Review SSD 480-512 GB – ADATA SX900, Silicon Power V55 and SmartBuy Ignition 2

review SSD 480-512 GB – ADATA SX900, Silicon Power V55 and SmartBuy Ignition 2
– 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, attention will be paid to volumetric solid-state drives, and one of them is based on the LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller, which has already set many teeth on edge, but has not yet left the scene.

The other two devices, at least in theory, should differ only in the label on the case and packaging, since this pair is representatives of the Phison platform. It is precisely Phison, in close cooperation with Toshiba, who are now diligently trying to compete with SandForce, including by overt price dumping. This is especially noticeable on the example of some of the products under the SmartBuy brand (Ignition and Ignition 2 lines).

Phison was able to reasonably implement the work of its drives in a situation when, for some reason, the TRIM command does not reach the device. But LSI didn’t bother itself with that. Nevertheless, there is a small and not too complicated trick to implement that allows the user to somewhat neutralize the effect of this problem on his own, which will be described in the final part of the material.

So, before you another review of SSD 480-512 GB, which took place thanks to our partner – the company Regard.

Test participants

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ADATA SX900 512 Гбайт (ASX900S3-512GM-C)

The ADATA company again could not resist making loud statements regarding its product. But is it really so?

“This drive ushered in an era of new memory capacities for SandForce 2281-based SSDs, reaching 512GB capacity, ie. 7% more than conventional SandForce SSDs on the market. This event marks an important milestone in the development of NAND Flash products in the history of ADATA. “

The drive comes in a cardboard box with a transparent window through which you can see the model itself.

Most of the volume of the box is occupied by a plastic form, in which the SSD and its equipment are located.

The package includes a plastic adapter (remember that earlier adapters were made of metal), instructions, a booklet for the cloning program that can be downloaded from the ADATA website, a thickening frame for installing the device into a slot for drives with a case thickness of 9.x mm (thickness SX900 enclosures – 7 mm) and mounting screws.

The solid-state drive is made in a metal case with an anodized black finish.

On the bottom cover of the case, in addition to the model name and product serial number, you can find a small bonus – a sticker with a serial number-key for Acronis True Image HD 2013 software, which is designed to back up data, as well as transfer it from one device to another (for example , from HDD to SSD). In this case, the program itself must be downloaded from the official ADATA website.

Technically, this drive is based on a combination of the LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller and MLC NAND memory. The memory is relabeled, and only by some indirect signs it can be judged that we have a synchronous (ONFi 2.2) MLC NAND, produced by a joint venture between Intel and Micron using the 25 nm process technology. The SX900 board is shortened and about 20% of the case is empty.

As for the volume available to the user, it really is more than usual. Recall that initially the LSI SandForce SF-2241/2281 controllers required for their needs not 7% ​​of the volume (the difference between real binary 512 GB and decimal “trade” 512 GB), like, for example, Marvell controllers, but 14%. Which ultimately led to the existence of models with a volume of 60, 120, 240, 480 GB and so on.

But in the first half of 2012, LSI released additional versions of the microcode of its controllers with partially disabled functionality (according to unofficial information, for example, RAISE was disabled), as a result of which it became possible to give part of the previously hidden backup area to users. Theoretically, because of this, the reliability of data storage on such a device is partially reduced, but there are no real statistics on this topic. As there are no special complaints from users. So I don’t see any crime in this “trick”.

Silicon Power V55 480 Гбайт (SP480GBSS3V55S25) и SmartBuy Ignition 2 480 Гбайт (SB480GB-IGNT-25SAT3)

These two models are brought together for a reason. From Silicon Power and SmartBuy, there are only labels and boxes. In reality, both drives are designed and manufactured by a Taiwanese company.
Phison Electronics
and are based on its PS3108-S8 controller as well as Toshiba NAND memory.

But despite the common essence, both products differ in packaging and configuration.

The Silicon Power model comes in a black box with a relatively intricate design. Whereas the SmartBuy version is in a simple white box, without any frills.

However, a company that is actively dumping in the solid-state drive market should save money – after all, we are once again facing one of the cheapest SSDs among the models of the same size. If earlier SmartBuy solutions were offered to customers in a simple semi-plastic and semi-cardboard blister, now it is a larger white cardboard box. But the equipment never appeared.

A simple bubble bag and cardboard dividers are all that will damp the shocks to the box during shipping.

The Silicon Power drive costs a little more, but it comes with a small instruction booklet (though pretty crumpled – it was so neatly packed), mounting screws and an adapter for installing the device into a bay designed for standard 3.5 ”HDDs:

It is worth recalling that Silicon Power has a parallel V55 (and technically identical) S55 (“Slim”) series with a case thickness reduced to 7 mm and without an adapter in the delivery set. The price is not much lower.

The thickness of the cases for the Silicon Power V55 and SmartBuy Ignition 2 models is also different: 9 and 7 mm, respectively. Otherwise, they are almost identical:

Traditionally, no serial numbers are given either on the packaging or on the drive itself.

This type of case (black and rough to the touch, two halves with curly edges) is used only by Phison, so this can be considered a characteristic feature of the product.

The drives are not supplied with any proprietary software. SmartBuy Ignition 2 was tested with firmware version 5.8, which was immediately updated to 6.9. Nice bonus:

The volume of the drive is 476 GB, which corresponds to 512 “trade” gigabytes. Although the official volume for SmartBuy Ignition 2 is 480 GB. But Silicon Power V55 turned out to be without surprises – the declared 480 GB and nothing more. At the same time, it was equipped with an even older firmware version – 5.4.

Both solid-state drives are completely identical from a technical point of view, which is quite unusual: as a rule, Ignition 2 drives (except for the youngest modification of 60 GB) use original Toshiba memory, while Silicon Power always uses cheaper memory. Also Toshiba, but bought out in the form of plates and brought to a “commercial” state by the capabilities of Phison. In addition, a part of the element base is missing on the Silicon Power board itself.

But both tested drives are completely identical from the hardware point of view, they use eight original Toshiba memory chips labeled TH58TEG9DDJBA89. Each of them contains eight 64-gigabit MLC NAND crystals, made according to the 19 nm technological process and operating in the Toggle Mode 2.0 mode. Thus, we have before us an eight-channel memory operation scheme with eight-fold interleaving.

A single DDR3 microcircuit manufactured by Powerchip Technology Corporation (PSC) with the A3P4GF4BLF 310M6B02 marking with a volume of 512 MB and operating at an effective frequency of 1333 MHz is used as a buffer memory.

A similar configuration could be seen when testing a 256 GB SmartBuy S8C in mSATA format, except that there were half the number of NAND chips – four.