Mushkin Triactor SSD Review

[Guest]

The Mushkin Triactor series pairs the Silicon Motion, Inc. SM2256 controller with high-quality SanDisk 15nm TLC flash and hides in the shadows as a great low-cost option in a sea of mediocre products.

Mushkin Triactor SSD Review : Read more

 

[josejones]

LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.

Remember, VGA got pretty cheap too and it took like 10 years to get rid of it. We certainly need SATA for now but, it should start being considered obsolete by 2020 and begin to disappear from motherboards to make more room for more NVMe SSD connections. I just hope SATA doesn't turn into the next VGA and linger for 10 years. No point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.

"The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

"Starting in October, the DemoEval lab will be hosting clusters for Silicon Valley startups using all NVMe SSDs. A year ago, these were SAS/ SATA clusters so the change is clearly upon us."
https://www.servethehome.com/going-fast-inexpensively-48tb-of-near-sata-pricing-nvme-ssds/

NVLINK Unified Virtual Memory (UVM) = 5 to 12 times faster than PCIE 3.0
http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-volta-gpus-sc15/

 

[Game256]

Samsung has changed the release dates of Samsung 960 (once again) on their site and set specific dates.

The release date of Samsung 960 PRO 512GB/1TB is November 18. The release date of Samsung 960 EVO (all versions) and Samsung 960 PRO 2 TB is December 19.

 

[joz]

In all my years building and servicing computers for myself, family, friends and various odd-job commissions for strangers - I will, and will always trust Mushkin for my RAM, and lately - SSDs. As a budget-quality oriented guy, Mushkin is the one company who's RAM has never failed me; and their SSD's work well without putting pressure on the wallet. For most people[regular consumers and moderate gamers], the high performance gains of the EVOs or other 'high performance' SSD's is a non-noticeable gain over any half-decent SSD. And Mushkin is not just a half-decent SSD. Mushkin is a GOOD SSD that is designed towards a specific segment without sacrificing quality. The Reactor was a fine 1TB drive, the ECO series was cheap, but of the six I've used so far in builds, not a single issue has popped up.

I will definitively be looking into the Atlas series if I need more m.2 drives (which seems to be the growing trend.) But still, I love Mushkin ram the most.

Anyway, in my semi-professional system building and tech troubleshooter, and yes, biased opinion, Mushkin is one of the best tech companies out there and we should be supporting them and their products.

 

[apk24]

[quotemsg=18809517,0,421409]LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.

Remember, VGA got pretty cheap too and it took like 10 years to get rid of it. We certainly need SATA for now but, it should start being considered obsolete by 2020 and begin to disappear from motherboards to make more room for more NVMe SSD connections. I just hope SATA doesn't turn into the next VGA and linger for 10 years. No point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.
[/quotemsg]

You're going to have a hard time convincing anyone to reduce the number of SATA ports on a motherboard for a couple of reasons.
[listNum=1]
■ It's still a viable standard and will be for some time. HDDs, while on the way to obsolescence, aren't gone yet and it makes no sense to put an HDD on anything more than SAS/SATA 3.0. Until the day that a 1-2TB HDD and SSD cost the same, people will still buy HDDs.
■ For the foreseeable future, SATA SSDs will be cheaper than NVMe SSDs and there is definitely a budget market. The monitor analogy fails in this respect because a 720p monitor will cost roughly the same regardless of whether it uses HDMI or VGA.
■ SATA SSDs perform fast enough for most users. We have reached a point in tech development that the general user is more than happy with a Core i3, a few gigs of RAM, and a SATA SSD. You don't need much more for the average workload. If/when the average workload changes, we might see a stronger push towards faster/better components. However, atm it is purely the gaming/workstation type customers that are fueling the push for more power. I, and I'm assuming you, fall into this category.
■ It's a number on a box that could be easily beaten by another manufacturer; marketing depts won't be happy about it.
[/listNum]
While I agree that SATA should be heading the way of IDE, it's unlikely that anyone will accept a planned obsolescence by 2020.

 

[Guest]

It would be nice if more products like USB flash drives and SSDs would ship in cardboard boxes like GPUs and such do. I understand it's smaller but just use a small box since SSDs are thankfully still made of metal and not plastic (yet...). Plastic doesn't degrade well, and hurts marine life so we're left with mutated fish to eat over time. Let's stop packaging things in so much plastic and use something like paper or cardboard.

On another note, let's stop making flash drives out of plastic. I know that currently the PCB uses plastic, but there are alternatives that have not been tried yet because they sound absolutely ridiculous: chicken feathers and soybean oil. It was attempted over a decade ago and I guess that didn't take off. There are alternatives that we have yet to discover to make PCBs.

