ICY BOX External 2.5″ HDD USB 3.0 Enclosure Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. ICY BOX HDD Enclosure4. Testing Methodology and Performance5. Closing Thoughts6. View All Pages

To test this ICY Dock enclosure we will be using a fast solid state drive … the Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB. As such we will be able to see the true and full performance of the ICY BOX 2.5″ USB 3.0 External Enclosure.

Processor: AMD Bulldozer FX 8-core 8150 CPU @ 4.2 GHz

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
Cooler: Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1800+ MHz
Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz)
Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W
Boot Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD (OS only)

OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit

Software: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64

SSD (for speed testing): Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB SSD

When it comes to USB 3.0 enclosure performance it seems most are limited to a speed of 150 MB/s (for 3.5″) and 100 MB/s (for 2.5″) and the ICY BOX USB 3.0 enclosure is no different.

This is mainly because they still expect that the majority of users will be using a mechanical hard drive, whether it is a 3.5″ or 2.5″ device, and as such won't need the full speed of the USB 3.0. We do however wonder what the difference is in terms of the electronics and how much more it would have cost to give this enclosure the full USB 3.0 speed.

The speeds of this ICY BOX enclosure are nearly 4 x faster than you would expect via USB 2.0 and as such this is still a good result, although of course our Kingston HyperX SSD can perform up to 5 x faster.

Become a Patron!