Hyundai Sapphire Low-Cost SSD Review

[Guest]

DRAMless SSDs are finally available. Many are hard to spot, but one company is passing the savings on with a 240GB drive that retailers can't keep in stock.

Hyundai Sapphire Low-Cost SSD Review : Read more

 

[AgentLozen]

This SSD seems to be competent enough in its price class. It's not something I would ever buy, but I can see it's appeal in low cost computers.

I think I would feel better about this type of SSD in a year or two when 3D NAND phases out old planar stuff. By virtue of 3D memory's naturally high endurance and performance, this sort of SSD will become more desirable and less cringe worthy.

 

[Sakkura]

Surprisingly acceptable performance, given that it's a DRAMless drive from an unexpected brand. I was afraid it was going to be even worse than Sandisk's low-end junk (Z410, SSD Plus), but I guess not.

Too bad they can't keep it in stock at $50. Newegg saying sold out, with a $193 price tag. Otherwise it would be an easy recommendation for budget builds.

I'd like to see a design like this at the 500GB capacity point. I feel like that's a much more comfortable capacity if it's going to be the only drive in a system. And an SSD-only system is the dream. A ~$100 price would make that viable even on a fairly restricted budget.

 

[AgentLozen]

I'd like to see a design like this at the 500GB capacity point. I feel like that's a much more comfortable capacity if it's going to be the only drive in a system. And an SSD-only system is the dream. A ~$100 price would make that viable even on a fairly restricted budget.

I like the words you're typing.

 

[DavidC1]

It's actually better to get a regular modern HDD. SSDs like this will feel fast for a bit but will screech to a halt. That's much worse than a constant chug.

The steady state performance is the real performance. Few hundred IOPs aren't better than HDDs, without mentioning the more complete stops you'll notice with these kind of drives.

 

[DavidC1]

"The Hyundai Sapphire provides inconsistent performance. In some application tests the drive performs well compared to the others, but in other tests, it falls well short of the competition."

This is ridiculous. Most of the applications show less than 5% gain. I mean you are talking about saving 2-3 seconds at most.

 

[Reaver192]

DAVIDC1, would you mind explaining further type of systems you have encountered this with? I have seen that problem when people use aftermarket SSD's on macbooks because trim cannot be automatically enabled, and has to be reset after each update manually so trim is off and the users are not aware of it which will slow the drive speed dramatically over time. Is it a situation like this that you're referring to? I have not noticed that issue with any of my builds and my current PC has had numerous games installed and uninstalled on it, with a mediocre SSD at best. I'm interested in avoiding the pitfall you have mentioned. Thanks

 

[Gregory_3]

I'm surprised to see anyone still clinging to standard HDDs. I've been using multiple SSDs of various kinds for years, beginning with Intels. It's certainly possible to get along without them, but for serious gaming, they are absolutely essential in my view. If you computer is nothing more than an office tool, then the continued use of the HDD might make economic sense. But it won't be long before the prices eclipse and the whole matter will be settled.

 

[4745454b]

The read/write speeds of 500+/400+ seemed good, but all the rest of the tests showed it being much slower than the other drives. After looking at the first test I thought it might be a good drive, but now I wouldn't touch it.

 

[raventothepowerofpi]

hdd's dont work if youre traveling though @davidc1

 

[JimmiG]

I'm surprised to see anyone still clinging to standard HDDs. I've been using multiple SSDs of various kinds for years, beginning with Intels. It's certainly possible to get along without them, but for serious gaming, they are absolutely essential in my view. If you computer is nothing more than an office tool, then the continued use of the HDD might make economic sense. But it won't be long before the prices eclipse and the whole matter will be settled.

Well until you can buy 4 TB SSD's for under $200, I'll continue to "cling" to my HDD's.

 

[4745454b]

I use 4TB HDDs for mass storage. You don't need SSD speed for your music or itunes collection. Keep an SSD for OS and games, but you don't really need 4TB SSDs unless your steam folder is really that large.

 

[Jeff Fx]

>It's a hard sell to convince a casual user to pay more for 256GB of flash than they
would pay for a 1TB HDD.

Not if they're Windows users. Let them try using Windows on a PC with Windows on an SSD, and they'll never be willing to put up with the sluggish UI of a hard-drive based machine again.

 

[AcesB]

Its weird that nobody say a word about cache software, using RAM as L1 cache and optionally SSD as L2 Cache. This improves both IOPS and throughput to stellar performance level. I use 4GB RAM as L1 and half partition of a Sandisk SSD 240gb as L2. CrystalDiskMark shows Sequential (Block Size=128KiB) Read/Write as 8439MB/s and 7255MB/S; Random 4KiB Read/Write with multi Queues are 1038MB/s and 790/MBS. This are impossible number for any bare SSD.

