Icy Dock Makes the M.2 SSD Easily Swappable with ExpressSlot MB204MP-B AIC Dock

[btarunr]

We've seen plenty of PCIe x16 add-on cards that put out four M.2 NVMe slots, but noting quite like this. The Icy Dock ExpressSlot MB204MP-B lets you swap in and out four M.2 NVMe drives. They can even be hot-swappable, provided your host platform and software support it. The technological part of the card is simple—there is no bridge chip, it relies on the host's PCIe lane bifurcation to turn a x16 slot to four M.2 slots with x4 wiring, each. The four drives have their own link/activity LED. A 50 mm lateral blower fan ventilates the four drives. Much of the innovation is in the way the drives can be installed and swapped or even hot-swapped. Intel VROC or AMD RAID technologies on platforms such as Xeon W "Sapphire Rapids" and Ryzen Threadripper 7000-series, should also lend RAID features.

Each of the four M.2 slots comes in contact with a caddy. This aluminium caddy lets you place an M.2 Gen 5 (or older) SSD, with sizes of up to M.2-2280. You're supposed to place a bare drive, as a thermal pad transfers heat from the drive to the caddy's body, which doubles up as a heatsink, under the airflow of the dock's lateral airflow fan. The dock includes four caddies, but you can buy more separately from the company. Icy Dock innovated a mechanism with which the caddy simply slots into the dock, and is elected at the flip of a spring-loaded lever. The dock requires a 6-pin PCIe power connection, so it has 150 W of power budget for the four Gen 5 SSDs. The company didn't reveal pricing.



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[Chaitanya]

Thats neat but unfortunately a lot of WS boards as well dont come with needed PCI-e Slots for add-in cards.

 

[Sarajiel]

That's quite an odd product.
People who actually want to (hot or cold) swap four M.2s at a time typically don't want to open their cases and fiddle inside, especially if your workstation is mounted inside a rack. Even on rails, it can be quite tedious to excess PCIe cards. It would be more useful, if the M.2s were accessible via the slot cover in the back, but that would be quite expensive to implement for four M.2s, I'd assume. Solutions that do this for single M.2s already exist, but are also horrendously expensive. Removable drive bays for the front already exist as well, but typically require the use of an HBA.

 

[unwind-protect]

You close your case?

LGTM, but if I go hotswap NVME I'd go all the way with

https://www.amazon.com/ICY-DOCK-ToughArmor-Rugged-External/dp/B07B9HK4QG/ref=sr_1_1

 

[efikkan]

Hot-swappable M.2 SSDs - for when you suddenly need storage in the middle of a gaming session.

But in all seriousness, more M.2 docks are welcome, and if it wasn't for motherboards lacking PCIe slots this would be the proper way to mount M.2 SSDs. The new motherboards coming out now are ridiculous; the entire lower part is just a gigant metal plate with 3-4 M.2 slots underneath. While that may look fine, it dissipates heat very poorly and leads to throttling SSDs, and will be mostly covered up by a graphics card anyways. Having a M.2 dock with a little airflow goes a long way, plus it's very easy to mount/dismount out vs. pulling apart half the computer to upgrade a SSD.

These plastic levers in this dock is clearly the weak spot. Some thumb screws would be better.

It is a missed opportunity not to have M.2 22110 slots, which would be appreciated by workstation users.

 

[InVasMani]

I can't imagine the fan is too effective at cooling a flat slab of metal basically.

 

[ypsylon]

This product is aimed at *nix/Linux or Windows Server and not ordinary users. For NVMe to be "hot-swappable" you need a OS which supports this feature and normal "PC Gaming" Winblows does not.

Sadly its not 22110 compatible and it has tiny annoying fan, which is totally unnecessary (on Gen4 model in particular) if you case has... you know airflow inside. At least Highpoint has two slot fan blowing through each of 8 M.2 slots. This tiny jet engine is only I think for cooling power delivery section.

 

[chrcoluk]

Hot-swappable M.2 SSDs - for when you suddenly need storage in the middle of a gaming session.

But in all seriousness, more M.2 docks are welcome, and if it wasn't for motherboards lacking PCIe slots this would be the proper way to mount M.2 SSDs. The new motherboards coming out now are ridiculous; the entire lower part is just a gigant metal plate with 3-4 M.2 slots underneath. While that may look fine, it dissipates heat very poorly and leads to throttling SSDs, and will be mostly covered up by a graphics card anyways. Having a M.2 dock with a little airflow goes a long way, plus it's very easy to mount/dismount out vs. pulling apart half the computer to upgrade a SSD.

These plastic levers in this dock is clearly the weak spot. Some thumb screws would be better.

It is a missed opportunity not to have M.2 22110 slots, which would be appreciated by workstation users.

The logical outcome is for sure addon cards providing M.2 connectivity, I suppose its a question of how long it will take the board vendors to figure it out, it took them several generations to even come up with such a basic thing as toolless installation.