I’ve been reading up on a lot of computer hardware recently in preparation for building my new system. Although I don’t have the specifics pinned down yet, it will likely be based on an Intel Core i7 860 processor running on a P55-based motherboard with 8 GiB of DDR3 RAM. In this process, I have found a growing annoyance inside of me towards reviewers that omit simple, yet powerful, information from their reviews.

I’m talking about integrated circuits. In the case of an external hard drive enclosure, sure, the aesthetics etc. are all very important. But at the core, performance will be derived almost entirely from the single little chip on the PCB that provides the hard drive interface on one side, and the USB/eSATA/FireWire interface on the other. There are many manufacturers of these chips, each with many different versions. Give me the manufacturer and product number, and I can look up all of the information I need, including specific features supported by the chips, quality comparisons, re-programmability, etc. Also, I can compare different enclosures from different manufacturers — if they both use the same chip, I’m going to go with the one that looks better; if they use different chips, how can I know which one is really better?