the Fresco Logic USB ports (the front 5 Gbps ones or the rear right-hand 3 USB-A ports), after a few hours it would drop. I thought the cheap USB adapter was bad, replaced it, same thing.
I found this blog post, switched to one of the ASMedia ports (the rear 10 Gbps USB-C port or the most left-hand USB-A port) and both of the Ethernet controllers are rock-solid now.
I now have it in the Thunderbolt port which ekes out another 100 Mbps or so compared to the ASMedia USB ports.
The blog post is probably a bit sensationalistic but I still can't recommend the dock to anyone when half the ports on it are flakey, especially at that price.
I like my Kensington a lot, don’t seem them mentioned a lot but the build quality is very high, lots of ports and it even has an official mount for under-desk use
Note that as all docks it requires displaylink software on mac to use more than one screen, and the software is a bit buggy - needs to be restarted every couple of times i reconnect to the dock for the displays to work right. TBH this is the first dock i experience this with but then again os and software updates, and ive seen weird flaky behavior before, just not specifically this.
Not all docks need DisplayLink. Thunderbolt-powered ones like this [0] or this [1] can support multiple displays for Macbook Pros without it, so if you want to avoid having to use DisplayLink, they're solid picks. The one thing you need to watch out for is that if you go with the second one, there are no HDMI ports, so you need a USB-C to HDMI converter, which in my experience can be flaky at higher refresh rates. If on the other hand your monitors support DisplayPort, then USB-C to DisplayPort is native, doesn't need a converter (just an adapter), and works better.
Aside from my justified negative opinions about caldigit, i was referring to docks that offer 3+ (simultaneous) screen outputs (eg not one with 2 hdmi+2dp that can use either set but not all 4 together).
I've been using an OWC 14 port TB3 dock with my 2018 Intel Mac mini for about 5 years now with no issues. I keep a 2TB Samsung T7 external SSD connected and it is always mounted when I wake the system from sleep. I've been very happy with this dock so far.
https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3DK14PSG/
I have a TB3 dock with a fast ish nvme slot. But I only found two options when I looked... something from OWC and the WD "game dock" i ended up buying.
I have a fancy pluggable dock and after my Mac goes to sleep it sometimes stops working when the Mac wakes up. Often, it appears to go into a loop where it detects an external monitor for 5 seconds then disconnects. Pretty annoying and guess away after a reboot.
I've been dabbling with this issue for a few months. I've got a one-year-old ThinkPad that multi-boots Linux (Ubuntu 24.04, 23.10), and Windows 11. Upon purchase, I immediately upgraded the 1TB internal NVMe drive to a Samsung 4TB (990). Later, I had some difficulty while upgrading from 23.10 to 24.04. To make things easier while troubleshooting, I was backing up the 4TB image, and restoring it when the upgrade failed. After doing this a few times, I was looking for more speed.
I've tried a few docks, and this is the one I'm using now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DBHG7486 It's a good dock, but unfortunately needs the DisplayLink driver to use the DisplayPort output. This works okay, but the monitor stays dark until the desktop is booted, and cannot be used for switching between Linux virtual consoles.
First off, because my ThinkPad has only one TB4 port that also serves as the USB-C PD input, I needed a dock if I wanted to use a TB4 accessory while not running from the battery. The dock is also quite valuable for using an external (4K/60Hz) display when using another TB4 peripheral.
The SSDs work fine when plugged into the non-TB4 port, but they operate at less than half of their potential speed, and are enumerated as /dev/sdX instead of /dev/nvmeXnX.
Operating the SSDs from the TB4 port gives variable performance depending upon what else is connected, and when it was connected. The Linux PCI+bridge enumeration has some issues with hotplugable devices. Various combinations of
pci=assign-busses, realloc, native, hpbussize=XX, lastbus=XX, hpmmiosize=XXXM, hpmmioprefsize=XG will all give varying results. At best, with my 4K monitor operating, I can get 20gbps on one external SSD, or some division of that speed distributed amongst multiple other SSDs.
