OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD Review (480GB) – LSI SandForce Driven Once Again

OCZ was the first to introduce a PCIe SSD solution to the consumer with their original RevoDrive PCIe SSD way back in 2010, this updated by the RevoDrive X2 PCIe SSD the following June and the RevoDrive 3×2 a few months later. There was no question that OCZ had struck gold with the RevoDrive 3×2 PCIe SSD as it was capable of performance of 1.5GB/s read and 1.25GB/s write with up to 200,000K IOPS. At a consumer price, the RevoDrive 3×2 PCIe SSD eliminated the SATA bottleneck, while providing RAID performance without the hassle, introduced OCZ Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) 2.0 technology, and provided workstation design and performance at an affordable price.

As odd as it may seem, that was way back in 2011 and a ‘high performance’ contender never emerged in that market until Mushkin Scorpion availability in late 2012, followed by the Deluxe version we reviewed late last year.  The Scorpion Deluxe is capable of a wicked 2.1GB/s read and 1.9GB/s write with up to 107K IOPS but it had one problem; Mushkin could not keep up with availability.  We don’t quite know why but the high-end PCIe SSD market has gone unsatisfied for some time and, if the number of e-mails we received with respect to the availability Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe PCIe SSD is any indication, the market is hot for PCIe SSDs. It has become years of our thoughts that if manufacturers could market a product with a great price, monster speeds in the area of 2GB/s along with  ample availability, we may just have something.  Enter the new OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCI Express x8 SSD.

REVODRIVE 350 PCIe x8 SSD

Available shortly after posting of this report, the OCZ RevoDrive 350 PCIe SSD completes the transition of OCZ products to in-house Toshiba NAND flash, marking itself as OCZ’ workstation grade SSD solution.  It will be available in capacities of 240, 480 and 960GB with a 3 year warranty.     Performance of the new Revo 350 is variable as shown in this OCZ chart:

The RevoDrive 350 is a full-height, half-length PCI Express 2.0 x8 SSD that is 128-bit AES, SMART and TRIM compliant, and rated for 50GB/day host writes for 3 years.  Power specs list the 350 at 9.5W Idle and 14W active power consumption.

Check Out another independent Revo 350 PCIe Review at Technology X!

The OCZ RevoDrive 350 has an encouraging MSRP of $529.99 for a 240GB version, $829.99 for the 480 and $1299.99 for the 960 capacity.  Considering the Revo 350’s only true competitor is the Mushkin Scorpion Deluxe which is more expensive and seldom available, things look real good for this SSD. Check out Revo 350 Pricing!

Inside the RevoDrive 350 packaging, one will find only the RevoDrive itself and a mini-disk that contains a very detailed set of installation instructions, warranty information and a driver.  Through installation on two separate systems, the first required installation of the supplied driver, while the second did not which bewildered us just a bit.

 

 

The driver also comes with an executable that only need be clicked to keep things quick and easy.  Once installed, there is a 5 second delay in the boot sequence prior to system BIOS that accommodates for this SSDs ability to work as a boot drive.