Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup

Internals:

These are significantly lighter weight than previous OCZ SSDs, which is a welcome change as SSDs don't function any differently with a bulky, heavy housing.

At the rear of the PCBs we see, well, not much. Even the 960GB model does not need flash packages installed at the rear, which is impressive once you look at the front:

At the PCB fronts we see just four flash packages on all three capacities. In the case of these, the capacity difference lies in how many dies are stacked within those packages. The Toshiba TC58 controller sits in the center, adjacent to its attached DRAM. The controller sits at a 45 degree rotatio… wait a minute, where have I seen that before?

Yup, that Phison S10 PCB looks just like this one. What an odd coincidence. To better compare, I busted out the Patriot Ignite from our roundup piece:

Yeah, that's looking awfully close indeed. Let's get a better look:

Well that settles that I guess. It is a safe bet that Toshiba is using the Phison S10 controller silicon here, presumably with a custom firmware to implement their QSBC error correction technology. This might mean they had to implement it purely in the firmware / software, which may see a performance hit to write speeds. We'll know for sure once we hit the benches.

Testing Methodology

Our tests are a mix of synthetic and real-world benchmarks. 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 have several storage testbeds. A newer ASUS P8Z77-V Pro/Thunderbolt and an ASUS Z87-PRO. Variance between both boards has been deemed negligible when testing SATA devices. Future PCIe and SATA device testing, including this review, take place on a new ASUS Sabertooth X99, which comes equipped with USB 3.1, M.2, and can also handle SFF-8639 devices with the proper adapter.

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

 
Hard Drive Test System Setup
CPU Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.125 GHz
Motherboard ASUS Sabertooth X99
Memory 16GB Micron DDR4 @ 3333
Hard Drive G.Skill 32GB SLC SSD
Sound Card N/A
Video Card EVGA GeForce GTX 750
Video Drivers GeForce Game Ready Driver 347.88
Power Supply Corsair CMPSU-650TX
DirectX Version N/A
Operating System Windows 8.1 Pro X64 (update)
  • PCPer File Copy Test
  • HDTach
  • HDTune
  • IOMeter
  • YAPT
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