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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 this drive features SMART attributes and supports TRIM as well as NCQ. The firmware revision we are testing on today is CS121122. While the temperature reads as 30C, it actually is a false reading.
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 running this test we can see that TRIM is indeed functioning.
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.
120GB
480GB
ATTO returns with solid results as the both the sequential read and write results exceed the listed specifications. We see read results reaching up to 566 MB/s and write results reaching up to 535 MB/s. Also, note the very rapid increase in the performance curve. It is able to reach over 500MB/s by the 16KB file size, which is very nice to see.
Thats a pretty good price for a 240G version. Too bad its for the states 🙂
But 15nm TLC is worrying for me personally. Its bad enough we went sub 20nm, let alone 15nm. But hey, everything for that price/gb 🙂
If you’re in the UK, here it is on Newegg <3 — and it's only £43 right now.
https://www.newegg.com/global/uk/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820178967
Thats a very good price. Do they ship outside of UK ?
It seems that the “entry level, value oriented” ox is itself being gored by a matador named PNY. Its offerings are the first that I have seen that seem to attempt to give features in line with their price point. That, my friends, is value.
I am not currently in the market for an SSD but I will be when Intel comes out with Generation 8 processors so I am following developments closely. I personally would go for the 2211 – pay more to get more – but the value is there in both of them.
I have a few PNY items and they are fine. I made two purchases last month and had awful problems ordering through their website but it was easy to get genuine human interface and complete the order by phone.
It seems that a lot of SSD manufacturers compete mainly against HDDs and not against each other. It seems that PNY is here to compete against both.
Jim
Hi Jim, we are sorry to hear you experienced issues with our website. Please e-mail offers@pnytechnologies.com with additional details so we can ensure this does not happen again in the future. Thank you.
The whole string was documented under the e-mail subject line “PNY Account will not accept my address”.
It all was satisfactorily resolved at the time, albeit with considerable effort on the part of your people and me.
I mentioned it here more as a disclosure/disclaimer.
Jim
A genuinely unbiased comment here. Don’t see those too often in the wild.
Mine failed in 6 months. Never again.
I received an RMA number but need to pay shipping to send the dead drive back to PNY. I sent two emails asking if I’ll get a refund and I have not received a reply.
I don’t know if I should waste any more money on this ‘thing’.
Wow that doesn’t sound too good.
I mailed it in, but no word (or refund) yet.
Did you RMA it to the factory? Or send it to store for refund?
Same here.
they mailed a replacement drive.
i have one thes drive for the last 6 months but the last two or so i have had nothing but issues with it. i dont think pny drives are very relible for there price.
What kind of issues?
I’ve had mine for possibly a year now and its been great. Never a problem.
I think the measured performance here is misleading, you don’t buy a SSD then marvel at how fast the empty drive is, it’s going to have stuff on it. As such results would be much more representative of actual real world situations if the drives were filled to around 20% capacity, in terms of a 120GB SSD that would be about the size of a OS install with drivers.
I bought two of the 240GB CS1311 drives and configured them in a RAID0. The drives cannot sustain their max speeds for very long. The drives slow down during large file transfers, so I assume the DRAM cache that is being used to buffer the slower TLC NAND and it chokes after a couple GB of sustained transfer. It does feel like false marketing to list the “cache” speeds and IOPS, but I guess you get what you pay for. I think that SSD reviews need to start benching larger workloads than 256MB and 1GB in the era of TLC NAND.
Also, after a week and a half one of the drives failed and died. I’m attempting RMA now…
what is the country of origin for PNY SSD? Thanks.
How about been able to see the reviews without eating a ton of carrots.
How about been able to see the reviews without having to eat a ton of carrots
Got 4 of these, there so cheap, in raid0 not bad…