Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup

 Internals:

We noted it was a bit easier than normal to get into these drives, as the ‘warranty void if removed’ stickers had not been fully seated prior to shipping:

Once open, we see the SandForce 2281 controllers and IMFT 25nm flash memory.

The fronts:

…and finally the backs. The 120GB models have flash on both sides of the PCB’s:

Testing Methodology

Our tests are a good mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. PCMark, IOMeter, HDTach, HDTune, Yapt and our custom File Copy test round out the selection to cover just about all bases. If you have any questions about our tests just drop into the Storage Forum and we’ll help you out! 

Test System Setup

We’re breaking in a new Sandy Bridge test bed. Necessary for properly testing these new drives, even with the known issues. To get around this, we are using only the Intel SATA 6Gb/sec ports, which are known to not exhibit the inconsistent performance / connectivity issues. 

PC Perspective would like to thank ASUS, Corsair, and Kingston for supplying some of the components of our test rig. 


Hard Drive Test System Setup
CPU Intel Core i5-2500K
Motherboard Asus P8Z68-V Pro
Memory Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9
Hard Drive G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD
Sound Card N/A
Video Card Intel® HD Graphics 3000
Video Drivers Intel
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-650TX
DirectX Version DX9.0c
Operating System Windows 7 X64
  • PCMark05
  • Yapt
  • IOMeter
  • HDTach
  • HDTune
  • PCPer File Copy Test

 

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