Linux Tests Of The QNINE M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure To USB-C Adapter

In the past few months a number of M.2 NVMe SSD to USB adapters have been appearing on the market. Curious about the performance potential on Linux of an NVMe SSD drive attached to a USB 3.1 connection, I recently picked up a QNINE NVMe solid-state drive enclosure for benchmarking.

The QNINE NVMe SSD enclosure is an M.2 NVMe to USB-C/USB-3.1 adapter that retails for about $40 USD from the likes of Amazon. Only Windows and macOS support is mentioned, but the drive was detected just fine and working under Linux. This QNINE adapter is just one of many M.2 NVMe to USB-C adapters on the market and most in the $40~60 USD price range.

The device is quite simple so let's get straight to the testing.

For this testing I was using a Samsung 970 EVO 250GB NVMe SSD and benchmarked when connected directly to the motherboard's M.2 slot and then again when using this QNINE USB-C to NVMe adapter.

A variety of storage benchmarks were run via the Phoronix Test Suite.