The enclosure of the USB drives can be rubber like the Patriot Memory RAGE or BOOST XT line. There are now wood enclosed flash drives as well. SSDs are still metal, so let's have recyclable packaging since it's a one time use thing.

 

[HERETIC-1]

The 8K+Random read at QD1 was a pleasant surprise for TLC.
If they could increase buffer size,it wouldn't be a bad drive.
I'm sure using quality SD flash it wouldn't effect endurance too much.

 

[Xajel]

[quotemsg=18809537,0,2324280]Samsung has changed the release dates of Samsung 960 (once again) on their site and set specific dates.

The release date of Samsung 960 PRO 512GB/1TB is November 18. The release date of Samsung 960 EVO (all versions) and Samsung 960 PRO 2 TB is December 19.[/quotemsg]

Are you sure of this ? I saw the Pro release date update but I didn't saw anything regarding Evo which I'm planning on have...

 

[Xajel]

[quotemsg=18809517,0,421409]LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.[/quotemsg]

I totally agree with wasting money on SATA but...

For now, there's two to three reasons
1- There's still no concrete way to add NVME SSD's like a regular 2.5/3.5 HDD's there's SATA Express yes but honestly that bulky cable is just a workaround, it's not even good enough to replace any SATA cable... basically it's a pathetic way to add a NVME SSD. and look around, how many SSD actually uses that thing ? hell almost nothing.. most solutions depends on M.2 or direct PCIe card.

2- Officially only x90 series chipset support NVME ( to boot from ), while technically any chipset x60 series and above can support it with simple UFEI bios update but most companies didn't do this update ( as they want you to upgrade )... I my self has Z77 motherboard and ASUS did not release any update ( and will never do ), there's a manual way to mod the bios in order to add support.. but honestly how many will actually bother them selfs with such route ?

3- SATA SSD's are still the cheapest way to go for SSD... NVME just started to be cheaper but still more expensive than SATA SSD's... and looking at how most peoples will do ( complications, costs & current system supports like most notebooks does not have NVME M.2 ) then most will go for a SATA solution because it will just work and a cheap way to upgrade their hardware with the least hustle and cost possible...


Personally, my next upgrade will be a 512GB SATA M.2 for my laptop ( SATA M.2 on a 2.5" adapter )... and a 512GB NVME M.2 on a PCIe card for my desktop which I'll need to mod the BIOS in order to be able to boot from...

later, I can take out that M.2 SATA SSD and use it as external fast flash on a smaller SATA M.2 -> USB housing... and I could directly put the NVME M.2 on a future motherboard ( with no PCIe adapter needed )

 

[logainofhades]

I still need sata. When they can make 4tb+ SSD affordable, maybe then I will care to make the switch.

 

[Nintendork]

Thing is that unless you work with huge chunks of data (like editing videos), there's little use of the 2GB+ sequential speeds of a NVME pci 4x drive.

Random 4k reads and latency are nearly the same between a good sata and a good pcie based SSD.

 

[josejones]

SATA sucks and needs to go. Those defending it are fighting a losing battle. VGA was pretty worthless yet was kept around for like 10 years.

"The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

http://content.hwigroup.net/images/articles/ssd-interface-comparison-v2-en.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_31_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_18_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png

 

[apk24]

[quotemsg=18815056,0,421409]SATA sucks and needs to go. Those defending it are fighting a losing battle. VGA was pretty worthless yet was kept around for like 10 years.

"The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

http://content.hwigroup.net/images/articles/ssd-interface-comparison-v2-en.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_31_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_18_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png[/quotemsg]

Repeating what you have already said without addressing the comments of others doesn't really add much to a conversation. I don't think anyone here is arguing that SATA is a superior standard over PCIe as far as data transfer goes. PCIe is clearly better.

However, most are arguing that calling SATA obsolete is ignoring many ways that keeping SATA support is beneficial to both manufacturers and consumers. These include cheaper disk costs due to simpler controllers, the availability of large SATA HDDs that are still cheaper per GB than any SSD on the market, and others that I and several others have listed in other posts.

 

[rhysiam]

[quotemsg=18815056,0,421409]SATA sucks and needs to go. Those defending it are fighting a losing battle. VGA was pretty worthless yet was kept around for like 10 years.

"The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

http://content.hwigroup.net/images/articles/ssd-interface-comparison-v2-en.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_31_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png

http://imagescdn.tweaktown.com/content/6/4/6468_18_defining_nvme_hands_on_testing_with_the_1_6tb_intel_p3700_ssd.png[/quotemsg]

NVMe and PCIe storage is definitely the future... but this is a budget drive. It's aiming to deliver acceptable SSD performance at the lowest possible price. It's obviously not as good as an PCIe NVMe drive, but it's much cheaper and still offers a sizeable advantage over any HDD solution.

