Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup

Internals:

After disassembly:

dsc02376.jpg

The housing and assembly is of good quality materials, and the aluminum doubles as a heatsink for both the Marvell controller and RAM.

dsc02377.jpg

The PCB design is slightly different from the ADATA models, but they contain the same 8x Micron branded Synchronous MLC flash packages. This was the case for all four SSD capacity points, meaning capacity scaling is accomplished by die counts within the 8 packages, and ensuring the controller always communicates over 8 physical channels.

dsc02380.jpg

PCB rear is mostly blank, and again was the case for all four capacity points.

dsc02378.jpg

A close-up of the controller and near-by components.

Testing Methodology

Our tests are a 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 currently employ a pair of testbeds. A newer ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt and an ASUS Z87-PRO. Variance between both boards has been deemed negligible.

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

 
Hard Drive Test System Setup
CPU Intel Core i7-4770K
Motherboard ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/TB / ASUS Z87-PRO
Memory Kingston HyperX 4GB DDR3-2133 CL9
Hard Drive G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD
Sound Card N/A
Video Card Intel® HD Graphics 4600
Video Drivers Intel
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-650TX
DirectX Version DX9.0c
Operating System Windows 8.1 X64
  • PCMark Vantage and 7
  • Yapt
  • IOMeter
  • HDTach
  • HDTune
  • PCPer File Copy Test
« PreviousNext »