Featured

SilverStone PTS01 USB 3.0 Enclosure for NUC Review

Final Thoughts

Pricing

At the time of writing, SilverStone’s 2.5″ USB 3.0 HDD/SSD Enclosure for NUC (SST-PTS01B) can be had for $29.99, £24.00, or €39.00 through the respective Amazon sites in US, UK, and DE.

Overview

Having a small form factor system such as the Intel NUC or one of SilverStone’s Petit series chassis is awesome as it saves a lot of desktop space, especially considering that you can mount the whole system behind the monitor on a spare VESA compatible mount. There is, however, one downside to such small systems and that is the limitation when it comes to storage options.

A lot of these small systems only come with an mSATA connector inside, which makes storage upgrade a tricky thing. In comes the SilverStone PTS01 enclosure to fill that gap. It utilizes the same size as the NUC series and can also be mounted below an NUC and in between the NUC and its mounting plate, allowing you to tuck it away just as easily as you could with the NUC itself. This is extremely convenient and space-saving.

The PTS01 connects through USB 3.0 which naturally sets some limitations. We don’t have the same speed and access times as we would have with a native SATA connection, but it isn’t bad and it is the best that is available for these systems at the moment. With around 400MB/s the speeds aren’t bad at all and you shouldn’t miss the last third compared to onboard SATA all that much. You could naturally also chose to set it up with a 2TB mechanical hard disk drive for extra storage in which case you won’t notice much difference.

Overall the SilverStone PTS01 is an awesome enclosure that fills a gap and a need. The build quality is solid and the lightweight case is made full of aluminium and steel that also further aids the cooling abilities.

Pros: