Remember when in 2011 the company SandForce, not then owned by LSI, provided the controller is SF-2281. He made a splash at just the stronger market of solid state drives. Processor SSD (so it was called in SandForce) was so successful that in a short time on this platform appeared countless storage devices. Intel, Kingston, Corsair, GeIL, ADATA, Super Talent, Patriot, OCZ, G. Skill, Team Group, Buffalo technology, Apacer, PNY, Kingmax, SanDisk, here is a partial list of companies that have used this chip in their devices. The secret of success was very simple: SandForce personally followed the update firmware for its controller, and the vendor received almost the finished product, as sold reference Board with memory chips. Companies without their own production capacity sighed with relief. They were not required to spend money on engineers and programmers, but just had to stick the logo on the body of the device and to design the packaging. “Echo” SandForce is felt even today, after all the drives on the SF-2281 is still for sale.
What this historical digression? To our test lab arrived SSD from Patriot American company. A series of Blast is based on the Phison controller PS3110-S10. By 2016, this chip on Board released more than a dozen SSDs. But can a new platform to repeat the success of SandForce?
Patriot Blast
The controller is Phison S10
The controller PS3110-S10 has not appeared out of nowhere. This is the evolution of 8-channel chip PS3108-S8 — a very weak CPU, suffering from extremely low speed random reads. S10 got four cores, one of which handles the commands coming through the interface SATA, and the other three are working directly with memory locations. It turns out that a quarter of the computing power of the processor reserved for leveling wear-leveling and garbage collection. PS3110-S10 is paired with a fast cache memory standard DDR3-1600. Of useful options note support 256-bit AES encryption and OPAL 2.0 specifications.
The controller supports caching, when a portion of a memory array operates in SLC mode. It is experimentally proven that is used about 3% of the total drive.
The controller Phison PS3110-S10
The analogy PS3110-S10 with SF-2281 suggests itself, one has only to examine the results of the performance of an SSD in CrystalDiskMark. As you know, the SandForce processor gave different performance when working with compressible/incompressible data. Often files are very amenable to compression and deduplication. The use of compression algorithms results in fewer number of cells (therefore, fewer number of write operations). The freed memory available to the user, it goes to General wear leveling. But the performance actually increases. In some cases, up to three times.
The Phison controller is not able to compress the data, but the firmware is trained to analyze the data content for the presence of empty blocks consisting of zeros. The entry of such a block is not only marked its existence in the table-the repeater. As a result, the speed of random read 4-KB blocks increases by about four times.
Patriot Blast performance (incompressible data)
Patriot Blast performance (compressible data)
Technical characteristics and design features
The Blast range consists of four models with capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, 480 GB and 960 GB respectively. The drives have a similar level of performance. For example, the whole series provide a linear reading speed up to 560 MB/s. This speed can not boast of even the Samsung 850 Pro. The Junior model is only with marking PBT120GS25SSDR received a frankly poor performance in sequential write. Affected by lower level of parallelism, because the Phison PS3110-S10 is 8-channel controller.
Another plus of the line of Blast — a great amount of time between failures. The competition for 500 000 hours less.
Patriot Blast
Interface
SATA 3.0, 2,5’, 7mm
Marking models
PBT120GS25SSDR
PBT240GS25SSDR
PBT480GS25SSDR
PBT960GS25SSDR
Volume
120 GB
240 GB
480 GB
960 GB
Memory
Toshiba 128 GB, TLC
Controller
Phison PS3110-S10
Buffer memory
256 MB
512 MB
1024 MB
Maximum speed sequential read/write
560/425 MB/s
560/530 MB/s
560/540 MB/s
Maximum speed of random read/write
100 000/14 000 IOPS
000/23 100 000 IOPS
000/32 100 000 IOPS
000/38 100 000 IOPS
Time between failures
2 000 000 hours
Warranty
3 years
Price
3500 rubles.
6000 rubles.
12 000 RUB.
21 900 rubles.