Leaving the PCIe enumeration to the kernel with no additional boot arguments did not go well with 23.10, but works better with 24.04. Hot-plugging performance is always a compromise, depending upon kernel parameters, and the order in which things are plugged in.
I bought a dock for my Mac mini. It works great, but I do notice that it takes a few seconds/minutes after waking up before the NVMe SSD is mounted, which means I can't keep any of my dotfiles on it.
Ah thunderbolt, yet another standard that started with a promise of simplicity but requires a lot of digging to understand what actually works.
For me some things worked better than expected (5K + 4K monitor at 60Hz, even though it states only one 5K or two 4K monitors), some things don't (work laptop detects the hub, but the displays stay blank.
My biggest takeaway from this was finding out they have USB4 2.0. Come ooooonnnnnnnnn. Wikipedia starts by saying USB4 isn't 4.0 (that'd make too much sense I guess). So disappointing.
It would be comical if it weren't so ridiculous. The standards group is surely aware of how ridiculous it is, yet they keep coming up with these idiotic names, and then try to defend it by saying "its only the technical name, not the marketing name", as if that matters.
They honestly just need to kill off USB at this point and just let Thunderbolt supersede it. Thunderbolt 4 and 5 are literally just implementations of USB4, except the Thunderbolt standards group is doing a hell of a lot better job at naming things and certifying cables than the USB group is.
I don't think you thought your statement through. What you're proposing is a massive mandatory price hike on all hardware just because you're slightly annoyed by naming.
Regarding Thunderbolt, I don't even bother buying USB-C cables anymore for anything important.
If it's in my backpack or used for a dock/monitor, it's going to be a Thunderbolt cable.
Expensive? Absolutely. Unnecessary? Almost certainly. But I haven't had any issues with them whatsoever.
Nobody is going to pay for a 40Gbps Thunderbolt cable to plug in their keyboard
Pricing aside, thunderbolt cables are usually thicker and more rigid. Sometimes you need a thin and flexible cable, cheap USB-C cable is a better choice.
And truly lightweight cables, for slow overnight charging (or for charging of small batteries, e.g. smartwatch scale) have all but disappeared with the shift from A/micro-B to C/C. It's awesome that we have near-universal connector for that wide a range of use cases, but that requires some learning about cable classes beyond the old "does the connector fit?" and that learning process is not over yet. And by learning I don't just mean us memorizing classes, but also an effective narrowing of classes, e.g. no more almost but not quite TB4 compliant ones.
Though poor cables do drop the voltage a bit I feel that the proper approach would be to to just use a weak charger. They are "all" USB-A and there are no lack of USB-A -> C cables.
I'm holding a thin USB-C Samsung cable right now.
Or ten for $1 off <your preferred Chinese marketplace>
Data rate between 10MB/s and 2 Gb/s.
Irrelevant for charging.
This kind of cheap cable won't fast charge in any case. Add a few dollars if you want that.
Agreed. It's fine as a technical name but the consumer name doesn't seem to catch on or even be referenced most of the time. I'm still having difficulty with component manufacturers saying "usb 3.2" which was far as I can tell is 1x5, 2x5, 1x10, or 2x10. Plot twist it's always the slowest one but still, the standards body could've done that better.
Disagree on the replacement with thunderbolt, though. USB historically is very different, and it's USB4 that's a clone of TB3. Agreed the naming is better but a lot of micros have USB and thunderbolt would be ridiculous for them.
It would be a lot simpler if you could just install NVMe drives internally, wired directly to the CPUs PCIe bus with nothing inbetween to slow it down, but alas if Apple let you do that it would cut into their business of selling internal SSD upgrades at a 500% markup.
If you’re referring to speed, then thunderbolt does include PCIe support, including direct memory access.
Thunderbolt 5 is PCIe 4.0 x4 but CPUs now have PCIe 5.0. Thunderbolt will probably always be one generation behind and of course more expensive due to the controller chips.
