Drevo Ares NVMe SSD Review

Status
Not open for further replies.

spdragoo

Expert
Ambassador
I gotta say, that switch on the back is definitely not appealing. Aside from not seeing the point of any kind of physical switch to adjust performance on a storage drive (I think software control would have been better), I think a selector dial would have made more sense. Less chance of accidentally changing the selection when fiddling with the back of your PC.
 

I was thinking this as well. Why would you want a toggle switch on the back of your computer that serves no purpose other than to cripple your SSD's performance? Even a dial could get nudged when reaching behind the case to plug in a cable. It they really wanted a switch to marginally reduce power consumption at the expense of performance, why not put in inside the case? It's not like anyone's going to be flipping the switch on a regular basis.

The Ares has a big endurance advantage over the 600p. Intel rates the 600p 256GB at 144 TBW, which is less than half of the Ares' 350 TBW rating. Endurance may not seem like a significant issue, but many shoppers looking at SSDs in this price range want to keep using the drive for several years rather than upgrade frequently.
Even this is practically useless. I can't really imagine many scenarios in which someone would be writing 144TB to one of these drives, let alone 350TB. If you averaged 10GB of writes per day, it should take you nearly 40 years to wear out the flash memory on a 144TBW drive. More than likely, some other component on the SSD, like a capacitor, will fail long before that point. In order to hit 144TB of writes within the 600p's 5-year warranty, you would need to write an average of almost 80GB of data to the drive every single day. That's nearly one-third of the drive's total capacity.

Perhaps more worth noting to someone interested in keeping their drive for a number of years is that the Drevo Ares only offers a 3-year warranty, as opposed to the 5 years for the Intel 600p. In order to write 350TB to the drive within its warranty period, you would need to write around 320GB to the drive every day. Or over 190GB per day if you were using it for the same 5 years compared for the Intel drive. 190GB of writes per day might be more than 80GB, but either one is far higher than any likely usage scenario on a 256GB consumer SSD, to the point where any differences in write endurance don't even matter. So no, the Ares does not have "a big endurance advantage over the 600p". If anything, the shorter warranty might be more of a concern for someone planning to keep the drive for a long time.
 

takeshi7

Honorable
Nov 15, 2013
105
3
10,685
That switch on the back is absolutely pointless and it's an eyesore. It's a nice looking budget AIC meant for desktops. Just ship it from the factory in the highest performance mode and get rid of that stupid switch.
 

mlee 2500

Honorable
Oct 20, 2014
298
6
10,785
Gotta ask yourself:

How mad and/or stupid are you going to feel when you discover that you've been inadvertently running at half speed because the switch moved unbeknownst to you, the last time you reached behind your PC to unplug a monitor, attach a USB cable etc?
 

MxMatrix

Distinguished
Jan 20, 2012
47
0
18,540
It looks like a product targeted for the chinese market. Cheap and sort of swag. Just missing the bling of a staple gun.
 

yonatanhak

Prominent
Nov 12, 2017
1
0
510
See the Electrolytic capacitors at the top?
These are cheap, lifetime limited devices.
This a sign of a product they have cut every corner on the worst.

Don't be blinded by a blue led..
 
And again, this is another product that has half the performance of the 960 EVO but costs 70 dollars more. Ok, 55 dollars more if you factor in the cost of an M.2 to PCIe adapter for those who don't have native M.2.

AND, this one doesn't even have a longer warranty. What makes these companies think they can compete like this and why do we promote them in such a positive light when there are so many better, cheaper options?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.