Thought I'd chip in on the external SSD discussion.

M2 Max here 2TB and 96GB ram.

Heavy After Effects user in my day job - writing 150TB+ per year to scratch disc.

I've been using a couple of Acasis external TB enclosures with Samsung and Lexar SSDs for a couple of years, really fast - around 1980Mb/sec write and 2800Mb/sec read.

They also report their temps and wear correctly to Drive DX and iStat menus which is a bonus.

I have the models with and without a fan. The non fan version gets warm but I've never been close to the max temps of the SSD even under heavy use.

Acasis also have a TB5 enclosure that supports the new M4s.

https://www.acasis.com/collections/a...-thunderbolt-5

M2 max has been very solid but I do max it out in Ableton on mixes chains etc - Single core speed on M4s is significantly faster so keeping a jealous eye on them