Thunderbolt is essentially external PCIe but there will definitely be higher latency than internal PCIe.
> SSD upgrades at a 500% markup.
Is the price difference really that high or are you comparing them to cheaper SSDs?
It's absolutely that high. Upgrading a Mac Mini from 256GB to 2TB is an extra $800, and a high-end 2TB NVMe drive like the WD SN850x is around $150 at retail. Even the 8TB version of that drive is only $650.
That's why external SSDs are so common in Mac setups, even accounting for the additional cost of a Thunderbolt enclosure it's usually still significantly cheaper than getting a bigger internal SSD from Apple.
Surely the WD SN850x isn't high end? It doesn't even have power-loss protection as far as I can see. SSDs with protection are much more expensive.
(Not sure if Apple SSDs have power-loss protection. Not using sockets probably eliminates one source of accidental power loss.)
There are also a lot cheaper ssds (nv2 or p3 are under 100 eur for 2tb often)
Using a gaming part is a poor comparison because gaming parts get higher speeds at lower prices by sacrificing longevity/energy efficiency. Clearly not the tradeoff Apple wants to make here.
Which isn’t anything against the SN850x, it’s a great fit for the intended use case it’s just many people assume there’s zero trade-offs involved beyond speed/price/capacity.
Apple is definitely raising storage prices to milk their customers and promote their iCloud cash cow, but it’s still worth considering when looking at ‘gaming’ parts in different situations.
It's a fair comparison. Both Apple's computers and drives like the WD SN850x are using commodity SSD-grade TLC flash; there's no significant difference in quality, performance, efficiency, or durability in the flash itself. It's possible (maybe even likely) that a Mac with 2TB of built-in storage is using literally the same NAND flash dies that show up in a SN850x.
SSD performance and power efficiency are significantly affected by the choice of controller. Apple's Macs have the controller built-in to the SoC, so it's a sunk cost that doesn't really factor in to upgrade pricing.
I said poor not unfair. They might happen to end up with equal price per flash chip, but either could end up being more expensive it’s just not a good yardstick IMO.
Anyway, what you might consider insignificant differences are things companies do consider these worth paying for. You not caring isn’t the same thing as nobody caring.
> significantly affected by the choice of controller
Aka it is more complicated than just slapping different controller on the same chips and calling it a day.
The SN850x isn't a "gaming part", it's a top-of-the-line consumer SSD that uses the exact same type of NAND chips (3D TLC) that Apple uses in its products.
Western Digital themselves are literally calling the WD_BLACK line their gaming line[1], and their page for the SN850X in particular is dripping with "gaming"[2].
Maybe that doesn't make it a bad comparison, but the SN850X is def intended to be a gaming part.
[1]: https://www.westerndigital.com/brand/wd-black
[2]: https://www.westerndigital.com/en-in/products/internal-drive...
What is a competing part that you think would be more comparable?
Gamers are the ones buying expensive parts so it makes sense to market to that. The next tier after this is basically server-class 10-20k machines which Apple is definitely not competing with (and SSDs are not really that much better in that class anyway). Dismissing SSDs as “gaming” parts as if it’s diminishing the quality misunderstands what’s happening here. It would be one thing if WD was ignoring fsyncs to achieve this performance but gamers don’t care about writes so much anyway and there’s no indication WD did that.
Source: I have the WD and Samsung parts as well as cheapo random SSDs.
The other product lines would be WD Blues (marketed at "creative professionals working with large files") and WD Reds (marketed specifically for use in NAS's), but neither of these really support the argument that the SN850x isn't a good comparison, because both the Blue and Red lines are cheaper and less performant (and the Blues are even rated for less longevity), and just make it seem like Apple is price gouging even more.
The point I was trying to make by pointing out that the SN850x isn't a "gaming part" is that the SN850x is literally the top-of-the-line, most expensive consumer SSD sold by WD, and has practically the same specs as other top-of-the-line, most expensive competing parts like the Samsung 990 Pro. Being one of the most expensive SSDs on the market means that saying that the SN850x is a bad comparison because it's supposedly "lower price" is just false on its face.
