Cheetah Speed: Five PCI-E 4.0 SSDs

Transcend MTE240S is the most affordable solid—state drive with PCI-E 4.0 interface. Unlike flagship models, the volume of which starts from 1 TB, MTE240S also has a 500 GB version for those who care about speed, but do not need excessively large capacity.

Transcend MTE240S is based on the Silicon Motion SM2267 controller, which is an ideological continuation of the SM2262 used in the MTE220S. The same two ARM architecture cores and four flash memory channels for parallelizing data recording to several 3D NAND chips at once.

But the PCI-E 3.0 bus was improved to 4.0. This gave the MTE240S a small, but still noticeable increase in linear read speed — up to 3800 Mbps, which is about 20 percent faster than the flagship PCI-E 3.0 models (and the price remained at about the same level). The IOPS indicators have also grown pleasantly — up to 560K.

Linear recording takes place at speeds up to 3200 Mbps. Of course, it was not without the smart SLC caching algorithm, which is traditional for all modern SSDs. Under load, the SM2267 controller does not heat up as much as the flagship PCI-E 4.0 SSDs, but still it cannot be called cold. Therefore, Transcend MTE240S is carefully equipped with a newfangled graphene radiator.

Goodram IRDM Ultimate X is the senior SSD model in the range of the Polish company Wilk Elektronik, which in Europe represents the interests of the Japanese Kioxia (the new name of the semiconductor division of Toshiba). Therefore, IRDM Ultimate X is based precisely on Kioxia flash memory — 96-layer 3D TLC BiCS4.

As a controller, the Phison E16 is used with two ARM Cortex-R5 cores, eight flash memory channels and support for the high-speed PCI-E 4.0 interface (backward compatibility with PCI-E 3.0, of course, is observed). The controller provides up to 750K IOPS of random reading and writing of small 4K blocks.

Sequential reading of large volumes of data at a time occurs at speeds up to 5000 MB / s, and sequential writing — up to 4500 MB / s within a virtual SLC array, the volume of which is one third of the free disk space. After the array overflow, the speed decreases to about 700 Mbps.

By default, the radiator is not installed on the Goodram IRDM Ultimate X. Therefore, the user is free to choose whether to use a radiator from the motherboard (if, of course, it is available) or a complete Goodram radiator. I am glad that the cooler is not a boring OEM solution, like some other SSDs on Phison E16, but is made in the form of a large IRDM logo.

The WD Black SN850 is a PCI—E 4.0 solid-state drive of Western Digital's own design and production, which absorbed SanDisk a few years earlier. It replaced the SN750, the top among PCI-E 3.0 disks. It is sold as a version without a radiator, and with a luminous EKWB cooler.

The heart of the SN850 is the proprietary Black G2 controller with three ARM cores, which provides the best IOPS (I/O operations per second) among PCI-E 4.0 SSDs — up to 1 million. The external chip of the DDR4 operational buffer speeds up the processing of small files even more.

Flash memory chips are represented by 96-layer 3D TLC BiCS4, but produced not by Kioxia, but by WD himself. The fact is that these two companies work closely together in the design of multilayer flash memory, but they are directly engaged in conveyor production separately — each at its own factory.

The presence of its own production lines allows WD to manually select the most successful flash memory chips from the entire batch and, thereby, provide the Black SN850 with a high speed of 7000 Mbps linear reading and 5100 Mbps linear writing. After continuous recording of 10 percent of the disk volume, the speed drops to about 1500 Mbps and the disk needs time to rest.

Corsair MP600 Pro is an updated Pro version of the original MP600 solid—state drive. The dual-core Phison E16 controller was replaced by a new E18 with three Cortex R5s. The linear speeds at the same time increased to 7000 and 6550 Mbps for reading and writing, respectively. And the speed of random processing of small 4K blocks is up to 800K IOPS.

The volume of the MP600 Pro SLC array is relatively small — only 5 percent. Then the sequential write speed drops to about 1000 Mbps. And in the last third of the free disk space is even lower — up to 700 Mbps. 3D TLC flash memory chips manufactured by Micron are used (the original MP600 had Toshiba/Kioxia).

Next to the Phison E18, another smaller chip is installed on the SSD circuit board, also labeled Phison — this is a power controller. The layout of the SSD chips is two-sided, which forced the manufacturer to resort to using a radiator consisting of two parts (the original MP600 has exactly the same radik).

The thick ribbed part covers the SSD from the front side, and the thin flat part covers the back. By the way, in addition to the passively cooled MP600 Pro, there is a Hydro X version with fittings on the market, that is, the possibility of including a custom liquid cooling system in the circuit.

The Patriot Viper VP4300 is the fastest solid—state drive at the moment and will probably remain so until the release of the fifth generation PCI-E bus. The maximum speed is developed in the case of a 2 TB version, whereas a one-terabyte reads just as fast, but writes a little slower.

It is built on the controller of the young InnoGrit company — IG5236, codenamed Reinier (in addition to it, there is only one simpler controller in the InnoGrit range — IG5216 with PCI-E 3.0). Despite the lack of experience, InnoGrit managed to make the PCI-E 4.0 controller faster than the recognized veterans of the market — Phison and Silicon Motion.

Thus, the speed of sequential reading of VP4300 reaches 7400 Mbps, and sequential writing — 6800 MB /s. The volume of the virtual SLC cache is 10 percent of the volume of the disk, and after its overflow, the write speed decreases to about 2000 Mbps. Theoretically, the speed may drop even lower — up to 1000 Mbps — due to overheating of the controller.

But in fact, this will definitely not happen, because two radiators for different tasks are supplied with the Viper VP4300. The first one is thin, made of graphene, in case the SSD slot is M.2 is located under the graphics card. The second one is thicker, made of aluminium, for the most efficient heat dissipation, it is recommended to install two radiators at once.