How We Test, Arrangement Specs

Along with an array of wink drives, we've included the Western Digital 4TB three.5" 7200RPM and Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB x,000RPM hard drives for comparison'south sake. Other SSDs tested have controllers from LSI, JMicron, Intel, Marvell, Toshiba and Samsung. Our testing suite consists of iv synthetic benchmark programs and our own file copying and load fourth dimension tests.

As you likely know, while manufacturers merits impressive peak I/O functioning out of the box, this performance can diminish over time. Different a conventional hard drive, whatever write functioning made to an SSD is a 2-step process: a data block must exist erased and then written to. Plain if the drive is new and unused there will be zippo to erase and therefore the starting time step tin be bypassed, but this just happens one time unless the drive is trimmed.

Because this, we'll test how much performance yous can expect to lose from each SSD over time. We'll examine all drives in their clean unused country, and so run the HD Tach full criterion several times to make full the drive. This simulates heavy usage and conspicuously indicates how functioning will exist afflicted after normal long-term use.

Virtually drives support the TRIM function, which is meant to counteract these negative furnishings.

Test System Specs

  • Intel Core i7-4770K (LGA1150)
  • x2 4GB DDR3-1600 G.Skill (CAS 8-eight-8-20)
  • Asrock Z97 Extreme6 (Intel Z97)
  • Silverstone Strider Series (700w)
  • Western Digital Black 4TB
  • Western Digital Velociraptor 1TB
  • Plextor M6e 256GB
  • Plextor M6S 256GB
  • Plextor M6M 256GB
  • Samsung SSD 840 Evo 1TB
  • SanDisk Extreme 2 240GB
  • OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
  • OCZ Vector 150 240GB
  • OCZ Vector 512GB
  • OCZ Vertex 460 256GB
  • OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
  • OCZ Vertex four 256GB
  • OCZ Agility 4 256GB
  • OCZ Octane 512GB
  • Crucial m4 256GB
  • Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB
  • Intel SSD 510 Series 120GB
  • Samsung SSD 840 Pro 512GB
  • Gainward GeForce GTX 780 (3072MB)

Software

  • Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate SP1 (64-bit)
  • Nvidia Forceware 331.65