Ahh you misunderstood what the lower prices is in reference to. Gaming parts often have a real premium, it’s specifically the price at a specific performance level where they preform well.
To be more clear, getting equal performance without sacrificing anything would raise costs even further.
I personally don’t think anything is a great comparison.
It’s easy to say moderate premium over normal business grade SSD’s but that doesn’t mean any specific number is correct. I’d say the equivalent to a 130$ to 220$ SSD assuming a stand alone equivalent exited, but the actual number depending on info Apple isn’t sharing. And yes the range is both above and below the specific part suggested.
There’s a lot of diversity under that “3D TLC” umbrella.
But anyway, in what world isn’t this a gaming product: https://shop.sandisk.com/products/ssd/internal-ssd/wd-black-...
“Built for elite gaming.
Crush load times and slash throttling, lagging, and texture pop-ins with the WD_BLACK SN850X NVMe™ SSD. …
Do more with WD_BLACK Dashboard The downloadable WD_BLACK Dashboard (Windows® only) monitors your drive’s health, lets you customize your RGB lighting, and, exclusively on the SN850X SSD, enables Game Mode 2.0 to transform your gaming experience.”
>Built for elite gaming //
That's just marketing language for "this is expensive af but you'll buy it because otherwise you're not an elite gamer!".
Also ‘has RGB LED’s all over it’
> There’s a lot of diversity under that “3D TLC” umbrella.
There really isn't. Apple is reported to use SanDisk 3D TLC NAND chips. SanDisk is owned by Western Digital, and the WD SSDs use SanDisk chips. They're literally the same chips.
They could in theory come off the same assembly line, that doesn’t mean the everything is identical.
Hell WD chips could be of higher quality as I am not suggesting I know their internal processes. I am saying things are optimized differently.
At this point of the conversation, you seem to be really grasping for theoretical stuff to defent Apple's margins with very little proof. Why?
There really isn't much diversity in NAND flash product lines. Each generation of 3D NAND from WD+Kioxia basically consists of two sizes of TLC die and one or two sizes of QLC die. For the purposes of this conversation, binning doesn't matter because "SSD grade" is already the top bin. So the only variable on the NAND side for a high-end 2TB drive is the question of whether it's built with the high-capacity die (cheaper per GB), or twice as many of the low-capacity dies (potentially faster if it allows more controller channels to be fully populated, but that's usually not a problem at 2TB).
> They could in theory come off the same assembly line, that doesn’t mean the everything is identical.
It could just come down to different binning of the same part, and it would still make a difference.
> They're literally the same chips.
At what grade? Plus, how much extra endurance is baked in to Apple's drives, i.e. how over-provisioned are they?
My MacBook Air M1 reports 99% health after being daily driven (and some 26TB written to it) at work since 2020 (we got these as soon as they introduced), and I don't baby its drive in any way.
Any decent consumer SSD will be exactly the same, brands such as SK Hynix, Samsung, Crucial, WD, etc. same chips and same performance, much cheaper than the Apple tax.
Is something like the Crucial T705 or Samsung 990 or also “gaming” parts?
Their manufacturers provide 5 years warranties unlike Apple. AFAIK Apple doesn’t even disclose endurance ratings. Wouldn’t you expect the opposite?
Samsung 990 is marketed as a PRO part and a reasonable comparison, hell it’s likely a better product than what Apple is shipping. But when a company slaps gaming 30 times on the product page, lists specific features to minimize load times etc it’s clearly targeting a specific demographic who in general wants different tradeoffs.
At scale failures are more than just endurance ratings. Gaming laptops for example often cook their components due to prioritizing performance over long term stability. That doesn’t guarantee early failure, but it reduces the likelihood the system is working in 4 years.
