Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe SSD Review (480GB) – Wicked 2GB/s Performance at a Great Price

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

If we look at whats on the market and not EOL right now for the consumer, Mushkin is positioned very well with their Scorpion Deluxe PCIe family.  Considering that the KingSpec is definitely not a consumer focused SSD, the Scorpion Deluxe enters as the top consumer solution available, just as the OCZ Revo 3×2 had been for so long.  The only cog in that wheel is the soon to be released Vector PCIe which truly isn’t competition at all as it is a dual controller solution capable of 1GB/s read and write performance.  The Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe retains speeds above 1GB/s in steady state enterprise workloads while ATTO results display 2.1GB/s readand 1.9GB/s write performance.

One might think that Mushkin would be looking at a premium for such power, however, the 240GB version can be found at a mere $559.  Having said that, availability isn’t peak just yet and we had to hunt to find that price.  We don’t think that anything else is remotely close to giving you that performance for the value.  It’s like paying $139 for every 500MB/s of speed.  Although we couldn’t find pricing anywhere, we are also certain that the 2TB capacity will have its place as well.

Having said that,  compatibility issues were experienced with two benchmark programs, just as it was with the KingSpec SSD which, at least we feel, were overcome with first hand transfer speed testing and some pretty harsh enterprise scenarios.  The transfer of 29 HD videos was completed in 2.5 seconds per and 45 OS ISO files took just over a second per.  Looking at enterprise testing, the Scorpion Deluxe leveled out at just above 1.9GB/s read and 1.6GB/s write in steady state and proved its worth when it hit the 103K IOPS mark for the first time. We don’t have to mention that the Scorpion Deluxe was pushed harder than what 99% of buyers would ever dream of introducing for a workload and, only then did it produced its best IOPS.

And then comes the head to head comparison between the three PCIe SSDs.  We are not quite sure why todays PCIe solutions are getting much less than the former Revo 3×2, but we would have thought that 200K IOPS would be the standard.  The Revo 3×2 owned that score and both others couldn’t come even remotely close.  Other than that point result alone, the Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe was the easy favorite over the Revo 3×2 and so it should be, it its heart and soul is quad LSI SandForce eight channel 6Gbps processors.  Actually, when we look at it from that angle, the KingSpec should have eaten both alive as it is technically a dual quad eight channel 6Gbps solution.

The last concern we had was the appearance of the sample received.  We understand that the plain black exterior shell serves the main purpose of dissipating heat and, once in the system, it’s out of sight where good looks don’t mean a thing.  That never stopped our imagination though and , as you can see, a few cosmetic adjustments were made for this sample that will remain in our new Test Bench for…extended testing.   Normally, we wouldn’t do so without mass availability being in place but, considering value, 3 year warranty, plug and play features and performance over 2GB/s the Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe SSD is deserving of our Editor’s Choice recognition.

Watch for Scorpion Deluxe Pricing at Amazon.