Interior Impressions

Taking apart the Consus M is a relatively straightforward affair. One simply has to unscrew four screws on the back of the unit and then gently pry the entire metal back off of the plastic case. When you do get the metal back plate off you will be amazed at how spare the insides are. You basically have the PCB, a bunch of capacitors, the controller chip and the lone SATA power / data connector.


The capacitors which are used on the Consus M are Changzhou Huawei Electronics Co capacitors. While very little is known about “Chang” capacitors (which can be considered both a good thing as no one is complaining about them or bad thing because no one is raving about them either) other than the fact that they have been in business since 1987 and they make over 4 billion aluminum electrolytic capacitors every year. While this sounds like a lot (and it is) it only places them in the 53rd place for Chinese Electronic Components top 100! In any case, the caps used on the Consus M are rated for 105°C which is much more than necessary but is always nice to see.


The brain of this unit is the Sunplus SPIF215A-HF021controller chip. This chip is a bridge controller chip which acts as the couples a USB high-speed device port and a SATA 1.5G host port together into one single chip controller. This chipset is the same chip used in the Vantec NexStar 3, Antec MX-1 and numerous other single drive enclosures. It is considered by many (on various forums) to be one of the best performing chips on the market right now.