so different and all together. Kingston, Plextor, Samsung, SanDisk and SmartBuy

so different and all together. Kingston, Plextor, Samsung, SanDisk and SmartBuy
– 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.

Contents hide

1 Test participants

2 Kingston HyperX 3K 90 Гбайт (SH103S3/90G)

3 Plextor M5 Pro 128 Гбайт (PX-128M5Pro)

4 Related posts:

Manufacturers of the first echelon and “close” ones with special contracts (Crucial-Micron, Intel, LiteON, Plextor, Samsung, SanDisk, Toshiba, Transcend, etc.), as a rule, more or less comply with the original specifications of the released model, maneuvering in pricing policy due to a higher margin, as well as the scale of production. Although they can also present surprises.

Companies that order finished products from ODM / OEM-manufacturers with their own brands (ADATA, PQI, PNY, Silicon Power, SmartBuy, etc.) are often deprived of this opportunity. Therefore, they apply a policy of making the price cheaper by choosing cheap hardware configurations (non-original flash memory, asynchronous flash memory instead of synchronous one, simplified controller, etc.). In this case, the formal name of the model of this or that drive during its hardware “modernization” most often remains the same.

Therefore, when reading the review, you should also check the availability of newer materials on this model (not necessarily of the same volume) in the corresponding section of articles – as far as possible, we try to track changes in hardware platforms. There is a separate section on drives on Phison controllers – there is a special conversation about this developer (for example, GoodRAM C100, SmartBuy Ignition 2 and Silicon Power V55 / S55 were at one time the same drive, just with different labels and packaging).

And an overview of a particular drive at a certain moment turns into a historical reference for advanced readers and those who, by the will of fate, became the owner of the old configuration, which is often no less valuable than a reflection of the current state of affairs in the solid-state drive market. This is normal in view of the rapid growth and development of the latter.

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Overclockers.ru and Regard company continue a joint project to test SSD drives. It is difficult to describe the participants in this material in one word, in short – so different and all together.

Kingston HyperX 3K 90 Гбайт (SH103S3/90G)
… The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 4100 rubles;
Plextor M5 Pro 128 Гбайт (PX-128M5Pro)
… The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 4600 rubles;
Samsung SSD 840 120 GB (MZ-7TD120BW)
… The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3800 rubles;
SanDisk Extreme 120GB (SDSSDX-120G-G25). The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3900 rubles;
SmartBuy Adrenaline 120 GB (SB120GB-ADRN-25SAT3). The approximate price in Moscow retail is about 3400 rubles.

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Kingston HyperX is a disk positioned as a high-performance disk, for this reason, only two-thirds of its actual capacity is available to the user. Samsung 840 is a storage device based on Samsung’s own controller and flash memory. But SanDisk did not use its own controller and used LSI’s development, leaving the flash memory of its own production.

The Plextor M5 Pro is now considered an exemplary drive based on a Marvell controller and fast (made according to one of the most modern technological processes) Toshiba memory. SmartBuy is, as a rule, one of the cheapest discs; the manufacturer prefers something unusual and rather infrequent to reduce the cost.

Test participants

Kingston HyperX 3K 90 Гбайт (SH103S3/90G)

The Kingston model has a rather unusual capacity. The explanation is simple – physically we have the same 128 GB (that’s why it got into this material), but in this series the reserve for the controller is not the usual 8 GB, but 38 (more precisely, even more). The essence is hidden in the SSD architecture itself: information is stored in flash memory in cells combined into logical pages, each 4 KB in size, in turn, these pages are combined into blocks of cells, the volume of each block is usually 128 pages or 512 KB. The restrictions are such that all operations are performed in blocks only.

Thus, even if only 1 KB of data needs to be written, the block will be overwritten in the flash memory at once. To maintain maximum speed characteristics, the SSD controller initially operates only with free blocks, but as soon as they run out, it has to do several internal operations for each write operation. And here the performance begins to suffer: first, the block is read as a whole, then this block is updated in the controller’s memory with new data, in parallel with this, the operation of clearing the block in the flash occurs, then the already changed block is written back to the flash memory.

