Internals, Testing Methodology and System Setup
Internals
First a look at the front and rear:
Now let us crack open the screwless housing:
No screws present at all, yet the fit and finish is solid and once assembled there are no noticeable rattles. Nice work for a budget product.
At the front we have a Marvell 88SS1074 controller, which implements LDPC and supports the installed TLC flash. We also get some DRAM and four Micron-branded flash packages containing two 384 Gbit (in TLC mode) / 48GB IMFT 3D NAND dies.
Sitting between the controller and flash we find a bank of capacitors. These help provide power loss protection. If system power goes away for any reason, the capacitors should provide enough juice to keep everything powered long enough for a graceful shutdown of the SSD itself. This helps prevent corruption of the Flash Translation Layer – something that can result in data loss or in extreme cases 'bricking' of an SSD.
At the rear we have four more packages, rounding out the full 750GB capacity.
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
- PC Perspective Exclusive Latency Percentile
Nice price, but too small. 🙁
Nice price, but too small. 🙁
your not going to be seeing
your not going to be seeing really high capacity coming to these budget drives for a while. most of the industry is stuck at 1tb with only high end drives going further like the 850 pro. Once 480gb drops to the current 250gb prices then i would imagine 2tb and higher drives coming to take the top spot
Why can’t somebody make a
Why can’t somebody make a cheap 2tb SSD?!!!
Because it’s a waste of money
Because it’s a waste of money to store pr0n movies… 😉
Actually, if you’re a pcgamer
Actually, if you’re a pcgamer then you want 2tb otherwise you’ll have to uninstall and reinstall games to make room. 1tb is not enough, especially with newer games that take up a lot of space.
Even PC gamers are wasting
Even PC gamers are wasting their money for loading faster huge games from SSD with no performance gain in game. 😉
You should better use a HDD for massive storage like games or movies. If the cost doesn’t matter you should be able to buy any SSD capacity or quantity.
These charts that you are
These charts that you are using are absolutely horrible to read. For example, that HDTach chart, the read and writes should be separated and then the results should be ranked going from best to worst. Actually…. any results chart you have should be ranked from best to worst. That way you can easily see how thing compare. Those YAPT charts…. tell me nothing. I can’t tell the difference between any of them really. And have you guys ever stopped to think for a moment about someone who is color blind? Trying to find which line goes to what would be impossible. Even without the color issue it’s still pretty bad.
Been meaning to say this stuff for a while. I honestly have had to skip right to your conclusions in your product reviews because the data charts are just god awful. Please make this info easier to read.
Most of that testing is being
Most of that testing is being phased out. If you can't tell the difference in YAPT, that means all SSDs are saturating SATA (a good thing). There is really nothing we can do about colors in charts, unfortunately. Regarding sort order, keeping the subject of the article at the top keeps it more easily identifiable. People have to dig to find the new product in sorted charts, and coloring it differently clashes with your colorblind comment…
You don’t have to keep it at
You don’t have to keep it at the top. If sort the chart and highlight the new product then it’s easy to see. Guru3D has been doing their charts this way for years. It also makes it much easier to see how x product compares to y product. The non sorted charts are a mess and it’s very hard to see how products compare.
$200 for 750gb, does that
$200 for 750gb, does that mean on sale $150? I’ve been seeing lots of 960gb drives on sale for $180-$200 lately.
Allyn, why has there been no new SATA standard? NVME interfaces don’t seem to be the greatest, M.2 is great but what if I want 2-3 drives?
I don’t like RAID because I like to be able to break up the band without a big headache, or not seem to screw up my array when I flash a new BIOS.
There are motherboards with 3
There are motherboards with 3 m.2 slots, and they don't have to be in a RAID to be used. Additional m.2 devices can also be installed via adapter cards, etc. Sadly, PCIe is the way things are moving, and SATA 6Gbit may be the last iteration of it that we see in the wild.
I’d like to see USB 3.1 /
I’d like to see USB 3.1 / Type C replace SATA. It’s faster, delivers power and data over the same compact connector, and can do PCIEx4 in alt mode.
And you don’t need drive cases. Just plug the bare drive straight in to any available port.
That would be a cool idea,
That would be a cool idea, I’m not a fan of external boxes all over the place. I still like the tower case with plenty of expansion ports/drive bays. Yes, I still rocking the optical. I saw a post somewhere, the guy complained that he was installing an OS and it needed drivers for USB ports, but he had his drivers on a USB drive. I guess out of luck.
I wonder why no faster SATA, they can’t come up with a better shielded cable and up the clocks?
I’ve read elsewhere on forums
I’ve read elsewhere on forums covering this release that the MX300 “Appears to be underwhelming”. Another response stated, “Underwhelming is being polite”.
Could this be because they analyzed the product before you’re aforementioned fixes were implemented?
What’s the deal with the controller? Does Micron potentially have a better one around the corner and that is why they are classifying the MX300 as ‘Limited Edition’ so as not to hamper current sales?
All input is appreciated. Thanks for your great article 🙂
What’d I’d really like to
What’d I’d really like to know is if IMFT’s Floating Gate Technology on their 3D NAND is really going to materially increase performance or if it is just reducing power consumption and improving efficiency, as has been the case with DRAM every year.
Will Micron 3D NAND Product blow planar NAND out the water or will it just strongly compete?
Thanks,
Max (23 yr old investor)
I think you should draw a
I think you should draw a line of a product in review above every other lines on the graphs for better visibility
personally, i would like
personally, i would like someone to do a video or an article dedicated to this new DWA technology
the available information out there is very limited, and may not be that reliable.
if possible, please explain, my interest on this new technology is quite high, since i’ve never heard of it
and also, what’s up with the quad plane thing?
i hope someone explains it
thanks
It was linked in the
It was linked in the article:
https://pcper.com/reviews/Storage/Micron-M600-SSD-Review-Digging-Dynamic-Write-Acceleration/Dynamic-Write-Acceleration
CLEVER MARKETING
750 GB means
CLEVER MARKETING
750 GB means there’s no direct competitor.
This should really be the replacement for the BX200 (which deserves LEMON status)not the MX200-That would hopefully be replaced with 3D-MLC……………..
Be interesting to see what follows-Have a feeling speeds will tank on smaller drives-Be interesting to see this size with a 8 ch controller……….
For anyone in the UK, Amazon
For anyone in the UK, Amazon UK have this currently on sale for £109 in the current Prime Sale.
Thanks for the detailed
Thanks for the detailed analysis and also the very good quality pictures.
Regards.
They gave it an editor’s
They gave it an editor’s choice at $200. What about at $100? Well that’s what it’s going for on Amazon right now. (11-24-16 @4:00AM EST) That’s $0.13/GB!!!!
yeah same, on amazon uk at
yeah same, on amazon uk at £105.99 for today, seems a good deal to me 🙂