Yottamaster Swift Wind USB4 M.2 SSD Enclosure Review – Words Like Invaluable & Irreplaceable Don’t Even Come Close!

Anyone who follows TSSDR knows that we rarely spend time on a review of something so common as a M.2 external enclosure.  Have I ever done one?  I have been trying to find just right rights words for my discovery.  Indispensable.  Crucial. (No…the adjective not the company) Critical. Key. Vital.  I am sure you get where I am going.  I have dozens of small SSD enclosures around the office and have been stuck on a specific 10Gbps one for years now.  Do you think I have been in search of, very least, an SSD enclosure where one can simply throw the SSD in and quickly move data at Thunderbolt 3 speeds?  Do you think I am any different than ANY media professional, content creator or SSD reviewer worldwide?  Not a chance.

In my hot little hands right now is a Yottamaster Swift Wind 40Gbps SSD Enclosure and would you believe me if I told you that EVERY review ever published, along with Yottamaster itself, has vastly undercut the data transfer speeds this device is capable of?  Oh ya.  It is not their fault though…not entirely anyway.  The ‘Swift Wind’ was introduced just about a year ago and true USB 4/Thunderbolt 4/5 was not really even out yet… Not until the newest Z890 platform in any case when that full 40Gbps of lane travel was dedicated solely to Thunderbolt 4/5 & USB 4.0.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, I am reviewing something I absolutely love, something that so many people have really been in search of for the longest time.  It is something that saves those with several SSDs lots of time.

The Yottamaster Swift Wind is a two piece 40Gbps USB-C M.2 SSD enclosure that contains a silent cooling active fan and accommodates M.2 SSDs of the 2280, 2260, 2242, and 2230 form factors.  It is constructed of a two-piece grey CNC machined aluminum alloy with an attractive acrylic top and venting on both sides which simply slides forward to unlock and remove.

It is completely toolless and is connected via USB-A or USB-C to your PC or laptop.  When plugged in with the included USB-C cable, air is drawn in from the far end of the device, over and under the SSD and through the fan, then pushed out the top.

The Yottamaster Swift Wind 40Gbps M.2 SSD enclosure comes with the two piece case, a black aluminum ribbed heatsink, two pieces of thermal pad, two plastic locking pins that one simply twists into place to secure the SSD, a 40Gbps USB-C to USB-C/USB-A cable and operating instructions.  We have tested Gen4 and 5 SSDs and have found that very little heat is generated in the enclosure with next to no noise. Our testing was without the thermal pads and heatsink in use for both Gen4 and Gen5 SSDs.

We tested the Yottamaster Swift Wind M.2 SSD Enclosure was with our latest Asus ProArt Z890 Test Bench described here in our latest Yottamaster Y7000 Pro SSD Review, which contains two Thunderbolt 5/USB4 ports along with a Thunderbolt 4/USB4 port.

There is a slight adjustment in your PC’s settings that must be made however.  Go to  Control Panel/Device Manager/Disk Drives and select ‘Properties’ of the SSD you have installed within the Yottamaster Swift Wind ‘when it is plugged in’.  Here you will check ‘Better Performance’ and ‘Write-caching Policy’ in order to get proper write data speeds.  If you don’t do this, performance is penalized heavily.

Now… for our testing, we used a ‘just released’ Samsung 9100 Pro Gen5 4TB SSD, as reviewed here, as well as a Yottamaster Y7000 Pro Gen4 4TB SSD, reviewed here. There was a difference between the two which we found rather odd as both are limited to the devices USB4 speeds which is considerably lower than Gen4/5 SSD speeds.

SAMSUNG 9100 PRO GEN5 4TB SSD

YOTTAMASTER Y7000 PRO GEN4 4TB SSD

The key to the Yottamaster Swift Wind M.2 SSD Enclosure is that it allows your SSD to be tested in full Thunderbolt 4/5 or USB4 speeds in newer Z890 motherboards.  We cannot speak to Mac whatsoever but we can speak to previous Gen motherboards that were Thunderbolt4/USB4 yet still only allowed 3.2GB/s max disk speeds.  Yottamaster  even states in their documentation that this device is only guaranteed compatible with Intel 12th Gen systems and above, as well as Mac M1 and M2. Without the latest chipset, you may still find that it works, just not at the speeds you were hoping.

This result was received from our ASRock Taichi Z790 Test Bench, after a great amount of time was spent trying to bring this result up with little success.  Just to confirm, this bench has consistently provided the best results in SSD testing to date. This should easily have been very least 3.2GB/s data transfer on a system equipped with Thunderbolt4/USB4.0.  No such luck.

Make no mistake; this is a very niche item that will be an immense benefit to those that need it… and have the proper hardware. There will also be others, several others that buy it and find it incompatible with their older systems, or lacking the performance that we demonstrate here at 3.7GB/s read and 3.5GB/s write, even in 13th or 14th Gen systems that should.  There is a reason.  In all but the newest Intel Core Ultra Series 2  systems, lanes were shared and ‘bifurcation’ became inevitable.

Bifurcation is sharing the total lane count which then prioritizes who gets what and how much with respect to performance outcomes.  In the newest Intel Ultra Core 200 series chipset, PCIe lanes are separated from M.2 and Thunderbolt/USB 4 lanes completely by ‘Tiles’.  PCIe slots are dedicated to the SoC (System-on-Chip) Tiles whereas SSD and Thunderbolt are dedicated to the IOE (Input/Outpot Expander) Tile. There are definite benefits to this new architecture, however, drawbacks as well which we will address in a later report.

In any case, there is no mention with respect to product warranty that we can find and we find pricing at just over $100 on the Yottamaster website itself.

CHECK AMAZON FOR YOTTAMASTER SWIFT WIND PRICING.