MyDigitalSSD BPX Value NVMe SSD Review

[CRamseyer]

Please see the Best of SSD article for an update on the BPX. There is a link to buy the drives today. The preorder is over and all three capacity sizes are available.

 

[Bruce427]

OK. I just installed a MyDigital 240GB BPX in one of my notebooks.

I ran an ATTO Benchmark on it and was very much surprised. I recorded Sequential Read speeds of 2960.6MB/s and Sequential Write speeds of 2188.6MB/s (the Write speed is what surprised me because the drive is only rated at 1300MB/s Write).

I am currently running a battery life test on it and will post the results as soon as the test has completed. But the preliminary results, so far, appear to indicate that the battery life is going to be better than with my Samsung 256GB 950 Pro.

With a fresh install of W10 and about 30GBs on the drive, the notebook is booting in 12 seconds from power on to desktop. My Samsung 256GB 950 Pro takes 19 seconds with the same software.

I am using a Prostar (Clevo) N170RF1 notebook.

I purchased the drive direct from MyDigital Discount and got it for $107.85 with free shipping.

I was planning to purchase 3 Samsung 960 EVOs for various computers. But since Samsung has delayed delivery twice and currently has no expected delivery date, I bought the BPX has a place holder.

BUT -- if the battery life turns out to be acceptable, this drive is so good I might not even buy the Samsungs. This drive uses MLC flash and has a TBW rating of 700 -- while the Samsung 960 EVO (500GB capacity) uses TLC flash and has a TBW rating of just 200.

Moreover, and this may not hold true for everyone, but so far I cannot tell any performance drop off between the BPX and the my 256GB Samsung Pro.

(I tried to post the ATTO results, but the comment frame/window wouldn't accept the image.)

 

[Bruce427]

Here are the results of my battery life using the MyDigital 240GB BPX NVMe drive.

The drive in installed in a Prostar (Clevo) notebook with a 17.3" screen and an i7 Skylake 6700HQ Processor. The battery is rated at 5000 mAh.

With a Samsung 256GB Pro 950 the battery lasted 4:05. (hours/minutes)
With the MyDigital 240GB BPX the battery lasted 4:37.

This was with a full charge each time and running precisely the same software for precisely the same amount of time.

This, of course, is not a scientific test, but it was a direct comparison between another drive that is not known for excessive power consumption. I was not able to replicate the poor battery life that revealed itself on Chris' Lenovo notebook.

 

[RojasTKD]

You say yours not got above 49c temps in you testing. I just installed a BPX a couple of days back and at it's lowest mine is always in the mid to high 60c and running Crystal Dick Mark it rose to 88c.

Should I be concerned?

 

[CRamseyer]

There are other reports of the drive reaching up to 90C. I use HDD Sentinel to monitor temps during testing and it shows the minimum and maximum. I think it didn't read our drives right. They later updated the software and now it shows high peaks. We talked to Phison and learned that the controller starts throttling at 90. You should only see high temps while running benchmarks.

 

[Inkiad]

The thing is in my country the Intel 600p 250GB costs less than the 850 EVO 240GB. I went with 600p and i have no regrets.

 

[Bruce427]

Chris,

While waiting on the Samsung 500GB EVO 960 review (I didn't want the 250GB version because of the poor review) I installed a 240GB MyDigital BPX as a place holder ... and I must say that I am completely satisfied for a drive that cost only $107.85 at MyDigitalDiscount.com.

Under normal daily usage, I can't really tell a lot of difference between it and the 256GB 950 Pros I have in other computers.

My question concerns benchmark numbers. When I run CDM I get the expected ~2800 MB/s Sequential Read and ~1400 MB/s Sequential Write.

But when I run ATTO, I get about the same Read numbers but the Sequential Write number increases to near 2400 MB/s. About a 1000 MB/s discrepancy.

I noticed the same phenomenon on the MyDigital Website Benchmarking images for this drive.

Any idea what causes this anomaly? I have never experienced this large a discrepancy between CDM and ATTO before on any other drive.

 

[Bruce427]

** RojasTKD > I just installed a BPX a couple of days back and at it's lowest mine is always in the mid to high 60c and running Crystal Dick Mark it rose to 88c. **

I noted the same running ATTO with the BPX. But the drive didn't go into Thermal Throttling.

I installed a small 2mm thick GPU heat sink (17x17mm square) on the controller and it dropped the average operating temperature by about 6 degrees C.

Here's a link where I ordered them (Note: if you're not installing them in a notebook with space limitations, the same company also offers thicker heat sinks for about the same price).

https://www.moddiy.com/products/3M-8810-Thermally-Conductive-Adhesive-2mm-Ultra%252dThin-Heatsink-%286-Pack%29.html

 

[RojasTKD]

<Bruce427>
Thank you so much, think I'll give it a try.

 

[Bruce427]

**<Bruce427>
Thank you so much, think I'll give it a try **

You are welcome. Please note that the heat sinks ship from China, so it takes a couple of weeks to get them.

 

[RojasTKD]

Using AS SSD my BPX write performance is WAY below what I would expect. Much slower than my SATA SSDs,

My DigitalSSD BPX:
Reads Writes
Seq 2268.06 473.88
4k 45.63 8.76
4k-64Thrd 396.04 12.37
Acc.Time 0.037ms 0.384ms

Samsung 850 EVO:
Reads Writes
Seq 511.07 493.41
4k 43.013 126.82
4k-64Thrd 377.51 287.75
Acc.Time 0.086ms 0.025ms

Something has to be wrong here? With AS SSD all three of my SATA SSDs writes are in the hundreds of MB while the BPX is in the 10 (or less) MB!

Crystal Disk Mark score higher reads but still less than what is shown on MyDigitalSSD site, Seg writes being 1117 MB vs 1300 to 1400 MB shown.

Might have to contact MyDigitalSSD. What do you think?

 

[RojasTKD]

UPDATE:

According to MyDigitalSSDthere is some kind of firmware conflict with AS SSD benchmark. That would explain the incredibly low reported write speeds.

Still my crystal mark sequential writes are in the 1100MB (Seq Q32T1) and 750 to 800MB (Seq), which is a 200 to 300 MB slower than advertised. On the plus side some my reads speeds are a little bit faster than what they show.

In everyday use can't really tell the difference between the PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD and SATA III SSDs, but when moving large file or folders, is is SUPER fast.

 

[rr67gto]

I just checked their web page. The 240GB, is down 7 bucks to $107.00.