AData S510 SATA 3 120GB SSD Review

After our SSD review of the AData S511 a few months back, we  knew there had to be a S510 in line for release with asynchronous memory as its host and we weren’t wrong.

Our SSD review today examines the AData S510 SATA 3 120GB SSD. On releasing the S511, AData has followed the lead of several ‘SandForce Driven’ manufacturers in an effort to provide consumers with selection in their SSD purchase.  This choice, for most consumers, is not as far off as one may expect.

THE PRICE vs. PERFORMANCE DILEMMA

Regardless of the flash memory in use, the SandForce SF-2281 controller is capable of equal read and write performance just over the 500MB/s mark.  If you are a typical consumer who does not expect to push your system, deciding on whether to choose an SSD with synchronous or asynchronous memory will prove to be a somewhat useless process as you will never see any visible difference between the drives. If you are purchasing a solid state drive for your business and you are work with incompressible data such as videos, photographs and music, however, you definitely want to understand the difference between the two.

The most easily understood explanation between ‘sync’ and ‘async’ NAND flash memory is simply that ‘sync’ performs better when the user has a specific task at hand (as described), whereas, SSDs containing ‘async’ NAND flash memory are…cheaper. They cost less. In comparing AData’s own S511 that we reviewed the S510 that we will look at today, the ONLY physical differences between the two are their name and the type of memory used.

In short, the S510 will be found at a better price whereas the S511 is higher performing in specific situations that the professional will need to consider.

S510 SSD SPECIFICATIONS

The S510 is a SATA 3 SSD (6Gbps) and available in capacities of 60 and 120GB.  The 120GB version is capable of performance of 550MB/s read and 500MB/s write with 85,000 IOPS at 4k random write disk transfer.  In an effort to make sure all is very clear, AData has published the performance results of the S510 (while testing with incompressible data) which reduces the overall speed to 200MB/s read and 140MB/s write.

Kudos to AData for their openness and, whether displayed by the SSD manufacturer or not, most ‘async’ housed SSDs will have similar performance with incompressible data.The S510 comes with a limited 3 year warranty as well as a desktop 2.5″ to 3.5″ adapter and free migration software.  The software is a retail copy of Acronis True Image and the authorization code found on the back of the SSD itself must be used to validate the installation.

S510 PHYSICAL COMPOSITION

The main components of the the S510 are the green printed circuit board, SATA 3 interface that connects to your computer, the SF-2281 processor and 16 pieces of Micron 25nm 8GB asynchronous NAND flash memory of which we see eight pieces on each side of the PCB.  The actual total of the NAND is 128GB (16×8), however, one memory module (8GB) is necessary for SandForce firmware and over provisioning needs. Formatting reduces the end user capacity further yet to 112GB.