ASUS TUF Gaming A1 External Drive Enclosure

1. Introduction2. ASUS TUF Gaming A13. ATTO/CrystalDiskMark/AS SSD benchmarks4. Throughput5. PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark6. Real Life File Transfers7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

The TUF Gaming A1 is the latest SSD enclosure from ASUS supporting M.2 SATA 6Gb/s or NVMe SSDs up to 2TB in capacity using a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2×1 (10Gbps) interface. Built from aluminium, the enclosure certainly lives up to its TUF name, weighing in at 142g and meeting both the military MIL-STD-810H 516.8 and the IP68 standards.

The MIL-STD-810 is a United States Military Standard, (version H is the eighth version of the test standard). It has 28 different test methods, method 516.8 is the shock test and in this instance, it's the ‘Shock Testing Procedure IV – Transit Drop', which is for testing products that could be accidentally dropped when handling. The IP (International Protection Rating) 68 is a rating for protection against dust and water. The first 6 digit means that the device is dust tight while the 8 means that it is protected from long-term immersion over 1 metre up to a specified pressure.

Installing a drive into the TUF Gaming A1 is a doddle (as long as you don't misplace the bundled Allen key). Four Allen bolts hold the pack panel in place. With the back panel removed you are confronted with a PCB that holds the dual SATA/NVMe interface and the simple but cleverly designed Q-Latch system. The latch has three positions; open – just off horizontal, locked – horizontal, and move – vertical. The move option allows the Q-Latch to move to one of the three mounting holes for the three M.2 formats supported: 2242, 2260, and 2280.

As to the TUF Gaming A1's performance it obviously depends on the SSD you stick in it as it's an empty enclosure. For our testing purposes, we used a 2TB Kingston KC3000 Gen4 drive. The best Sequential performance we saw was testing the drive with CrystalDiskMark 8's Peak Performance profile using compressible date with reads of 1,014MB/s and writes of 974MB/s.

We found the ASUS TUF Gaming A1 for £43.03 (inc VAT) on Xcase.co.uk HERE.

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Pros

• Ease of drive installation.
• Build quality.
• Dual SATA/NVMe compatibility.

Cons

• Only supports M.2 drives up to 2TB.

KitGuru says: A well-designed enclosure from ASUS built to survive the rigours of everyday use and then some. Handy in that it supports both SATA or NVMe drives, but It's just a shame that it only supports them up to 2TB in capacity.

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