As I mentioned in my last NVMe to USB adapter review, there are a lot of NVMe-to-USB 3 adapters on the market, and unfortunately many of them are of poor quality. This review marks the second unit to have worked without failing, after having multiple models from other brands fail my testing.
I purchased the RIITOP docking station with my own funds, but I’d like to thank Intel for sending me the Optane 905p 380gb which I will be using for testing with this (and future) accessory reviews. Despite the 905p series being recently discontinued without a replacement in the foreseeable future, it remains one of the best performing drives and thus best suited to truly stress test these adapters.
What’s in the Box
- NVMe Dock
- 1x USB-C to C Cable
- 1x USB-C to A adapter
Specifications
- Model NVME2DT
- USB 3.2 Gen 2 support – up to 10gb/s
- Officially it only lists compatibility with 22×30, 22×42, and 22×80. The lack of official support for 22×110 is puzzling, as the device works with any sized m2 drive.
- It does NOT support Plug N’ Play
- Features a JMicron JMS583 Controller
Setup
RIITOP’s adapter is unique in that it’s a literal dock- unlike other adapters which house the NVMe drive inside of the unit, you just plug the drive into the top of the circular dock with the NVME2DT
There isn’t much to setting it up. As it doesn’t support hot swapping, you plop a NVMe drive into the slot and then connect the dock via USB. The included cord isn’t very long – only a few inches – so if you’re thinking of using this with a laptop you’ll want to be careful (or purchase a longer cord) as sudden movements may cause it to flip over.
Stress Testing & Crystal Disk Mark
The first two stress tests are simple. I copied a 172gb folder to the drive, and then ran CrystalDiskMark 7 a few times in a row. Running these sort of heavy loads has caused other NVMe adapters to fail – usually from overheating , resulting a “USB Device not recognized” error in Windows. Fortunately, the RIITOP unit passed these tests without issue. During stress testing, the dock did get a little warm but it does not get hot in any sense of the term at all.
When running Crystal Disk Mark 7, which I consider to be somewhat of a “synthetic” benchmark, the best results were just shy of USB 3.2 Gen 2’s theoretical maximum speed of 10gbps or 1.25 gigabyte/sec – coming in with 1005.88mb in sequential performance in CrystalDiskMark. Random performance was approximately 25% of that in a desktop, but we can’t really expect desktop speeds from a dock like this. In the screenshots below, I’ve included results from IcyDock’s IcyNano NVMe-to-USB adapter for comparison.
“Real World” File Transfer Testing
To demonstrate real world performance, I performed two tests. First I copied a single contiguous file – in this case, a 21.5gb WinRar archive, both to and from the Optane 380gb connected to the RIITOP Dock. This was done to simulate the transfer of a large file.
When copying this file to the OS, the transfer averaged ~770mb/sec, completing in 28 seconds – 1 second faster than it took IcyDock’s IcyNano to perform the same operation.
Transferring the file the other way around took a little longer, transferring at an average of 632mb/sec and finishing in 34 seconds – also one second quicker than the IcyNano.
The next test I did was to copy the contents of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey from my OS drive to the m2 drive connected via the dock. As games have an assortment of both large and small files, some may consider this to be more of a “real world” example.
Copying these 98.5gb of files from my host drive, to the dock, took 2 minutes and 40 seconds to complete – approximately 615mb/sec. This operation took the same amount of time while using the IcyNano.
Transferring the game from the dock to the host drive was quicker taking 2 minutes and 12 seconds to complete or approximately 746mb/sec. In comparison, the IcyNano took one second longer.
Summary… and concerns
At $32.99, this dock isn’t very expensive at all. Read and Write speeds were about as fast as you can expect with a unit that has USB 3.1 Gen 2 -10gbps support – in fact it slightly outperforms the only other adapter which I’ve tested with an Optane drive while also costing less.
That being said, despite it being a perfectly working product, I cannot give it my full recommendation. I am worried about the risk of damage to NVMe drives used in Ineo’s adapter from static electricity. By having the NVMe device fully exposed, there’s nothing to prevent a random discharge from effecting this unit – and because of this I cannot in good conscience recommend purchasing this unit.
