Akasa presents USB 4 case with active cooling for external M.2 SSD

Thermal solutions manufacturer Akasa has introduced a new casing for external use of M.2 SSDs. The accessory is compatible with USB 4 and PCIe 5.0, delivering 40Gbps bandwidth through its highly flexible Type-C cable. The body is entirely made of aluminum and comes with a fan for active cooling of the high-performance drive.

Akasa’s new case supports M.2 SSDs in 2242, 2260 and 2280 formats. The fan rotates at up to 8,000 RPM, but to ensure even greater heat dissipation, the product features an internal heatsink with two thermal covers for the drive. The downside is that the design makes it more difficult to change the SSD whenever you want, something that is usually an attraction for external storage solutions.

Evidently, the final performance of Akasa’s new casing largely depends on the installed SSD. The manufacturer released CDMark results showing sequential reading of up to 3,629.72MB/s, with recording reaching up to 3,475.02MB/s using the case. Unfortunately, it was not stated which SSD model offered these numbers.

The new product already has a dedicated page on Akasa’s official website, but the company has not yet revealed its price or a launch window. With so much information available, however, the premiere should happen soon.

Akasa opts for USB 4 as version 2.0 approaches

As connection and cable technologies advance, external solutions like the Akasa case become increasingly attractive. The 40Gbps bandwidth was already enough to greatly boost the accessory market for external GPUs, for example.

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Therefore, it will be interesting to see what types of accessories can be made with version 2.0 of USB 4. Promising 80Gbps transfers and up to 240W of Power Delivery, some solutions for SSDs could be as good as direct connections to the desktop.

And we already have the first products certified with the technology appearing in Japan, so more and more new products should appear soon.