Hi everyone, this time we are reviewing a Solid State Drive(SSD), more specifically a M.2 SATA SSD from Kingston. The M.2 slot is now included in the latest motherboards and has a minimum bandwidth of up to 10 Gb/s. These types of SSDs are new in the market and perfect for system builders having very low footprint. The SSD supports TRIM, has shock resistant chips with lower power consumption, supports SMART and is backed by 3 years of warranty.

Here is the link to the product(KINGSTON official site) : Kingston SM2280S3 120 GB M.2 SATA SSD

Unboxing and packaging

The packaging is simple and is transparent so that you can check the exact model before buying:

There is a tamper proof seal and on the back, there are the serial numbers and place of manufacture information.

Packaging was okay. A shock proof membrane was given which holds the SSD in place and protects it from shock. Would have been happier if the package was a bit more appealing.

Component analysis

The label is neat and important information is printed here.

The main controller used is a PHISON PS3108 S8 chip.

A Nanya 2 Gb(256 MB) RAM chip is used for the buffer memory.

4 x Kingston FA32B08UCT1-BC ICs are used for providing the storage support. Each chip is 32 GB in size and combining 4 of them gives a total memory of 4*32 = 128 GB.

So that is it for the component analysis part. Lets move on and see how this drive performs in real time.

Test system

CPU: Intel Core i5 4670K
Motherboard: GIGABYTE GA-Z97X-UD5H-BK
RAMs: Kingston HyperX Beast DDR3 2400 MHz(2*8 GB)
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Seidon 120V with push pull configuration
Graphics card: Sapphire Radeon HD 6770 1 GB DDR5
Hard disk/Solid State disk(s): Kingston SM2280S3 120 GB M.SATA SSD
Power Supply: Corsair GS 700 2013 edition
Monitor: Dell S2240M
Chassis: Open test bench table
Software: Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate x64 Service Pack 1 and all updates till then.

Information from AIDA 64 and HDTune Pro:

Real time performance and benchmarks:

Test method: The performance of the drive was tested with various industry known benchmark software and such that scores can be compared with other sites as well.

Software used:

HDTune Pro, CrystalDiskMark3.0.3, Anvil’s storage utilities(1.1.0), AS SSD Benchmark 1.7.4739.38088

HDTune Pro read and CrystalDiskMark benchmark:

Anvil’s storage utilities benchmark:

AS SSD benchmark:

Speed:

IOPS(Input/Output Per Second):

Windows boot time:

Windows was booting in approx 8 seconds. Time was counted from the instant after POST finished and the motherboard logo went away.

I must say those are some really good scores for a SSD. The speeds are very close to what is advertised and the read speed almost reaches the SATA 6 Gbps bandwidth.
Input Output Per Second(IOPS) values are also good. You can compare the values with other sites as well.

Summary and conclusion

Pros:
1. Good build quality
2. M.2 SATA is new and compact
3. Shock proof and low voltage ICs
4. 3 years warranty

Cons:
1. Packaging could have been better.

Verdict:

This SSD can be a very good small form factor choice for PCs having a SATA M.2 slot. It is connected directly to the motherboard without any discrete cables and thus installation is a breeze. Performance is very good and promised as per specs.

Thanks for reading. Hope you like it. Please share your opinions. Criticisms and suggestions are warmly welcome. Last but not the least, I would like to express my thanks to Kingston Technology India and Social Nirvana for providing me the sample.

The post Kingston M.2 Sata SM2280S3 120GB SSD Review appeared first on OCFreaks!.

ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB

Storage as a part of computer system has not changed much over the span of time after the invention of mechanical disks.
Things really took a turn for good when the flash based SSD’s became mainstream in the late 2000’s.Although the price/GB was huge the speed was well worth it.
From that time it was always a matter of tradeoffs between price and performance.
Today we have one such mainstream SSD’s in our lab : ADATA Premier Pro SP 900 .

We have a few nifty features in this SSD which needs to be talked about and we will talk about them after we check out the specifications.

Read on..

The post ADATA Premier Pro SP900 (0-provison) 128GB Solid State Drive Review appeared first on OCFreaks!.

Introduction

Among all PC components none gives more sense of performance than the SSD.The general snappiness of the system brings a smile and satisfaction to anyone.

Today we have such a component on the test bench.presenting the Phoenix III SSD from the stable of Gskill.

The SSD was on my radar for a long time and finally i got it in my hands to play..so lets see how good it is..

The post GSkill Phoenix III SSD review appeared first on OCFreaks!.

“This makes the future of SSDs cloudy,” states Laura Grupp, a graduate student at the University of California, San Diego. “While the growing capacity of SSDs and high IOP rates will make them attractive for many applications, the reduction in performance that is necessary to increase capacity while keeping costs in check may make it difficult for SSDs to scale as a viable technology for some applications.”

To prove this theory, Grupp teamed up with Steven Swanson, director of UCSD’s Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory, and John Davis of Microsoft Research. Using PCIe-based flash cards with a channel speed of 400 MBps based on the Open NAND Flash Interface (ONFI) specification and a standard 96 NAND flash dies, they tested 45 different NAND flash chips from six different vendors that ranged in size from 72-nm to 25-nm.

The group discovered that write speed for pages in a flash block suffered “dramatic and predictable variations” in latency. Even more, the tests showed that as the NAND flash wore out, error rates varied widely between devices. Single-level cell NAND produced the best test results whereas multi-level cell and triple-level cell NAND produced less than spectacular results.

With the testing information at hand, the group fast-forwarded to the year 2024 when NAND flash circuitry is expected to be only 6.5-nm in size. They predicted that read/write latency will double in MLC flash and increase more than 2.5 times for TLC flash. Yet SSDs at that time are expected to feature capacities of 4 TB when using MLC flash, and 16 TB when using TLC flash.

“It’s not going to be viable to go past 6.5-nm,” Grupp said. “2024 is the end. [People] are used to working with technology that continues to just get better, but with NAND flash we’re going to be facing trade-offs as it evolves.”

Source

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