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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 SSDs. For consumer SSDs, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with a fresh drive so, not only can we verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an SSD that is top-notch. We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.
SYSTEM COMPONENTS
This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to those who jumped in specifically to help the cause. Key contributors to this build are our friends at ASRock for the motherboard and CPU and be quiet! for the PSU and cooling fans. Also, a big thank you to Thermaltake for the case and Kingston for the RAM. We have detailed all components in the table below and they are all linked should you wish to make a duplicate of our system as so many seem to do, or check out the price of any single component. As always, we appreciate your support in any purchase through our links!
| PC CHASSIS: | Thermaltake Core V51 |
| MOTHERBOARD: | ASRock Z97 Extreme6 |
| CPU: | Intel Core i5-4670K |
| CPU COOLER: | Corsair H75 |
| POWER SUPPLY: | be quiet! Dark Power Pro 10 850W |
| SYSTEM COOLING: | be quiet! Silent Wings 2 |
| MEMORY: | Kingston HyperX Beast 2400Mhz |
| STORAGE: | Samsung 850 Pro |
| IRST DRIVER: | 13.1.0.1058 |
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, TRIMcheck, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, , PCMark Vantage, and PCMark 8. We prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.
Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, to the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.
Crystal Disk Info shows us that on top of TRIM and NCQ, the Premier SP550 also supports DevSleep. There is also a working temperature sensor and a bunch of other helpful S.M.A.R.T. attributes.
We’ve covered TRIMcheck in the past. It is a great tool that easily lets us see if TRIM is actually functioning on a SSD volume in your system.
After testing, we can see that TRIM is working.
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.
Our first look at performance is a positive one, with ATTO showing up to 560MB/s read and 512MB/s write speeds. The performance improvement from small to large file sizes is very solid.
80MB/s write on TLC area ?
Thats really really bad. That means 120GB model would only achieve 40MB/s at best.
Looks like hynix TLC isn’t really on par with micron or toshiba flash.
That fourth ‘Performance’ star is more than a little bit generous.
To be fair, look how well it does in PCMark 8. Sure, large transfers aren’t great past the cache buffer and are slower than the Samsung EVO, but in PCMark it is on par with it. In most consumer workloads you have short bursts of writes. For the given use and market segment, the performance, while slower than the competition in large write transfers, is still decent.
I wounder how endurance fairs, given this clearly isn’t the best TLC out there.
Well, we are guaranteed what the specs state. The 120GB and 240GB models are rated for up to 90TBW, the 480GB is
rated for up to 180TBW and the 960GB model is rated up
to 360TBW. If it wears before then within 3 years one can RMA.
Hello, I have been using this drive about 1 month, I found out that Reallocation event count RAW value is 7 from the first day and drive temperature is around 36C- 42C. Is that normal?
What are the top 5 consumer ssds for large file transfers in your opinion?
Why type of drive are you looking for? PCIe, SATA, M.2, etc?
SATA. I have an old motherboard. M3a78pro
Your only going to get around 200 MB on that MB-
Restricted by it’s 3Gb Sata ports.
Modern MB have 6Gb ports that max out around 500 MB.
But in answer to your question
Samsung 850 pro.
Sandisk extreme pro.
Tanks for the suggestions. I have a Asus g74sx laptop also. I know the Samsung pro and sandisk pro are good but I am looking for the 5 best ssds at large transfers not just the top two. So I can get the best deal on price.
Well, there are still many mainstream drives that can do that, you don’t need to buy the best of the best. The BX 100 and Samsung 850 EVO can sustain write speeds and are usually popular choices. Just stay away from the dirt cheap value segment, especially TLC if it isn’t 3D.
Hi Mike, Forgot to mention in earlier post-Capacity of the drive plays
a big part in the write speed.
Example-If you wanted only a 120/128GB size then your almost
totally limited to Samsung pro.
If your considering 480/512GB then most MLC drives will be fine.
Personally I will only buy drives where the flash has been cut and
binned by the manufacturer-So that cuts out the likes of A-Data
and Kingston-This is only personal preferance-Remembering
that this was what gave OCZ a 60% failure rate on some of their
drives.
All of those qualifiers don’t get reflected in that Performance star rating. Perhaps an additional category like ‘Price:Performance Within the Consumer Value Level Peer Group’ is needed.
I have been thinking about this and will consider this highly for our future reviews. Thanks for the suggestion!
