Vantec has added another member to the NexStar 360 lineup. The 3i boasts some things that we have not seen from Vantec in their many ages in the industry. In the past year or so we have seen motherboards feature energy efficiency, now we have it in hard drive enclosures. The 3i has an integrated controller that can regulate power to the drive resulting in less power consumption, less noise and longer drive life. Adding the real reason why we buy hard drive enclosures, which is for data storage, the new Vantec housing may be worth taking a look at.
Testing and results
We believe that it isn’t important to show performance number for USB connected devices as they can only go as fast as the port allows it to go. But we know readers like charts and numbers, so we put the 3i up against some of the unit we have around the lab using HD Tune.
| Motherboard |
ASUS P5E3 |
|
Processor |
Intel Core2Duo e8400 |
|
Ram |
OCZ DDR3 14400 |
|
Video |
Zotac 8800GTX |
|
HDD |
Seagate 7200.8 120g SATA |
|
Power Supply |
Tagan BZ700 |
|
OS |
Microsoft Vista Ultimate |
|
Cooling |
Thermalright Ultra 120 |
|
Case |
Open air |
Results
Like we stated above, the 3i was right in the middle of the pack of other enclosures.
