How We Examination, System Specs

Along with an array of wink drives, we've included the Western Digital 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM and Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB 10,000RPM hard drives for comparison's sake. Other SSDs tested accept controllers from LSI, JMicron, Intel, Marvell, Toshiba and Samsung. Our testing suite consists of four constructed benchmark programs and our own file copying and load time tests.

As you likely know, while manufacturers claim impressive peak I/O performance out of the box, this performance tin diminish over time. Unlike a conventional hard drive, any write operation made to an SSD is a two-step procedure: a data cake must exist erased and and then written to. Obviously if the drive is new and unused there will exist aught to erase and therefore the commencement step tin can be bypassed, but this only happens one time unless the bulldoze is trimmed.

Considering this, we'll test how much functioning you lot tin can look to lose from each SSD over fourth dimension. We'll examine all drives in their clean unused state, and then run the HD Tach total benchmark several times to fill the bulldoze. This simulates heavy usage and conspicuously indicates how performance will exist affected after normal long-term utilise.

Most drives support the TRIM role, which is meant to counteract these negative effects.

Test Organization Specs

  • Intel Core i7-4770K (LGA1150)
  • x2 4GB DDR3-1600 Grand.Skill (CAS 8-8-8-20)
  • Asrock Z97 Extreme6 (Intel Z97)
  • Silverstone Strider Series (700w)
  • Western Digital Black 4TB
  • Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB
  • Plextor M6e 256GB
  • Plextor M6S 256GB
  • Samsung SSD 850 Pro 512GB
  • Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB
  • Samsung SSD 840 Evo 1TB
  • SanDisk Extreme Pro 512GB
  • SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
  • OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
  • OCZ ARC 100 240GB
  • OCZ Vector 150 240GB
  • OCZ Vertex 460 256GB
  • Intel SSD 520 Serial 240GB
  • Gainward GeForce GTX 780 (3072MB)

Software

  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro (64-fleck)
  • Nvidia Forceware 340.43