The presence of a reserve allows the controller to save on the operation of erasing the old block, allowing it to be done later, at the time of inactivity. And the information is simply written into a new block. But the main point here lies not in the concern of Kingston engineers about the speed of the drive, but in the fact that a cheaper MLC NAND 25 nm with a reduced rewriting cycle is used to build the drive. So, if the usually used MLC has a resource of 5 thousand rewriting cycles, then here we have a resource of 3 thousand, which means “3K” in the name of the drive (there is also a version “just HyperX”).

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The clause “more precisely, even more” is not in vain. Physically, flash memory is characterized by a volume in binary notation, where 1 MB is equal to 1024 KB, and so on. And the manufacturers consider the capacity in the decimal system (1 MB is equal to 1000 KB), hence there is also some difference and it is also used as a reserve. Ultimately, the Kingston drive has a 44GB reserve. This is almost a third of the total actual volume.

In addition, if you remember, SandForce controllers (and here the SF-2281 is used) use data compression in their work, as a result of which the amount of data transferred by the operating system to the drive for recording is far from always equal to that recorded as a result. According to the LSI developers, data compression can be as high as two times. It also saves the resource of flash memory chips. But those blocks that were “saved” in the end are not given to the user, but are sent to the reserve. As a result, the amount of SSD memory that ends up in reserve (to be meticulous) will be even more significant.

Here is such an entertaining math. It is worth noting that at the time of this writing, the 90GB model was not listed on the official Kingston website.

The drive is offered to the user in a box, the design of which hints at increased performance.

On the reverse side of the package, only general words are given, and at the very bottom it is mentioned that an adapter for the 3.5 ” format is included in the kit.

The disc inside the box is wrapped in a foam backing that is firm enough not to dangle when moved.

The package contains instructions, a sticker on the system unit, an adapter from 2.5 ” to 3.5 ” format and two sets of mounting bolts (for attaching the SSD to the adapter and the adapter itself in the landing basket of the system unit case).

The drive is housed in a case with a metal base and a plastic cover with a metal insert with decorative anodizing.

On the reverse side there is a sticker on which the disk model, serial number and firmware version, flashed into the drive during its manufacture, are indicated.

On the official website of Kingston, you can download the proprietary SSD Toolbox utility.

This program allows you to see information about the drive, as well as update its firmware from a file previously downloaded from the Kingston website.

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Crystal Disk Info tells us quite detailed information about the drive, thermal monitoring is present.

After creating the file system (MBR, NTFS), 83.84 GB becomes available to the user.

Plextor M5 Pro 128 Гбайт (PX-128M5Pro)

Another drive from the product line, which is positioned as high-performance. It includes three models – 128, 256 and 512 GB. The first of them, she is also the youngest, and will be tested in this material.

The disc comes in a striking blue-tinted mirror box.

Since the general technical information on the packaging is not given in full, the manufacturer on the valve box on a special sticker directly writes the date of manufacture of the SSD and the version of the firmware that was stitched into it at the factory. At the moment, this information is not very relevant, but it is worth remembering that it may turn out to be useful in the future in the event of a change in the revision of the technical filling of the drive.

Inside the cardboard box there is a box made of soft foam material; in addition to the drive itself, an adapter from 2.5 ” to 3.5 ” format, fastening screws and instructions are included in the kit.

The box itself has a sticker with license keys for installing NTI Echo and NTI Backup Now EZ.

These programs are little known in our country, but one should take into account that they are not developed without the participation of Toshiba, the manufacturer of flash memory, on which the Plextor model is based. The first one is designed for disk cloning, the second one allows you to back up data. As noted, the drive is based on Toshiba’s 19nm MLC NAND, which operates in Toggle Mode. A Marvell 88SS9187 is used as a controller.

The drive body is made of metal with an anodized silver finish.

On its bottom there is a sticker indicating the disk model, serial number, release date, factory version of the firmware, and more.

The drive is supplied with Plextool proprietary software that allows you to see information about the status of the disk and, if necessary, update the firmware from the Plextor server.