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TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL
SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise storage media. For our Apricorn Aegis NVX 1TB Secure SSD testing today, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide.
For this Test Bench, there are no ‘bios’ specific performance tweaks whatsoever and the new ASUS Maximus Z790 Hero brought us to over 6GHz while the newest Kingston Renegade Fury DDR-5 memory rests comfortably at 7200MHz.
The components of this Test Bench are detailed below. All hardware is linked for purchase and product sales may be reached by a simple click on the individual item.
INTEL Z790 PCIE 5.0 COMPONENTS
| PC CHASSIS: | Corsair 5000D RGB White Tempered Glass Chassis |
| MOTHERBOARD: | ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 Hero Gen 5 |
| CPU: | Intel 13th Gen Core i9-13900K |
| CPU COOLER: | Corsair Hydro Series H150i Capellix White |
| POWER SUPPLY: | Corsair HX1000i Platinum Modular 80Plus |
| GRAPHICS: | ZOTAC GeForce RTX 3080 Trinity White |
| MEMORY: | Kingston Renegade Fury RGB DDR5-7200 32GB |
| STORAGE: | Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus Gen 4 4TB NVMe SSD |
| KEYBOARD: | Corsair K70 PRO RGB Optical Mechanical Gaming |
| MOUSE: | Corsair M65 RGB Elite FPS Gaming |
| MONITOR: | Samsung 34? 1440p WQHD Ultrawide Gaming |
A WORD ABOUT PERFORMANCE AND BUILDS
As can be seen above, we have just upgraded from a 12th Gen Intel Z690 Alder Lake system to a 13th Gen Z790 Raptor Lake build where we saw the chipset move comfortably into PCIe 5.0. This alone may cause a performance increase in testing which we will identify in our comparison charts until there are enough Gen 5 reviews to move them to their own chart. Our view is simply that we want to provide the reader with the best possible performance and we welcome all to refer back to specific reports in order to identify the system in use should they desire. Logically, we simply haven’t the time to retest hundreds of SSDs every time we move up to a new platform. Thank you for understanding.
CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 8.17.8 X64
Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.
Crystal DiskInfo validates that our SSD is running in UASP (NVM Express) mode, using the NVMe 1.3 protocol and confirms that it is TRIM capable. We can confirm that there were no heat concerns whatsoever with this SSD and the mas it reached was as shown here.
ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.
The Apricorn Aegis NVX 1TB Secure SSD achieved highs of 1012MB/s read and 980MB/s write in ATTO which is a very good start. It is also great to see gradual and steady speed increases when the data size is increased. We have always found this to be a positive trait of a good SSD.