Mushkin Reactor SSD Review (1TB) – High Value High Capacity SSDs Become the Norm

CRYSTAL DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.0 X64

Crystal Disk Benchmark is used to measure read and write performance through sampling of random data which is, for the most part, incompressible. Performance is virtually identical, regardless of data sample so we have included only that using random data samples.

In Crystal Disk Mark the Reactor was able to achieve maximum sequential performance of 520.4MB/s read and 455.0MB/s write. On the 4K section we can see a high of 30.48MB/s for read and 114.0MB/s for write.

AS SSD BENCHMARK VER 1.7

The toughest benchmark available for solid state drives is AS SSD as it relies solely on incompressible data samples when testing performance.  For the most part, AS SSD tests can be considered the ‘worst case scenario’ in obtaining data transfer speeds and many enthusiasts like AS SSD for their needs. Transfer speeds are displayed on the left with IOPS results on the right.

In AS SSD it hit an overall score of 971. Sequential speeds hit 513.18MB/s for reads and 438.29MB/s write. 4K speeds reach 28.49MB/s for read and 96.75MB/s for write. Furthermore, the drive reached 70,933 read IOPS and 72,817 write IOPS. Access times are both low at around 0.040ms.

To complement this, the AS SSD Copy Bench presents us with transfer speeds for different file types. The 1TB Reactor reached a high of 454.28MB/s for the ISO test. For its lowest value, it reached 303.71MB/s on the Program test. These results are similar to drives built with the same controller.

ANVIL STORAGE UTILITIES PROFESSIONAL

Anvil’s Storage Utilities (ASU) are the most complete test bed available for the solid state drive today.  The benchmark displays test results for, not only throughput but also, IOPS and Disk Access Times.  Not only does it have a preset SSD benchmark, but also, it has included such things as endurance testing and threaded I/O read, write and mixed tests, all of which are very simple to understand and use in our benchmark testing.

In Anvil Storage Utilities the max sequential read reaches 518.09MB/s and sequential write comes in at 434.08MB/s.  4K speeds prove similar to the other benchmarks, 28.94MB/s for read and 104.95MB/s for write. Testing with compressible and incompressible data has presented no issue for this drive so far and there has been consistent performance across all tests.

PCMARK VANTAGE X64 HDD SUITE

The SSD Review uses benchmark software called PCMark Vantage x64 HDD Suite to create testing scenarios that might be used in the typical user experience. There are eight tests in all and the tests performed record the speed of data movement in MB/s to which they are then given a numerical score after all of the tests are complete. The simulations are as follows:

• Windows Defender In Use
• Streaming Data from storage in games such as Alan Wake which allows for massive worlds and riveting non-stop action
• Importing digital photos into Windows Photo Gallery
• Starting the Vista Operating System
• Home Video editing with Movie Maker which can be very time consuming
• Media Center which can handle video recording, time shifting and streaming from Windows media center to an extender such as Xbox
  
• Cataloging a music library
• Starting applications

PCMARK VANTAGE RESULTS

The Mushkin Reactor 1TB SSD achieved a Total Score of 76,104 points. The highest transfer speed of 435.46MB/s was recorded during the “Windows Vista Startup” benchmark. The lowest of 275.67MB/s was recorded during the “application loading” benchmark, which isn’t surprising when you compare this result to the AS SSD copy benchmarks from earlier. Overall, while it is not the highest performing drive in PCMark Vantage testing, 76K is still a great mark and is very competitive against other 1TB drives.