Tech Review: ASUS ROG Strix Arion

I picked this up as part of a small project to make a storage/portable Ubuntu Studio workstation (see https://www.geekpantsmedia.com/post/storage-portable-ubuntu-studio-workstation for information on that project). The idea was to see if I could get something at a fair price, good performance, and maybe good durability (compared to USB keys/external SSDs). I could have just shopped for a low budget/on sale drive but I decided on an enclosure/SSD combo for three reasons:

• Up-gradable/repairable - Normally, if you out grow your storage and need an upgrade or your drive fails, you are stuck buying a new one. This option helps address this issue by allowing the memory to be upgraded/replaced by swapping the drive in the enclosure with a new one. If a new enclosure is needed (due to failure or an upgrade), it can also be swapped out. Swapping out either the drive or the enclosure could be less expensive than buying a new external drive/USB key would be (depending on sales, requirements, and available options).

• Multi function - This enclosure could be used to back up/restore hard drives, perform operations on a hard drive that is not installed in a system, or even copy/clone a drive when performing a storage upgrade instead of just for storage.

• It's fun - 'nuff said.

So far this combo has been working out pretty well. I've booted a copy of Ubuntu Studio and performed some video streaming/file read/copy operations to test it. Below is my unboxing and review.

Overview/Package

The enclosure (on left) is in a fairly small package. The SSD I bought to use with the enclosure comes in a box that isn't much smaller. Considering it comes with two USB cables and a carrying harness, the packaging is pretty compact.

Unboxing

The packaging is multi-layered with the enclosure on the top layer, the carrying harness on the second layer, and the cables/manuals underneath. There is also a metal tab for operating the case lock. The cables are approximately 15in long which makes them a good length for use with a laptop but maybe a bit short for some desktops (depending on how the enclosure is placed with respect to the desktop/workstation). The case is solid metal (aluminum alloy) and appears solidly built.

Mounting a drive

The pin lock is pretty well made. It operates more smoothly than cell phone SIM card slots and it feels like its well built and solid when the internal button is pressed. The cover is very easy to remove once the button is pressed. Inside (shown above) there are heat sink pads on the cover (which are a very good thing since these drives can heat quite a bit when in use), a mounting screw, and a warning tag reminding a user to initialize the drive if needed.

Mounting the drive was pretty easy. The mounting screw has a slot (shown below) to hold the SSD at an appropriate distance from the case and avoid putting any pressure on the PCIe slot. The drive supports M.2 form factor 2230, 2242, 2260, and 2280 SSDs. Mine is a 2280 and fit easily in place.

Case Assembly

The only problem I have with this enclosure is the carrying case. It's made up of a plastic ring that runs around the enclosure, a strap held in place with Velcro (which is actually pretty useful and not a problem), and a plastic carabiner. The carabiner is not very durable and I can see it breaking easily. I would get a metal one and/or a key ring to replace it if I were going to hang it from something. The plastic ring is also a bit stiff and difficult to attach to the enclosure. I can see this breaking if attached/removed multiple times.

The enclosure includes a colour changing led light which can be customized with a program available on the ASUS web site (I didn't use this feature and left it at default). The USB cables are good quality and stay firmly in place when plugged in so you don't have to worry about accidentally unplugging the drive if you move it while it is being used.

Performance

The SSD is capable of 4150 MB/s which is much faster than the enclosures 10Gbps (1250 MB/s) so the speed tests here should reflect the performance of the enclosure and the USB-C speed of my laptop. For tests, I used the FlashBench USB Flash Benchmark to run some speed tests and I also copied some mid sized and large video files to/from the hard drive.

For the benchmarks, I formatted the drive as NTFS and exFAT. Both file systems performed roughly equally with write speeds tending to be slightly higher than read speeds. The maximum speeds were lower than advertised but pretty close to 1000MB/s.

NTFS:

ExFAT:

For the file copy tests, I used several video files ranging from 97kb to 2.2GB with the average file size being 275.5682MB. For the first test, I copied the files to the drive using Windows copy/paste. The speed started at 1000MB/s (possibly for the largest files) then fell to around 400-412MB/s for most of the copy operation. For the second test, I copied the files from the drive onto my laptop using Windows copy/paste. The speed stayed steady at about 700MB/s for the entire operation. For the third test, I coped the files from one folder on the drive to another folder on the drive. The speed was roughly 430MB/s for the entire operation.

For the Ubuntu boot USB test, I used Rufus to turn the drive into a bootable USB drive for Ubuntu Studio 24.04.1. The drive booted fairly quickly but there was a noticeable speed difference vs using an internal drive. This is to be expected since the drive is booting off of USB-C and the enclosure is much slower than the drive itself. Even with the slowdown, programs loaded quickly and overall performance was still pretty good.

Throughout all the above tests, the temperature of the case didn't increase significantly and I could comfortably hold it in my hand. While writing up this review, I have been playing the videos I loaded to the drive and the enclosure has not noticeably heated more than it did during the above tests. It appears that it is very good at managing the temperature of the SSD.

Conclusion

Overall, I recommend this enclosure. For use as a tool for backing up/copying/cloning SSDs, it will perform well but, if using it for a USB SSD, I would recommend finding an SSD that is closer to the speed of the enclosure. The enclosure performed as well as I had expected and the heating is much lower than I had worried it would be. It provides good performance and the enclosure construction is high quality. The only complaint I have is the durability of the carrying case and carabiner which I think will break under repeated use.