Overview of the Thermaltake Max G5:
The sides are covered in a mesh panel to help increase cooling and airflow. Thermaltake has installed two 80mm fans to help with cooling your 3.5″ drive.
The back of the Max G5 contains the power switch, power connection, USB 3.0 connection and the LED on/off switch. This LED on/off switch was a great addition, because working at night can be annoying with blinding LEDs shining in your eyes.
For better stability, if you decide to run the Max 5g vertically, Thermaltake has installed a sliding foot to make sure it does not topple over easily.
With the Max G5 on, you can see the LEDs on the front and side. It looks nice with the black polished aluminum and mesh panels.
Installation:
In this picture of the Max G5, we see the use of Allen bolts to secure everything down. This could be a good and bad thing. First, it will help keep people from just opening your external enclosure easily and taking your drive. Second, if you lose your Allen wrench, it will be a trip to the hardware store before you can gain access to it again.
Once open, just slide the drive into the SATA connection and flip up the locking mechanism to secure the drive in place. Once that is finished, put back on the panel and use the two Allen bolts to fully secure it.
Speed Tests:
Sata Connection:
The Crystal Disk Mark screen, shot above, will help give us a baseline to test against. We connected our drive into the SATA connections on our motherboard and tested the speeds first.
USB 2.0 Connection:
Running the first round of tests through our USB 2.0 connection was rough. It performed about 4 times slower than it should. This is not the Max G5′s fault, but the limit of speed the USB 2.0 connection can support. Hopefully, you have a USB 3.0 connection or you will be relegated to some very slow sleeps.
USB 3.0 Connection:
Now, once we moved to the real test, USB 3.0, we see that the speeds are almost identical. This is great to see for the Max G5 as it does not limit our drive in any way. We could have used a faster drive, but we felt that since this is an external enclosure device, most users will not be using extremely fast drives.
Conclusion:
Overall, the Thermaltake Max G5 performed great in our testing and did not limit our hard drive at all. The two 80mm fans ran quietly and seemed to do an effective job of pushing air through the external enclosure. The blue LEDs were a nice touch aesthetically, but the best part of that was the option to be able to turn them off. If you needed to carry this external enclosure around with you, it is light enough to do so. The portability of this case and the full speeds of our test drive make us really like the Max G5.
The Thermaltake Max G5 receives the Techreaction.net Gold Silicon Award!
For more information on the Max G5 and other products from Thermaltake, please visit their website.
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