 

[Sakkura]

The read/write speeds of 500+/400+ seemed good, but all the rest of the tests showed it being much slower than the other drives. After looking at the first test I thought it might be a good drive, but now I wouldn't touch it.

It crushes the Z410 and SSD Plus in 4K random write, mixed sequentials, steady-state sequentials, and service times. I don't see how you can call it much slower than those drives.

 

[asim1973]

You only need an SSD for the OS, for everything else including gaming a HDD is absolutely fine, had my laptop for 3 years and never had a problem with using HDD'S.

 

[hellwig]

Is this the type of RAM-less SDD that has direct access to system RAM and stores the file tables there? Or are file tables directly read/written from/to the NVM? The former scares me, and I would never even consider it in a system that wasn't battery-backed. Based on some performance numbers, though, I assume it's the latter?

 

[4745454b]

It crushes the Z410 and SSD Plus in 4K random write, mixed sequentials, steady-state sequentials, and service times. I don't see how you can call it much slower than those drives.

Again, it does good in the sequential read/write tests. I said as much in my first post. But every test after that has it down at/near the bottom of the pack. Random read? Dead last. Random write? Third place. 80% mixed? At nearly all queue depths it's dead last. And when it's not last it's still at the bottom. Two other tests that stood out were the Application Storage Bandwidth and battery life tests which showed it again, dead last. Considering how well it did with the sequential read/write tests I would have thought it would have done better with the other tests. But test after test had it bringing up the rear. I get that it's not a performance drive and I wouldn't expect it to be a leader everywhere. Just really odd to me that it reads/writes so well only to have it fail so bad at everything else. Hopefully a firmware update can fix this.

I'm interested in these SSDs because I have performance SSDs for my OS. What I need is a large SSD for my steam folder. Something simple that can send the data to my system quickly. If I can get a large ~1TB drive that provides middle of the road speeds for my Steam folder at a much cheaper price than the Sumsung Evo's, etc then I'd be all over one. This article said they have a 960GB model, but if it performs this poorly then I'm passing.

 

[Sakkura]

It crushes the Z410 and SSD Plus in 4K random write, mixed sequentials, steady-state sequentials, and service times. I don't see how you can call it much slower than those drives.

Again, it does good in the sequential read/write tests. I said as much in my first post. But every test after that has it down at/near the bottom of the pack. Random read? Dead last. Random write? Third place. 80% mixed? At nearly all queue depths it's dead last. And when it's not last it's still at the bottom. Two other tests that stood out were the Application Storage Bandwidth and battery life tests which showed it again, dead last. Considering how well it did with the sequential read/write tests I would have thought it would have done better with the other tests. But test after test had it bringing up the rear. I get that it's not a performance drive and I wouldn't expect it to be a leader everywhere. Just really odd to me that it reads/writes so well only to have it fail so bad at everything else. Hopefully a firmware update can fix this.

I'm interested in these SSDs because I have performance SSDs for my OS. What I need is a large SSD for my steam folder. Something simple that can send the data to my system quickly. If I can get a large ~1TB drive that provides middle of the road speeds for my Steam folder at a much cheaper price than the Sumsung Evo's, etc then I'd be all over one. This article said they have a 960GB model, but if it performs this poorly then I'm passing.

You are completely misrepresenting the facts. Sequentials? When the Sapphire gets 11,000 QD1 random write IOPS, and the Sandisk SSD Plus gets 496?

 

[dorsai]

"You only need an SSD for the OS, for everything else including gaming a HDD is absolutely fine..."

Seriously...gaming is THE reason to buy an SSD. Level load times on modern games are killer on an old school HDD's...I gave up running even 10k Raptors for SSD's about 4 years ago...

 

[Brian_R170]

They've should've branded it as a Kia. Isn't that the low-end Hundai?

 

[bit_user]

Hmmm... I wonder how much they're paying to license the name. I wonder if someone will sell Kia-branded SSDs, next.

Seriously, does Hyundai sell their name for anything, or do they at least require some quality control to ensure their brand isn't going to get trashed?

 

[4745454b]

That's one test where it's in the middle. What about those other four tests I mentioned where it's dead last? I'm not "completely misrepresenting" anything. In many/most of those tests it's at the bottom or near the bottom. Which I found odd considering it's at the top or near the top in the first of the speed tests.

 

[jfoster38122]

The link for the 64 doll drive goes to Newegg and it's 193 dollars
Yeah no thanks

 

[Kunra Zether]

I guess it depends on the user but I still feel that you need an hdd for the junk you don't use all the time like pictures and music , games you don't play often. I use my ssd for the os and all other system tools and whatever games I play often.