> Their manufacturers provide 5 years warranties
Yep and it's possible to get much more out of it.
I've been running a Crucial MX100 256 GB SSD for 10 years. It's at 63% health from a S.M.A.R.T. readout. It's been powered on 125 times over ~10 years and transferred 56 TB in that time. It's my main Windows partition and runs WSL 2 where I've built and ran thousands of Docker images. Basically, it hasn't been sitting here unused.
A Samsung 990 Pro dips to the same prices. I got a 2TB one for $150 this Black Friday.
Apple is overcharging for storage. You get a lot of compute for cheap though :/
Is it clear? Apple doesn't publish endurance specs for their drives so there's actually no way to tell. 600x full drive writes (what the 2TB SN850X is specced for) is probably enough for the vast majority of users to never have to worry about it. You can even get enterprise SSDs, which are rated in whole drive writes per day for less than that.
AFAIK the NAND they use on Mac products is not really particularly special, they seem to shift between a lot of different chips (often Kioxia/Toshiba) and many of them seem at best to be middle of the road. A lot of industrious folks were just buying the chips directly and performing SSD upgrades the very hard way, since it was simply worth the savings if you could.
Apple is selling 256 GB for $200
So it’s probably even considerable more than 500%.
Unless you believe that Apple only buys “magic” components like the 8GB=16GB crowd there is nothing particularly special about their storage or memory.
Their SSDs even aren’t that fast. You can get faster ones for $200 (EXCEPT they are 2TB instead of 256GB)
M4 Pro 512GB --> 2TB cost: $600
M4 Pro read/write: ~5.4/6.7 GB/s
Samsung 990 Pro 2TB: $170
990 Pro R/W: ~7.1/6.2 GB/s
Samsung 990 Evo 2TB: $130
990 Evo R/W: ~4.8/3.9 GB/s
Sorry no links, looked at tomshardware, Amazon, and macrumors forums for numbers.
Samsung has an 8TB and 4TB model as well. The 8TB is 509 euros in Germany (inc VAT). The 4 TB one is 233 euro.
I have an older 2TB one. USB 3.2. Plenty of speed for putting lots of media, large software packages (e.g. Xplane 12 with a lot of scenery) etc.
CalDigit TS4 is the best dock I've used. I tried several. I get 2.5 GB Ethernet, two external 4k monitors, and much throughput.
PSA: STAY AWAY!
I had two expensive caldigit docks (TS3 i believe). One was warranty replacement for the first one. Each died after about a year.
After that I had an expensive alogic dock. Seemed great when it was working, but after just over a year it went dead (warranty is for two years).
The dock i had is out of stock. After weeks of “checking” I was offered an exchange for a cheaper version (whatever) that doesn’t include features i rely on (3 screens).
As “compensation” I was offered about 30% of the original price, since “the item was used”.
Thanks but no thanks. Standard amortization time for computer equipment is 5 years. And in either case, who has patience to go for weeks without their familiar computing environment? And my cost is replacement of the item, i did not rent it.
I got a Kensington dock sold by amazon at slightly less than the original price of that one, with better features and a brand name that is worth more than the piece of paper it is written on.
We’ll see how it lasts
I'm using a CalDigit TB4. It's two years old and no issues.
I don't push it too often, but when I do, it's fast enough to play six or more concurrent 1080p video layers in Resolume from a single Gen4x4 NVMe. It's not as fast as my M1's internal storage, but it does the job.
https://resolume.com/
I’ve been using the TS3+ for many, many years now. Not a single issue.
$DAYJOB issues us Mac laptops. (Seems like a waste of money, but it's not MY money.)
So, I've been using a CalDigit TS3 Plus device for the last two or three years. I have USB 3, Ethernet, and DisplayPort going out from it, and a Thunderbolt cable going into it. Other than sometimes having to unplug and replug the DisplayPort cable to get the screen to wake [0], it works fine.
