External portable drives are increasingly becoming indispensable devices for storing and transferring large amounts of data. Compact, convenient, fast, versatile SSDs seem to leave no chance for hard drives that were actively used for similar tasks even in this category. The available range of flash drives is very wide, and most of them hardly have any special features. But some of them deserve additional attention. Today we review the ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000, a portable SSD in a spectacularly durable case with additional protection and cooling of the internal drive.
ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000
External portable drives are not usually a core business for a well-known Taiwanese manufacturer, but given that this is not the first time ASUS has paid attention to external SSDs, this product category is receiving special attention. Back in 2019, the company began experimenting with devices of this class, offering ROG Strix Arion external pockets for M.2 drives, and then ready-made solutions based on them.
This time, the developers have decided to support the TUF Guming military gaming line by offering ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 drives. However, the potential series so far includes only one 1TB model.
The drive is connected via the USB 3.2 Gen 2 bus (10 GB/s). In this case, the read/write speed can reach ~1050 MB/s. Of course, backward compatibility with previous generations of USB ports is provided, but in this case, the SSD performance will be limited by the interface bandwidth.
The ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 has a fairly robust aluminum alloy case that protects the drive from mechanical damage. The developers declare compliance with MIL-STD-810H standards, as well as IP68, which provides additional protection against water and dust.
The overall dimensions of ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 are 125×54×13 mm and weigh 157 g. The massiveness of the case was used by engineers for additional cooling of the internal SSD. The drive is in contact with the walls of the device through a thermal pad, which allows for very efficient heat dissipation.
The drive comes in a rather large cardboard box. Inside, in addition to the SSD itself, there is also a set of paper documentation and a Type-C to Type-C connection cable about 40 cm long. An additional Type-C to Type-A cable would have been nice to add some versatility and expand the possibilities of use.
Obviously, the developers did not aim to offer the most compact portable drive, so even in the external design of ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 there is no attempt to hide the overall dimensions of the device.
The weight of the metal bar is felt in the hand, while the good processing and assembly of the case elements add a certain effect of a simple, high-quality thing. ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 has a shape with a certain asymmetry. The upper part has an “eyelet” for an additional strap. The lower part has a molded TUF Gaming series logo.
On the reverse side there is a sticker with basic technical information. From this side, you can also see that the case design is collapsible, and the additional cover is attached with four screws. However, two of them are covered with a sticker, so the manufacturer does not provide for the user to disassemble the drive independently. This is not surprising, given that ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 is offered as a ready-made solution.
Judging by the overall dimensions of the portable drive, it’s easy to guess that the case is initially equipped with a 1TB M.2 2280 drive. The SSD model itself is not important. Obviously, this is an M.2 drive with a PCI-E interface, which easily provides the maximum data transfer rate of 1050 MB/s, which is declared for the ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000.
According to the available information, this case uses M.2 PCI-E 3.0 based on the Phison PS5013-E13 controller and 3D TLC flash chips.
There is a USB Type-C connector on the bottom end. As we noted, the bundled cable is 40 cm long, which may be excessive when connecting the drive to a laptop, but in the case of desktops, the increased length may be appropriate, especially when the USB Type-C 3.2 Gen 2 high-speed port is located on the motherboard interface panel and not on the case wall.
The drive activity indicator is located closer to the opposite side of the top panel. A small white LED is constantly lit when connected and pulsates when the SSD is directly accessed.
ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 is compatible with a wide range of platforms. The drive can be used with mobile devices, laptops, desktop systems, and gaming consoles. An additional high-speed drive can be useful for a variety of tasks.
To monitor the status of an external SSD, the manufacturer recommends using the TUF SSD Dashboard utility. The application allows you to check the S.M.A.R.T. parameters, operating time, current drive wear, and other indicators. In addition, there is a Secure Erase option to completely wipe the drive.
A useful bonus for ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 owners can be a license for the backup utility NTI Backup Now EZ, which currently costs $30 separately. The program allows you to conveniently customize the algorithms and frequency of saving the necessary data. If necessary, you can also use data encryption and compression.
Performance
Given the drive’s configuration and connection interface, even before we started practical tests of the portable SSD’s capabilities, we had no doubt that ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 would demonstrate the declared performance in synthetics. Even the basic M.2 PCI-E 3.0 x4 is capable of providing much higher speeds, so the only limiting factor here will be the USB 3.2 Gen 2 interface (10 GB/s).
The test platform may have a certain influence on the results. When testing the drive, we used a laptop ROG Zephyrus M16 2023.
Initial CrystalDiskMark measurements show that the drive can achieve peak transfer rates of 1,050 MB/s for reads and 990 MB/s for writes.
AS SSD Benchmark and Anvil’s Storage Utilities are a bit more modest in their estimates of peak values – 850-950 MB/s.
ATTO Disk Benchmark records a maximum of 1,000 MB/s read and 940 MB/s write, and the drive achieves these speeds when transferring blocks of 512 KB or more.
The results of the Data Drive Benchmark sub-test from PCMark 10 are also fairly typical for portable drives in this class.
It is more interesting to observe how ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 behaves during a practical task, namely copying video fragments with a total capacity of 100 GB from the laptop system disk to a portable drive.
According to the indicators, the actual write speed after starting and storing a third of the files was 640 MB/s.
And what’s more, the drive maintained this pace while writing all 100 GB. To achieve such performance, SLC caching is obviously used, and the capacity of such a buffer is one third of the free space on the SSD. These are very good conditions for a portable drive, especially if the main model of using such a device involves frequent storage of large files.
Heating
We also checked the temperature operation of the ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000. Despite the fact that the internal SSD is not subjected to the maximum load when connected via USB, additional cooling will not be superfluous, given the limited internal space of the drive. In this case, the developers made the most of the design feature of the relatively massive aluminum alloy case.
Through a large thermal pad, the case panel is in direct contact with the M.2 storage elements, removing heat from the controller and flash memory chips. As a result, the entire case structure is involved as a heat sink.
When the drive is at rest, CrystalDiskInfo detects that the ASUS TUF Gaming AS1000 heats up to 31°C.
After an intensive data writing load, the temperature rose only to 37°C. Here, we could assume that the utility’s interpretation of the SSD’s internal parameters was not entirely correct, but the drive case was indeed slightly warm to the touch. And this is an actual indicator that the implemented idea with the heatsink works.
Price
ASUS TUF GAMING AS1000 1TB is already on sale in Ukraine. The current retail price of the drive is 4329 UAH. However, despite the recent announcement of the device, you can already find more affordable promotional offers.
In case you already have an M.2 drive that would be nice to convert into a portable SSD, the manufacturer offers an identical USB pocket – Asus TUF Gaming A1. This aluminum box allows the use of M.2 drives with PCI-E/SATA interfaces with a capacity of up to 2 TB. The current price of the pocket is about 2000 UAH.
Loading comments …