Of course the high end is ditching SATA. The last premium SATA SSDs (which are still the fastest SATA SSDs today) were released years ago (I'm thinking the 850 Pro and Sandisk Extreme Pro).

But if you think this drive is pointless, then please could you post a link to a PCIe device which offers acceptable SSD performance at a similar price. When those products start to exist (and the will at some point), then this drive will be obsolete. But now, it absolutely has a place in the market.

One other point about SATA... I would like to be able to throw large amount of redundant storage in a box and not have to spend the earth. Even if PCIe SSDs become affordable at high capacities, that still won't be possible until we get more PCIe lanes. So that's the other place where SATA makes sense.

You're missing a fundamental point here... you're only looking at sequential read & write speeds. To benefit from those speeds, you need a capable source AND destination device. SATA3 is faster than Gbit LAN, faster than USB 3 (gen1). So at the moment, the only time you benefit from you fancy sequential throughput on a PCIe based drive is if you have two internal drives you're copying between (why?), or you have 10gbit LAN or thunderbolt (again... with PCIe based drives on either end).

 

[josejones]

[quotemsg=18815657,0,2054346]Repeating what you have already said without addressing the comments of others doesn't really add much to a conversation. I don't think anyone here is arguing that SATA is a superior standard over PCIe as far as data transfer goes. PCIe is clearly better.

However, most are arguing that calling SATA obsolete is ignoring many ways that keeping SATA support is beneficial to both manufacturers and consumers. These include cheaper disk costs due to simpler controllers, the availability of large SATA HDDs that are still cheaper per GB than any SSD on the market, and others that I and several others have listed in other posts.[/quotemsg]

LOL, the comments were addressed, you are obviously not paying attention. I am specifically referring to SATA storage vs NVMe and some act like a bunch of elementary school girls with their knickers in a bunch having a mental breakdown out over the idea that SATA will soon be obsolete. Not my problem. If the SATA fundy's are stuck on SATA I could care less. If all you care about is cheap, old, outdated crap soon to be obsolete that is your issue not mine. VGA was super cheap too - you still using it?

Factoid: SATA sucks for storage and will start being obsolete by 2020. Remember, VGA got pretty cheap too and it took like 10 years to get rid of it. We certainly need SATA for now but, it should start being considered obsolete by 2020 and begin to disappear from motherboards to make more room for more NVMe SSD connections. I just hope SATA doesn't turn into the next VGA and linger for 10 years. No point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.

Price premiums for new far better technology has always been there and is no surprise and it is also no surprise that over time prices will drop. So, before long all of these pro-SATA arguments you mention will be utterly irrelevant and moot. Sticking with SATA holds back progress.

What part of this do you not understand:

"The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

"Starting in October, the DemoEval lab will be hosting clusters for Silicon Valley startups using all NVMe SSDs. A year ago, these were SAS/ SATA clusters so the change is clearly upon us."
https://www.servethehome.com/going-fast-inexpensively-48tb-of-near-sata-pricing-nvme-ssds/

 

[logainofhades]

You are still ignoring the high capacity HDD's, that SSD cannot come close to the price/GB on. SATA is not going anywhere until we get those high capacity SSD's at an HDD price.

 

[josejones]

[quotemsg=18824191,0,59887]You are still ignoring the high capacity HDD's, that SSD cannot come close to the price/GB on. SATA is not going anywhere until we get those high capacity SSD's at an HDD price. [/quotemsg]

I've already make it categorically clear - I COULD NOT GIVE A <language> ABOUT PRICE RIGHT NOW. We all know about the price premium and we are in agreement on that, however, there's still no point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.


Before SATA there was PATA - you guys still clinging to that too? PATA is capable of data transfers speeds of 66/100/133 MBs/second, whereas SATA is capable of 150/300/600 MBs/second

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

Woo hoo lets all go out and get some cheap <language> PATA

 

[g-unit1111]

josejones - language of this type will not be tolerated around here. Please be aware of this in the future.

 

[apk24]

[quotemsg=18824231,0,421409][quotemsg=18824191,0,59887]You are still ignoring the high capacity HDD's, that SSD cannot come close to the price/GB on. SATA is not going anywhere until we get those high capacity SSD's at an HDD price. [/quotemsg]

I've already make it categorically clear - I COULD NOT GIVE A <language> ABOUT PRICE RIGHT NOW. We all know about the price premium and we are in agreement on that, however, there's still no point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.


