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Today we are looking at an enclosure by ICY Dock, the Blizzard (MB080U3S-1SB), a creatively designed single 3.5″ bay featuring both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity.
ICY Dock have built this new enclosure from the ground-up to have an elegant appearance but yet incorporate a large 80mm cooling fan. The advantages of this design? With the fan positioned at the front and the vents at the rear it can create a tunnel of fast moving air … much like a turbine engine, allowing all sides of the hard drive to be cooled very efficiently.
ICY Dock have also managed to create an enclosure which can house a 3.5″ drive securely without the use of any tools – great if you want to switch drives at any point.
Specifications
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The ICY Dock MB080U3S enclosure is shipped in a dark box with a large product picture highlighting the blue fan and the unusual shape of the product.
The back of the box lists all the specifications and indicates that the hard drives can be installed into the enclosure without any tools.
Inside we find a User Manual, 3 boxes, and two feet to hold the product upright.
Inside the three boxes are cables for connections via USB 3.0 and eSATA. ICY DOCK also include a power adapter.
The ICY Dock MB080U3S is certainly an unusual design – resembling an air intake on a jet airliner. The company have stretched the front of the enclosure in the center to allow an 80mm fan to be incorporated. We hope they haven't opted for a loud, fast spinning model however.
The sides of the enclosure have a sleek look and include a single button on each side for releasing the front for access to the drive.
From several angles this enclosure looks good, and we certainly think it stands out in a crowded market. On the back is a power socket, an on/off switch, an eSATA port, and a USB 3.0 port.
As well as this there is a brightness dial for the LED and a fan controller with 3 positions (High/Low/Auto).
If you press both buttons on either side of the enclosure the fan unit pops out. Cleverly there are no connections to the enclosure, so this can be removed easily.
The fan itself is a standard unbranded 80mm computer fan. On the bottom left are two clear panels to allow the two LED's (for power and data activity) to shine through. On the top right are the two pins which provide power to this fan unit.
Looking inside the device we can see that the PCB board is secured at the back of the device – this is no surprise as this is where the I/O connections are. There is a simple metal bracket that guides a 3.5″ drive into place, and also holds it securely during operation.
After adding the two feet the device is very stable but still doesn't take up much desk space.
The ICY Dock enclosure is a bit longer than a 3.5″ drive, mainly as it incorporates the fan at the front.
Installing the device is just a case of sliding it in, although you do need to make sure the HDD is the right way round first.
To test this ICY Dock enclosure we will be using one of the fastest SSD's out there, the Kingston HyperX 3k 120GB drive. As such we will be able to see the true and full performance of the ICY Dock Blizzard Enclosure.
Of course this enclosure is more likely to be used with high capacity drives for offline backup and storage but this will show the maximum theoretical speeds.
Processor: AMD Bulldozer FX 8-core 8150 CPU @ 4.2 GHz
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3
Cooler: Antec Kuhler H20 920 CPU Cooler
Memory: 8GB Corsair Dominator DDR3 1800+ MHz
Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz)
Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W
Boot Drive: Kingston HyperX 3K 120 GB (OS only)
OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit
Software: CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1
SSD 1 (for testing): Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
From these results we can see that the device is limited via USB 3.0 at a speed of nearly 160 MB/s, this is fast but no where near the maximum theoretical speed of the Kingston HyperX SSD.
Using an eSATA connection will give you slower speeds of around 110 MB/s and USB 2.0 is unsurprisingly limited to just 32 MB/s. There is clearly a big advantage using USB 3.0 over USB 2.0 but this is not the best performing enclosure on the market.
The performance of the ICY Dock Blizzard MB080U3S-1SB is reasonably good however the speeds are not close to class leading. With the Kingston HyperX drive plugged in the device was limited to around 160 MB/s. We know this particular drive is capable of nearly500 MB/s via a direct SATA-III connection.
In terms of design the ICY Dock Blizzard is simple but effective, we like the ingenuity in terms of the shape and cooling configuration. While it is not essential to actively cool a HDD enclosure mechanical drives can (with intensive use) get pretty hot, and certainly this will improve their life span.
ICY Dock have added a blue LED which gives the enclosure a nice appearance and if the device does ever get too hot (above 50 degrees C) a red fan illuminates to let you know.
As this enclosure uses a large 80mm fan to cool the hard drive we expected it to be quiet but there is a fair bit of noise emitted. The ICY Dock Blizzard isn't a sealed enclosure so there is no effective sound proofing. That said, on the ‘low' setting it is barely audible in a normal office, or bedroom environment.
As the ICY Dock Blizzard enclosure features both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity it caters to a wide audience, although we were disappointed to see that without buying the additional converter that it won't natively support 2.5 inch drives.
The ICY Dock Blizzard retails at just under £55 which is reasonable, although cheaper alternatives are available.
Pros
- Features both USB 3.0 and eSATA connectivity.
- well designed.
- 3 Fan speeds.
- Looks good with blue/red LED.
Cons
- Only fits 3.5″ drives (without buying an adapter)
- Not the fastest read/write speeds.
- Fan isn't particularly quiet.
- Not the cheapest.
Kitguru says: Another solid bit of kit from ICY DOCK, but there are many alternatives available on the market today.
Interesting product but I wonder where the market is. The only market I see for 3.5″ enclosures is for reusing old drives you’ve replaced with bigger ones, and I’m not going to spend a lot of money on that.
Simply put this review is a complete waste of time, and reads like a brochure.
You reviewed a Hard Drive enclosure purposely designed for cooling, and didn’t even put a Hard Drive inside it!
You put in an SSD (which as everyone knows generate allot less heat in use).
So your whole review tests the speed capabilities of this units I/O board.
Simply put who cares about the throughput on an enclosure such as this, it’s whole purpose is to cool large capacity Hard Drives, and with the current generation of HDD’s experiencing overheat problems in standard enclosures, it might be nice to see a thermal graph / diagram of this units performance over time.
This review is a perfect example of a lazy and stupid product testing, that anyone on any computer could do in there sleep.