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TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL
Our analysis today will be conducted with our Asus Z77 Premium Test Bench. Clicking on any pictures or benchmarks will bring up a more easily viewable high resolution image.
In testing, our main objective is to obtain results as pure and as accurate as possible and we want to ensure that no anomalies slip through. Simply put, we want to provide you with the absolute best results the tested hardware can provide. Repetition in testing is standard and, if necessary, we may conduct specific tests in Windows 7 ‘safe mode’ to ensure the OS has little to no influence on the end result.
In order to validate and confirm our findings, testing is supported by industry accepted benchmark programs. All results are displayed through capture of the actual benchmark for better understanding of the testing process by the reader.
We would like to thank ASUS (P8Z77-V Premium
), Intel (Core i7-3770K), Crucial (Ballistix), Corsair (H100) and Be Quiet (PSU/Fans) for supporting the build of our Z77 Premium Test Bench. In addition, we would also like to thank HighPoint for their contribution of the RocketStor 5322, RocketRAID 2711 and their External Mini-SAS to Esata cabling. Through this configuration we are able to benchmark all notebook and mSATA SSDs, whereby achieving identical performance as a direct system connection, yet we simply hot swap from the external storage dock.
BENCHMARK SOFTWARE
The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark Vantage. We rely on these as they each have a way of supporting one another yet, at the same time, adding a new performance benchmark to the total picture. Much of the software is free and can be downloaded simply by clicking on the linked title.
Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, ‘power on’ information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the SSD is capable of TRIM as it is not greyed out as with AAM.
While looking at the photo of the opened unit and seeing the thermal pads I started thinking it might be interesting to do temperature measurements on SSDs to see just how hot they can run. Case surface temp checks would give an overall surface reading but it would be neat to see realtime color thermal imaging (via a Fluke thermal imager handgun or equivalent). You’d then be able to see which chips ran hotter than the others. It would solve the question of what generates the most heat, reads or writes? Sequential or random? Large or 4K? RAID 0 or RAID 5? Are there operations that can generate enough heat to cause damage or shorten the lifespan of the unit? Just my $.02 worth (before taxes).
Thanks you for the great review I like the way you go through the whole details of each SSD you review. This is an amazing Solid States Drive, fast like an blink of an eye. works great in my Macbook Pro 2012, Just one thing I have noticed, it when I leave my MBP and it goes in sleep and I come back and wake it up, it takes 20-30 delay, couldn’t find a solution for it, except shutting it down and turn it on again because it takes 12 Sec to boot up.