[0] To make this easy, I have an F<->F coupler near the display that doesn't have latches. I just slip out one end of the cable from the coupler and slip it back in. Quick and easy, if slightly annoying that I have to do it at all.
Yep that was my exact story too, before the first sock gave out shortly before warranty, was replaced (at least regarding customer service im happy), and then same exact story with the second one.
Given that i had a third unrelated dock fail recently it wouldn’t be unreasonable to suspect something on my end might be causing this, but then again that’s the only hardware that failed on me in a while and i don’t do anything that unusual besides having 3x4k screens plugged into it and the occasional mouse charging/flash drive drawing power off it.
In all cases the PSU of the dock died with it (but also the docks themselves) so i suspect current DL chipsets overheat and eventually burn out when pushing clost to their max resolution.
Off topic but why refer to it as $DAYJOB (is it really a variable like that?) rather than just saying “work” or “my job”? I see it all over HN but I’ve actually never understood why people do this. Sorry for veering off topic.
The syntax is written like a bash shell variable, the idea (I assume) is that the actual job itself doesn't matter but the idea of it being something they do for work does (because contextually it means they have less decision power.) So, if it were me, saying I work for Puzzmo is about as useful as me saying I work for $DAYJOB in a sentence like that.
Also it’s just some HN slang. No more, no less.
Just watch out for the TS3 dock, a few of the USB ports on it are driven by a flaky chipset and should be avoided https://sebvance.medium.com/the-secret-caveats-of-the-caldig...
> 2. Don’t expect to run any USB hubs behind any of the USB ports on this dock whatsoever... even if the downstream hub is only powering wimpy devices like wireless mouse dongles. You might not have this problem if you plug the hub into the dock’s extra Thunderbolt port...
I have this device and don't have this problem? I have a couple of self-powered hubs downstream of this thing and have plugged them into the USB-A-shaped ports on the back.
I don't have any downstream Thunderbolt devices plugged into this thing. Maybe that's the major difference between my setup and the author's? (Or maybe I'm running better firmware on this thing than he is?)
I haven't tried any hubs, but my problem was using a 2.5 Gbps USB Ethernet controller off of one of the Fresco Logic USB ports (the front 5 Gbps ones or the rear right-hand 3 USB-A ports), after a few hours it would drop. I thought the cheap USB adapter was bad, replaced it, same thing.
I found this blog post, switched to one of the ASMedia ports (the rear 10 Gbps USB-C port or the most left-hand USB-A port) and both of the Ethernet controllers are rock-solid now.
I now have it in the Thunderbolt port which ekes out another 100 Mbps or so compared to the ASMedia USB ports.
The blog post is probably a bit sensationalistic but I still can't recommend the dock to anyone when half the ports on it are flakey, especially at that price.
What about no dock and no 3 external monitors ?
I like my Kensington a lot, don’t seem them mentioned a lot but the build quality is very high, lots of ports and it even has an official mount for under-desk use
What’s the model name?
I recently got this one (see sibling comment to parent) and am quite happy with it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B0CMT7WMVM
Note that as all docks it requires displaylink software on mac to use more than one screen, and the software is a bit buggy - needs to be restarted every couple of times i reconnect to the dock for the displays to work right. TBH this is the first dock i experience this with but then again os and software updates, and ive seen weird flaky behavior before, just not specifically this.
Not all docks need DisplayLink. Thunderbolt-powered ones like this [0] or this [1] can support multiple displays for Macbook Pros without it, so if you want to avoid having to use DisplayLink, they're solid picks. The one thing you need to watch out for is that if you go with the second one, there are no HDMI ports, so you need a USB-C to HDMI converter, which in my experience can be flaky at higher refresh rates. If on the other hand your monitors support DisplayPort, then USB-C to DisplayPort is native, doesn't need a converter (just an adapter), and works better.
1: https://plugable.com/products/tbt4-ud5
2: https://www.caldigit.com/thunderbolt-4-element-hub/
Aside from my justified negative opinions about caldigit, i was referring to docks that offer 3+ (simultaneous) screen outputs (eg not one with 2 hdmi+2dp that can use either set but not all 4 together).