Smaller drives may not need fast transfer speeds ( OS ) 120gb 240gb ,but the larger drives are used for ( backup, storage, large transfers ) 480gb 960gb. these larger drives need more write speed after the buffer.
I agree completely.
Good thing you guys test these ssds for us consumers. thanks for the reviews! Some or maybe more than it should be of these new ssds are slow. 80 mbs transfer speed for a 30gb file I think that’s terrible, when these ssds are advertised for 560 read / 510 write max. hdds are faster than that. If not for the slc caching and the dram buffer how slow would this new nand really be. These new controllers with their slc caching and there dram buffers paired
with inferior nand hide their true speed and give some new ssds a bad name. I know ssds are all about access and read speeds , but come on cant we get decent transfer speeds on large files on sata? Why if we want decent transfer speeds we now have to have a pci ssd? And average users do transfer large files every now and then.
Please change: “Overall, there are 8 NAND packages on our 240GB model with room for another 8. The NAND is supplied by SK Hynix. Each package is 32GB in capacity for a total RAW NAND capacity of 256GB. Since the usable capacity is 240GB, we can see that it is over provisioned by ~7%. The total usable capacity once formatted in our system is 223GB.”
To:
“Overall, there are 8 NAND packages on our 240GB model with room for another 8. The NAND is supplied by SK Hynix. Each package is 32GiB in capacity for a total RAW NAND capacity of 256GiB. Since the usable capacity is 240GB, we can see that it is over provisioned by ~7%. The total usable capacity once formatted in our system is 223GiB.” Just because Windows does not know what is the differenz between Gigabyte and,Gibibyte, not every reviewer needs to repeat that mistake.
The initial statement is correct. This is a value oriented consumer drive. Utilizing GiB that the consumer has no understanding of is pointless. There is no mistake in the statement made.
If you are not using your laptop for gaming our any thing that intensive like rendering these ssds will do the high end ssds are costly
I beg to differ, at least for the gaming part.
This seems like a nice little SSD for entry-level SSD game loading speeds. And since games don’t write much, save for installation and updating/patching, the slow-ish writes won’t matter as there won’t be “frequent” Gigabytes of writes for games.
Also, if you don’t mind, you could use some punctuation in your sentences. I had to read that several times to get it.
And before you say it i live out in out back Queensland and a lot people out here are cattle people so there funds are restricted so they dont have the money for they high end stuff but they want something that works and will do the job ssds are more responsive faster but the high end ones can be a bit costly for what they want them for
And that is why people read SSD Review.
So we can get good value for our money.
In USA Crucial seems to be the go to drive for value-but here in Aus(Perth) they
tend to be overpriced in comparison.
I find Sandisk and Transcend 370 to be the best value drives here.
samsung evo prices have come down https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Samsung-250GB-850-EVO-Series-Solid-State-Drive-SSD-2-5-SATA-III-540MB-s-Laptop-/331167062761?hash=item4d1b185ae9:g:amMAAOSwBLlVCh1I they seem to be pretty good ssds
there read write ? are good tend to use them for customer laptops
https://www.facebook.com/pages/rimtechmob/339997936058525?fref=ts this is my work link
Why this (240GB sp550) does not on and is not properly detected on Lenovo T500 (p8600cpu) but runs fine on older hp nc6320 (coreduo 1,6 ddr2) and newer hp 6540b (i5, ddr3) ? Both with compatibilty and ahci setings ?
try cloning the drive, then swap, worked for me to get detection of unrecognized drives in many a machine in an enterprise environment. macrium reflect free – for clone
Just wanna put it out there.
MiniTool Partition Wizard works great too for migration. Its free.
Switched from kingston UV300 240gb drive to the adata SP550 becuase i felt the kingston had degraded overtime
big mistake this adata caps at 40mb/s write speeds whenever you write more than 16GB of data
and reads seem much much slower
it was cheaper so.. bleh time to get a real fast drive
So far, I’ve been using the Adata Premier SP550 SSD Review (240GB) for about 4 months (since Mar-2016), and things are good: My laptop bootup speed is up by about 3 times, to under 30 seconds! Worth the upgrade from HDD to SSD!
Only thing was the need to use a disk imaging software to copy the laptop OS & setup from the old HDD to the new SSD.
Hi guys, I just pick this SSD for a good price, but after few review I’m a bit concern about the performance of this drive, is still new, I will install it in a couple of days, should go fo a new one? o better product?, I’m using it mainly for documents such word, excel, pds, and some java development in netbeans, show I be worry or the drive is good for my work? thanks to all