Review Inland TN436 SSD Review: Retail 2230 Drive That Comes Up Short

[Admin]

The Inland TN436 is a specialized SSD, a retail option produced in the 2230 form factor for devices like the Steam Deck and Surface but workable in many PCs. Its performance is generally poor and it's pricier than the average 1TB SSD.

Inland TN436 SSD Review: Retail 2230 Drive That Comes Up Short : Read more

 

[petllama]

Are any of the comparison products even 2230? Why was the sn530 left out since it's one of the few 2230 1tb drives that comes highly recommended for the steam deck, which this product is advertising for.

 

[patrick47018]

This review really needs to be updated with testing showing performance vs. other 2230 drives.

 

[watzupken]

Personally, I feel the performance of such small NVME SSDs are within my expectations. Given that this is a 2230, it will run into thermal throttling before it can hit anywhere near the PCI-E 4.0 transfer rate. My experience with a Samsung NVME 512GB drive in the 2242 form was that it ran so hot, it thermal throttled within a few seconds without any heatsink on it. And that was a PCI-E 3.0 drive. Even with a tall ram sink on it, the ram sink became so hot that I cannot even leave my finger on it for more than a second. So I expect 2230 to be worst since the heat concentration will be higher.

 

[seanwebster]

Are any of the comparison products even 2230? Why was the sn530 left out since it's one of the few 2230 1tb drives that comes highly recommended for the steam deck, which this product is advertising for.

As much as we would like to include more 2230 drives, there aren't many available in retail atm. Most are used, second-hand devices without any factory warranty. Unfortunately, the SN530 isn't a retail drive and it wasn't sampled to us for review, so we don't have a sample to compare to on hand. However, we recently sampled a Sabrent Rocket 2230 and will be able to compare it head-to-head in an upcoming review soon.

Personally, I feel the performance of such small NVME SSDs are within my expectations. Given that this is a 2230, it will run into thermal throttling before it can hit anywhere near the PCI-E 4.0 transfer rate. My experience with a Samsung NVME 512GB drive in the 2242 form was that it ran so hot, it thermal throttled within a few seconds without any heatsink on it. And that was a PCI-E 3.0 drive. Even with a tall ram sink on it, the ram sink became so hot that I cannot even leave my finger on it for more than a second. So I expect 2230 to be worst since the heat concentration will be higher.

Bear in mind, surfaces 50-55C+ are too hot to touch for us, but perfectly fine for these chips to operate at. Often, NAND controllers can reach temps of 70-85C before throttling.

 

[bolweval]

Sure is cute..

 

[t-dome]

The TN436 appears to be a retail variant of the OEM Kioxia BG5 which uses relatively new hardware but nothing cutting-edge.

If the hardware is similar, then the firmware surely is not. The BG5 has different specs, and also benchmarks on the Deck show completely different results.
My BG5 1 TB has slower sequential reads, but faster writes. And the random reads are 50% higher than those of the TN436.