Before SATA there was PATA - you guys still clinging to that too? PATA is capable of data transfers speeds of 66/100/133 MBs/second, whereas SATA is capable of 150/300/600 MBs/second

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_ATA

Woo hoo lets all go out and get some cheap <language> PATA [/quotemsg]

PATA HDDs are not significantly cheaper(actually slightly more expensive) than SATA HDDs. PATA went obsolete when SATA replaced every function of PATA for the same price. I remember seeing PATA drives on the market until that happened. NVMe doesn't even come close to doing that yet.

By your logic, we should have dropped SATA a long time ago since SAS exists. It's superior to SATA in every way except for cost.

You're also ignoring that SATA speeds are "good enough" for most users and NVMe is just not worth the premium. The average user doesn't see the point of paying an extra $0.30-0.50 per GB extra for improving boot and load times by a few seconds.

What about RAID arrays? Even if you say that RAID 0 is pointless because NVMe is fast enough, RAID 1, 5, 6, 10 serve a very valid purpose of data redundancy. Until platforms (CPU+Chipset) come with more PCIe lanes, RAIDing NVMe drives just isn't possible past a couple drives. Think of home NASes with 4-8 drives, those would all still be SATA. What's more, they'd probably all be high capacity HDDs, not even SSDs.

And on the topic of high capacity HDDs, I have 5TB of storage connected to my mITX Skylake system right now(my build on pcpp hasn't been updated, but the mobo and cpu are the same). If we were to obsolete SATA, like you recommend. How would you recommend I go about connecting that amount of storage to my system?

You can't call a technology obsolete until it has NO place in the market. If there is no replacement for high capacity HDDs or cheaper SSDs that perform well enough for the average user, you can't say that SATA is obsolete. It clearly still has a use, and we have listed some of them.

I'd like to reiterate that no one is arguing whether PCIe is better than SATA. Everyone knows it is. We will eventually shift to PCIe or another similarly fast standard eventually. When SATA no longer serves a purpose it'll drop out of the market. However, SATA is far from obsolete in the current short term and we have a very real need for some of the functions it provides.

 

[USAFRet]

Will the SATA interface go away, to be replaced by something 'better'? Yes, eventually.

However, the current huge installed base points to that not being 'soon'.
And systems are already 'fast'. People don't upgrade as quickly as they used ot.

For my main system, the only way I can take advantage of an NVMe drive is...a whole new system.
This is an i5-3570k, 16GB RAM, 4 x SSD totaling ~2TB drive space. Plus a 3TB that holds 'all that other junk'.

My next main system will probably have 1 or more NVMe drives.
But whining about SATA + SSD being "super slow" and demanding that it goes away NOW is simply useless blather.

 

[logainofhades]

In real world usage, most would never know the difference between say a 960 pro, and an 850 evo.

 

[USAFRet]

[quotemsg=18824566,0,59887]In real world usage, most would never know the difference between say a 960 pro, and an 850 evo. [/quotemsg]

Exactly.
I almost find it hard to tell between a SATA II Sandisk 120GB and a SATA III Samsung 500GB.
Both used as the C drive in different systems.

The difference is there, but it's not soul crushing.
Now...between the SATA II Sandisk and any HDD? Huge difference.

 

[13thmonkey]

Another point for sata, it takes up next to no mobo real estate, and the drives can be placed off the board, want to try fitting 3-4 drives directly onto a motherboard, you're going to need a bigger board, that means itx can only have 1 drive (if that), matx maybe 2. With Sata there is no physical limitation.

 

[apk24]

[quotemsg=18824611,0,45784]Another point for sata, it takes up next to no mobo real estate, and the drives can be placed off the board, want to try fitting 3-4 drives directly onto a motherboard, you're going to need a bigger board, that means itx can only have 1 drive (if that), matx maybe 2. With Sata there is no physical limitation. [/quotemsg]
Personally, I don't put a lot of stock in that counterpoint. U.2 connectors aren't that big. The day a SATA HDD (or high capacity SSD) becomes comparable in price to an NVMe HDD (or high capacity SSD), then I'm sure we'll see U.2 and the like become more popular on motherboards. mITX boards might cost a bit more and have 3 ports instead of 4 but that's not so bad. What is bad is that 3x4 lanes going to the drives leaves very little bandwidth for peripherals like wireless card, USB controllers, etc (assuming you have the 16 from CPU going straight to your GPU).

 

[josejones]

[quotemsg=18824472,0,537231]josejones - language of this type will not be tolerated around here. Please be aware of this in the future. [/quotemsg]

What on earth is your problem? Big deal, cheap arse Pata ... knickers in a bunch?