Testing:
To test the file transfer speeds of the
Icy Dock MB453SPF enclosure, I installed it in a system with the following components:
» ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe
» AMD X2 4200
» eVGA 7900GT KO Superclock PCIe card
» G.Skill 800Mhz DDR2 2gb
» 2x 80GB Hitachi Deskstar SATA 3Gbps hard drive in RAID 0
» 1x 120GB Seagate 7200.9 SATA 3Gbps hard drive
» Memorex DVD/CDRW
» 10-in-1 Media Card reader
To begin the testing, I wanted to get a couple of base benchmarks. Connecting one of my Hitatchi drives directly to the motherboard, I received a burst read speed of 203.3MB/s, and an average read speed of 48.8MB/s.
My next test was to perform a baseline using my previous removable hard drive chassis made by Kingwin. I received an burst read speed of 201.7MB/s, and an average read speed of 48.8MB/s.
Finally I performed the same test as the previous benchmarks, this time with the hard drive installed in the Icy Dock chassis. I received an burst read speed of 203.4MB/s, and an average read speed of 48.8MB/s.
During testing, I took temperature measurements with a Cooler Master Cool Drive IV bay device. While the hard drive was installed in a Thermaltake Eureka case (no separate enclosure) the drive skin temperature was 29 degrees Celsius. In the Kingwin chassis it was 38 degrees Celsius, and in the Icy Dock chassis it was 30 degrees Celsius. The change in temperatures between the Kingwin and the Icy Dock chassis did not surprise me. The Kingwin tray has a 40mm exhaust fan, and the tray surrounds the hard drive, while the Icy Dock has the 80mm exhaust fan. What did surprise me is that the temperatures between the case and the Icy Dock chassis were so close.
