PNY CS1311 SSD Review (120GB/480GB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

Finally, we wanted to see how performance was in a real world use when transferring large files to the SSDs. As we know, most TLC NAND based SSDs utilize a SLC caching algorithm to help improve performance, especially writes. This is needed due to the inherent slowness of TLC NAND. For this test we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of one SSD to this one and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.

During our real-world file transfer test we can see that while benchmarks display high sequential write speeds within their testing file size of just a few GB, when testing more than that these TLC SSDs will slow during transfers. For the most part, the 120GB model is second to last at an average write speed of 96MB/s, however, the 480GB model was able to maintain above 200MB/s during testing.

To build upon this test we also looked to see where the speeds leveled off to by using HD Tune Pro.

120GB Left/480GB Right

Again, we can see that once the initial SLC cache is saturated, write speeds will drop off significantly when conducting large file transfers. The 120GB model drops off to the mid 90MB/s range and the 480GB model drops to about 180MB/s.

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. One, idle power consumption. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive. Next we look at startup consumption. This tells you how much power the device needs during startup and while it is usually more important when looking at HDDs and enterprise class storage, it is still something worth quantifying. After that we did averaged out the active power consumption from the 30GB file transfer. Finally, we went through our power logs during testing and listed the maximum power draw.

The active rating by PNY is 2.2W and the idle rating is 0.17W. Active power ratings can be measured in many different ways, but looking at our results, it seems that the PNY CS1311s are well regulated. Overall, better than that of the Crucial BX200s we reviewed a few months ago and about on par with the PNY CS2211.

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the difference in idle power consumption between many of the current SSD options in the market. Again, idle accounts for the majority power draw of a drive and considering the use a drive in laptop, idle power consumption can greatly affect battery life, therefore we feel we should compare it in its own graph.

Idle power consumption is also very good, each model sips less than 60 milliwatts at idle, which is good news for those of us who could use a few more minutes of juice in our laptops.