No Hot Swap, But No Performance Penalty Either
ICY Dock’s new ToughArmor MB842MP-B is a PCIe 3/4.0 card that will fit a pair of NVMe drives. It takes advantage of PCIe bifurcation to provide each of the drives with four lanes of PCIe, so you will need to install it in a PCIe 8x or 16x slot to get the full speed. The drives slide in and out easily, similarly to how the old SATA docks used to work and the ToughArmor MB842MP-B comes with heatsinks so no worries about having an extra step when installing the drives into the dock. It also has cables to allow you to connect it to your motherboard’s headers so you can get blinkenlitghts on your case, should you so desire.
Nikktech saw impressive performance from the drives they tested but were a little disappointed by the ~$230 price tag. At least it has decent compatibility, with 2230, 2243, 2260, 2280, and 22110 all fitting within the ToughArmor MB842MP-B. On the other hand, your PCIe 5.0 SSD won’t hit maximum bandwidth and you need to ensure your motherboard supports PCIe bifurcation.
If you don’t mind the price, you check out the full review here.