Buy
Call vertelki:Patriot PBT120GS25SSDR3inline
Call vertelki:Patriot PBT240GS25SSDR3inline
Call vertelki:Patriot PBT480GS25SSDR3inline
Call vertelki:Patriot PBT960GS25SSDR3inline
I almost forgot: Phison PS3110-S10 is a budget controller. Therefore, the maximum reduction in price of the device contributes to the absence of any configuration. At all.
Packing Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
Drive the standard, to reinvent the wheel for the 2.5-inch form factor makes no sense. Metal housing 7 mm thick contributes to the fact that the SSD will fit in most laptops, is equipped with a SATA interface. The frame has no screw mounts. The upper and lower parts are held by special cut-outs on the edges. Poet to disassemble the SSD does not pose any difficulty.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
Printed circuit Board reference. The same architecture can be found in other devices PS3110-S10. That is, Patriot has purchased not only the Phison controller, and the circuit Board together with memory. About the main features of the processor I already did. Help him tragen chip memory standard DDR3-1600 of 512 MB. Judging by the marking, the chip made by Kingston, but this company has no plant. There is only the equipment that allows you to purchase their own plates and cut them into chips, packaged and labeled under their own name. Apparently, there was a double sale.
The memory chip is unsoldered them eight pieces — got an unusual marking TT69G5PARA. Keygen not come in the search engine. Practice shows that in this way the label is used for chip production to Toshiba. In our case, the characteristics are as follows: type — TLC; memory produced by 19-nm process technology. All this only confirms my suspicions. Phison cares about their customers, personally, by ordering the finished plate. Platformer then cuts them into chips, packages and marks them. So is cheaper. Another budget move — the rejection of BGA soldering in favor TSOP-CompuServe (in common — “centipede”).
Printed circuit Board Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
Printed circuit Board Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
Testing
Test stand:
- Processor: Intel Core i7-4790K
- CPU cooler: ENERMAX LIQTECH 240
- Motherboard: MSI Z97 MPOWER
- RAM: DDR3-2133 2x 8 GB
- Storage: Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
- Power supply: Corsair HX850i, 850W
- Peripherals: Samsung U28D590D, ROCCAT ARVO, ROCCAT SAVU
- Operating system: Windows 8.1 x64
As I said, the Blast drives have claimed very high linear speeds of reading and writing. The values correspond to the reality. Starting with 64 Kbytes, PBT480GS25SSDR out at the peak of his performance.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Sequential read/write (ATTO)
Patriot Blast ahead of even the more expensive Samsung 850 PRO drive. As you can see, the controller and SLC caching bear fruit: in the lightweight mode (linear reading/writing) PS3110-S10 has no equal.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Sequential read/write (IOMeter)
However, the transition to operations single-threaded random 4K blocks radically changes the situation. Here PBT480GS25SSDR and markedly inferior to the 850 EVO, and 850 PRO. To lose the “Proshka” is not shameful — the difference in price between the SSD serious. But the 850 EVO is a real competitor.
However, progress is evident: PS3110-S10 markedly increased in work with random read/write. PS3108-S8 in the “pleasing” performance at the level of 12-15 MB/s. Plus don’t forget that the Phison chip works better with compressible data.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Random read/write (IOMeter)
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Random read/write (CrystalDiskMark)
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Random read/write (CrystalDiskMark)
In the operations mixed linear load Blast PBT480GS25SSDR ceded 850 EVO.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Mixed load (IOMeter)
Worst drive manifested itself in the PCMark 7 benchmark, which simulates the daily activities of the user. About the rivalry with the 850 EVO. The backlog is enormous. At the same time, Phison PS3110-S10 managed to concede even prehistoric SF-2281. But this controller was 5 years old.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Performance in PCMark 7 (patterns)
However, in the IOMeter patterns, developed in conjunction with Intel, Blast PBT480GS25SSDR is not so bad. 850 EVO/PRO does not reach, but is ahead of SSD on the SandForce chip and is still relevant Plextor M6 Pro with the Marvell 88SS9187 controller.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Performance in IOMeter (patterns)
Interesting situation turns out, though? On the one hand, Blast PBT480GS25SSDR was very fast in linear reads and writes. On the other hand, lame performance when random access to the drive. Besides SSD PS3110-S10 frankly failed in PCMark 7. What could be wrong? It’s very simple. SLC-caching gives a great increase in speed. Drive until enough buffer reserved technology place, really nimble. Once the cache is full, the speed drops significantly. It is easy to prove using the built-in test AIDA64. Especially serious speed drops when recording. The graph shows that the claimed 530 MB/s performance instantly rolls up to 180 MB/s. And this is true for all drives on the controller Phison PS3110-S10 and memory TLC. Reading speed suffered less, but the decline is observed here as well: with 560 MB/s up to 460 MB/s. Model with MLC chips (e.g., Silicon Power S80) are not explained.
