BIOSTAR G330 SSD Review (256GB)

BIOSTAR isn’t the first name to come to mind when thinking about SSDs. Even for us, we didn’t even recall ever seeing a BIOSTAR SSD until today. They aren’t entirely new to the game, however. Last year at about this time, they released their first SSD, the G300. Utilizing SMI’s popular 2256 controller at the time, it put out some decent performance numbers on paper. Furthermore, they released a Marvell powered M.2 SSD back in March. Sadly, we hadn’t put those drives to the test, but that brings us to today’s topic of discussion. BIOSTAR has sent us their latest replacement for the G300, the G330.

The BIOSTAR G330 is stated to be for gamers. It features an “exclusive design concept of U.F.O.” and “6-U Design.” The “U.F.O.” stands for Unique Design, Flexibility, and Optimized Performance. From the G330’s page on BIOSTAR’s website, this essentially means that it is uniquely designed to be attractive to the end user, it has the flexibility to deal with high demand use, and is “optimized for gaming and 3D video content” and that its components “offer 2 times faster data transfer rate than that of traditional SSD.” The “6-U” stands for Ultra-fast, Ultra-Stable, Ultra Entry-saving, Ultra Durable, Ultra-premium, and Ultra-slim. Now, we’re not entirely sure how much we believe what is stated, or even how accurate my translation was of that since it read like it was very broken English, but we can reasonably conclude that this drive should perform well. But, is that really the case? Read on and find out.

SPECIFICATIONS, PRICING, AND AVAILABILITY

The BIOSTAR G330 is a SATA 6Gb/s SSD that comes in a 2.5″ form factor with a 6.8mm height, which makes it slightly thinner than standard 2.5″ 7mm SSDs. It is rated for read speeds of up to 565MB/s and write speeds of up to 515MB/s. It is available in capacities of 128GB ($59), 256GB ($99), and 512GB ($169). As for other specifications, BIOSTAR’s website doesn’t give us much else besides the operating temperature of 0-70C and that it is compatible with Windows, Linux, and Mac. There is no endurance rating and it lacks an SSD dashboard software, but it does come with a 3-year warranty.

PACKAGING AND COMPONENTS

The packaging for the BIOSTAR G330 is very stylish with its use of a checkered flag and black and red colors. On the front is a preview of the drive as well as the information on the model, capacity, interface, and warranty length. On the backside, it has a space theme with purple rather than red. There it lists the weight of 56g, size, storage media type, operating voltage, as well as other specs we have gone over.

Out of the package, we can see that the BIOSTAR G330 has an attractive matte black design with the company logo on the top. There is a sticker on the backside with the SKU #s and capacity listed as well as the interface and other compliances it follows. the company branding logo on a very attractive red casing.

At the heart of the G330 is an SMI 2258 controller along with a SK Hynix DRAM cache, an update from the SMI 2256 its predecessor had. Furthermore, it now features Micron’s latest 3D TLC NAND. As you can see from the PCB layout, there are only three NAND packages.