ADATA XPG SX910, Crucial M500, Kingston HyperX 3K, SanDisk SS – Today will will take a look at the Specs, Hashrate, CPU performance and also a testing of this SSD Drive. We will go into more details as it regards to the testing in the article below.
This time it was decided to approach the matter the way it was implemented in May of this year: “So different and all together – 2”. Thanks to our old partner, Regard, four solid-state drives from different manufacturers were selected for testing.
ADATA XPG SX910 is announced as the fastest drive. SandForce controller, Intel memory and the fastest at the same time? The second entrant, the Crucial M500, is a newcomer designed to reduce the cost of production and bring a markedly modified memory to the world. The Micron engineers had to tinker with the controller, which was not originally compatible with such memory.
As for the other two, the Kingston HyperX 3K Series is positioned as a performance solution with a very attractive price, in which Toshiba memory is combined with a SandForce controller. But at the release of SanDisk SSD, apparently, guided by the slogan “why are we worse than Samsung?”: The drive uses SanDisk memory and the original SanDisk controller.
Test participants
Let’s introduce our new subjects:
- A-DATA XPG SX910 128 Гбайт (ASX910S3-128GM-C)
… The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 4400 rubles; - Crucial M500 120GB (CT120M500SSD1). The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3600 rubles;
- Kingston HyperX 3K Series 120 Гбайт (SH103S3/120G)
… The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3700 rubles; - SanDisk SSD 128GB (SDSSDP-128G-G25). The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3050 rubles.
-14000р на RTX 3060 ASUS Dual
RTX 3060 MSI Gaming – a drain for a penny
RTX 3070 cheapest and all at Compeo.ru
-15000р на RTX 3060 MSI Ventus
Prices for video cards went down steeply
-14000р на RTX 3060 Gigabyte Eagle
Another top vidyaha with a mega discount
RTX 3060 – prices have gone down
First-hand Z590 motherboards at very good prices
RTX 3060 12Gb in XPERT.RU – be in time 🙂
Galaxy S20 family price crash 25% discount
RTX 3070 at XPERT.RU at the lowest prices
Lots of RTX 3090 in XPERT.RU
Prices are indicated at the time of publication of this material.
ADATA XPG SX910 128GB (ASX910S3-128GM-C)
“The Best Open Box Drive – The World’s Most Powerful Fastest SSD!”
It is with this slogan and banner on the whole page that the section on the ADATA website, dedicated to this series of devices, meets us.
There are two interesting statements at once. “Open-frame” solutions are usually called solutions of a different format than the one in which the SX910 is made. And is it the fastest SSD? We’ll see.
The drive is shipped in a nice blue box with a transparent window through which you can see its body. But what you see not every day is a 2.5 ”-3.5” plastic adapter.
It is usually metallic. Cheaper? In addition to it, the kit contains a set of mounting screws, a warranty card and a small instruction.
Hidden under the cover is a SandForce SF-2281 controller and sixteen Intel MLC NAND chips made using the 25 nm process technology and bearing the 29F64G08ACME3 marking. The memory is quite fast and works in synchronous mode (by the way, its resource, according to unofficial data, is 5000 rewrites), therefore, in theory, the drive should demonstrate a very decent level of performance.
On the back there is a label with information about the model. It contains (traditionally for ADATA solid-state drives) the license key for the Acronis True Image backup software.
ADATA does not offer its own proprietary software, the site contains only a regular flasher LSI – the developer of the SandForce controller.
Crucial M500 120 – (CT120M500SSD1)
One of the representatives of a very extensive family has already been considered earlier, then it was a mid-range drive with a volume of 240 GB.
Although the word “average” here applies more to general market trends than to the family of the M500 itself, which currently has a maximum capacity of 960 GB SSD models. And the typical limit for most custom SSD lines on the market is 480-512 GB, or even less – 240-256 GB. Even in brand new models: remember, for example, the recently released Corsair Force LS.
The drive comes in a custom-designed Crucial box.
The box is noticeably larger than the solid-state drive itself, but inside there are only the drive itself, a warranty card and a plastic frame that increases the thickness of the SSD case.
A bezel is required if the drive needs to be installed in a 9mm slot on the model, since the M500 case is 7mm thick.
On the back of the case, on the bottom there is a label with information about the device: model code, serial number and firmware version flashed at the factory.
It is the only new member of the industry to be based on the Marvell controller. The M500 is an upgrade from the previous M4 line, which has gained a lot of popularity among users. However, the M500 does not carry something particularly progressive, its appearance, apparently, was aimed at reducing production costs and lowering costs. Marvell controller changed from 88SS9174 to improved 88SS9187. But the main improvement is the memory change. And she’s pretty interesting.
If earlier MLC NAND was used, made according to the 25 nm process technology, now it is 20 nm. In both cases, the memory is released by a joint venture between Intel and Micron. But the technical process is not the most important thing: this memory has a different organization. Whereas all other manufacturers use 64 Gigabit NAND dies in one package, the M500 is based on 128 Gigabit NAND. This is beneficial for IMFT, since the logic has been simplified, as a result, the amount of stored service information has decreased slightly, the redesign of the crystals has led to space savings, as a result, a saving of silicon, which is so precious for today’s times, has been achieved.
And the user pays for all this. This change led to an increase in page size from 8 to 16 KB, the page pool also doubled, and the response time for write operations increased. All this caused a general decrease in the level of performance of the drive with such memory. And the very use of twice the capacity of NAND crystals automatically means that SSDs of small capacity will meet with a decrease in available crystals when using interleaving. So, a breakthrough in performance after M4 should not be expected. At least in the junior modifications with a volume of 240 GB or less. The memory resource has also decreased: for 128-bit NAND crystals with a 20 nm technical process, it is declared at the level of 3000 rewriting cycles.
The consolation is that the Crucial M500 is currently the only solid state drive line on the market with this memory. But sometimes it’s nice to have an exclusive.
It remains to add that the Crucial product does not come with any software.
Related posts:
AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 21.2.1 Beta 
NVIDIA выпускает Game Ready – GeForce 461.40 WHQL 
Review and testing of SSD-drive PCIe NVMe WD Black SN850 2 TB 
Review and testing of SSD-drive PCIe NVMe Plextor M9PGN Plus (PX-1TM9PGN +) 1 TB: Specs| Hashrate 
Kingston UV500 240GB SSD Review and Test: When Volume Matters: Specs| Hashrate 
Review ADATA XPG Gammix S11 : Specs| Hashrate| Performance
