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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 Samsung 990 EVO Gen 5 2TB NVMe 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 |
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, AJA, TxBench, PCMark 10, 3DMark, PassMark Performance Test, Final Fantasy XIV Gaming BenchMark, as well as true data testing. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.
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 PCIe 5.0 x2, using the NVMe 2.0 protocol and confirms that it is TRIM capable. With respect to temperatures, this was the average with our heatsink. We initially started testing without the heatsink, thinking that the lower performance threshold might provide for better cooling, without considering that this is the latest and greatest PCIe 5.0. Without a heatsink on the 990 Pro, it ran hot during testing… 70C hot in fact.
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.
ATTO performance hits highs of 4.74GB/s read and 3.52GB/s write are what we might expect for a DRAM-less SSD. Very encouraging as well is the fact that performance consistently rises as data sizes increase. We have always found this to be the trademark of a solid SSD.