That requires DP.
From the first link
> On Mac systems, dual display is only supported on M1 Pro/Max, M2 Pro/Max, M3 Pro/Max, and M4/Pro/Max systems
So if you're still on an OG M1 it won't work for you.
SD5700T
I've been using an OWC 14 port TB3 dock with my 2018 Intel Mac mini for about 5 years now with no issues. I keep a 2TB Samsung T7 external SSD connected and it is always mounted when I wake the system from sleep. I've been very happy with this dock so far. https://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/TB3DK14PSG/
What annoys me is not speed, but why there are so few docks with a storage slot inside.
It's bad enough that you have to have a box hanging off your machine, but with most docks you have to have several boxes.
There are several designed that way for the Steam Deck. They are just generic USB C hubs with a slot of the deck. Not Thunderbolt though.
I have a TB3 dock with a fast ish nvme slot. But I only found two options when I looked... something from OWC and the WD "game dock" i ended up buying.
It does do the job including display passthrough.
Would love to hear about folks favorite docks.
I have a fancy pluggable dock and after my Mac goes to sleep it sometimes stops working when the Mac wakes up. Often, it appears to go into a loop where it detects an external monitor for 5 seconds then disconnects. Pretty annoying and guess away after a reboot.
I've been dabbling with this issue for a few months. I've got a one-year-old ThinkPad that multi-boots Linux (Ubuntu 24.04, 23.10), and Windows 11. Upon purchase, I immediately upgraded the 1TB internal NVMe drive to a Samsung 4TB (990). Later, I had some difficulty while upgrading from 23.10 to 24.04. To make things easier while troubleshooting, I was backing up the 4TB image, and restoring it when the upgrade failed. After doing this a few times, I was looking for more speed.
I tried several NVMe/TB4 enclosures. Some of them were junk, some were just okay, and this one (which I now have two of) is great: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0CSFFMQWF
I now also have three of these 8TB NVMe SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0D9WT512W (I also have a few others that are slower and/or smaller.)
I've tried a few docks, and this is the one I'm using now: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DBHG7486 It's a good dock, but unfortunately needs the DisplayLink driver to use the DisplayPort output. This works okay, but the monitor stays dark until the desktop is booted, and cannot be used for switching between Linux virtual consoles.
First off, because my ThinkPad has only one TB4 port that also serves as the USB-C PD input, I needed a dock if I wanted to use a TB4 accessory while not running from the battery. The dock is also quite valuable for using an external (4K/60Hz) display when using another TB4 peripheral.
The SSDs work fine when plugged into the non-TB4 port, but they operate at less than half of their potential speed, and are enumerated as /dev/sdX instead of /dev/nvmeXnX.
Operating the SSDs from the TB4 port gives variable performance depending upon what else is connected, and when it was connected. The Linux PCI+bridge enumeration has some issues with hotplugable devices. Various combinations of pci=assign-busses, realloc, native, hpbussize=XX, lastbus=XX, hpmmiosize=XXXM, hpmmioprefsize=XG will all give varying results. At best, with my 4K monitor operating, I can get 20gbps on one external SSD, or some division of that speed distributed amongst multiple other SSDs.
Leaving the PCIe enumeration to the kernel with no additional boot arguments did not go well with 23.10, but works better with 24.04. Hot-plugging performance is always a compromise, depending upon kernel parameters, and the order in which things are plugged in.
I bought a dock for my Mac mini. It works great, but I do notice that it takes a few seconds/minutes after waking up before the NVMe SSD is mounted, which means I can't keep any of my dotfiles on it.
Ah thunderbolt, yet another standard that started with a promise of simplicity but requires a lot of digging to understand what actually works.
For me some things worked better than expected (5K + 4K monitor at 60Hz, even though it states only one 5K or two 4K monitors), some things don't (work laptop detects the hub, but the displays stay blank.