In the end, Blast PBT480GS25SSDR and other SSD using a Phison platform and memory TLC, somewhat similar to sprinters. For “short distances” the performance is impressive. In more difficult conditions drives immediately “blown away”.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Sequential read/write (AIDA64)
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR. Sequential read/write (AIDA64)
Competitors and analogues
Analogues of the lines of the Patriot Blast abound, because we’re dealing with a platformer that takes most of the work. OCZ, Kingston, Sony, GoodRAM, Corsair, SmartBuy, Silicon Power is an incomplete list of companies producing the drives with the controller PS3110-S10.
Competitors include the drives on the controller Silicon Motion SM2256K. This ADATA Premier SP550 and Crucial BX100. And SSD Samsung — series 750 EVO and 850 EVO.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
OCZ Trion 100 TRN100-25SAT3-480G
Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E500BW
Volume
480 GB
480 GB
500 GB
Memory
Toshiba 128 GB, TLC
Toshiba 128 GB, TLC
Samsung 128 GB, TLC V-NAND
Controller
Phison PS3110-S10
Phison PS3110-S10
Samsung MGX
Buffer memory
512 MB
512 MB
512 MB
Maximum speed sequential read/write
560/540 MB/s
550/530 MB/s
540/520 MB/s
Maximum speed of random read/write
000/32 100 000 IOPS
54 000/3200 IOPS
98 000/90 000 IOPS
Warranty
3 years
3 years
5 years
Price
12 000 RUB.
12 100 rubles.
12 400 RUB.
Buy
Call vertelki:Patriot PBT480GS25SSDR3inline
Call vertelki:OCZ TRN100-25SAT3-480G3inline
Call vertelki:Samsung MZ-75E500BW3inline
Analog — OCZ Trion 100. The drive is based on the same controller, use the same type of TLC-memory from Toshiba. Performance the Patriot Blas is somewhat higher, but in fact both SSDS show the same performance.
OCZ Trion 100 TRN100-25SAT3-480G
Competitor — Samsung 850 EVO. As showed the testing, this drive has no serious drawdown after exhaustion of the limit SLC cache. In the end the similarly priced storage device from the Korean manufacturer ahead of Patriot Blast.
Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E500BW
In conclusion
Testing showed that the controller Phison PS3110-S10 doesn’t have any outstanding qualities. Yes, in the framework of the SLC cache and SATA 3.0 PBT480GS25SSDR Blast was unreal fast when performing sequential reads and writes. But the drive is openly folded in more complicated situations. It turns out that at equal value of Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR inferior Samsung 850 EVO MZ-75E500BW.
Contemporary (competitive) look drives 120 GB and 240 GB. Thus, the model Patriot PBT120GS25SSDR costs an average of 3400 rubles, and the Samsung MZ-75E120BW — 4500 rubles. The difference in 1100 roubles is essential.
When you use someone’s design, which does not disdain to use others, there are three ways to be in the black. The first option is to go to the brand. In the USA Patriot sounds good mark, because the U.S. company sells under the name RAM and SSDs. In Russia “the Patriot” is famous, but to a much lesser extent. The second option is to offer SSD with something unusual: an interesting package, useful software. You have convinced yourself that there is nothing that Blast PBT480GS25SSDR no. A third option is to dump, offering essentially the same thing, but at a lower price.
Patriot Blast PBT480GS25SSDR
Pros:
Cons:
- High linear speed of reading and writing;
- Low price.
- Feeble with random operations;
- When “exhaled” SLC cache, the write speed decreases several times.