SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

2015 is the year of the Solid State Drive. The technology has advanced to the limit of the SATA 3 interface, and prices have never been more competitive. SK hynix are keen to cement their position in this market and regular readers will be aware of our reviews of their 128GB and 256GB SC300 drives. Today we look at a larger capacity 512GB drive within the SC300 portfolio – priced at £134.99.

SK hynix, to give them their full name, is a South Korean semiconductor specialist that was established in 1983 and it has over 17,000 employees spread across a number of sites. Technically, it was born out of Hyundai (HYundai electroNICS) and it bought the Maxtor hard drive company in 1993.

Behind rival Samsung, SK hynix claims to be the world’s second largest memory chip maker and sixth biggest semiconductor company overall.

At some stage or another, every major player on the planet is likely to have used SK hynix memory modules – including IBM (System X servers), Asus (Nexus 7) and Apple (some MacBook and MacBook Pro models).

The SC300 is a multi level cell Solid State Drive and the NAND is built on the 16nm process. They are shipping in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.

SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB rated performance levels:

• Sequential Read: 530 MB/s
• Sequential Write: 470 MB/s
• 4KB Random Read: 95,000 IOPS
• 4KB Random Write: 85,000 IOPS

Product Overview:

• Fully compliant with SATA revision 3.1, compatible with SATA 6.0Gb/s interface rates.
• Fully compliant with ATA-8/ACS-3 Standard.
• PIO, DMA, UDMA (up to 6, dependent on host) supported.
• SATA 6.0Gb/s Native Command Queuing (NCQ) : up to 32 commands.
• Power Saving Modes : HIPM and DIPM (Partial/Slumber mode).
• Data Set Management Command (Trim support).

The SK hynix Canvas SC300 ships in a very stylish little box featuring a high res image on the front.

Remove the stickers and you are tied into the companies warranty policy.

The SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB SSD is protected inside an anti static bag.

No bundle, as such, just some literature on the drive.

I said it in previous reviews – I am a big fan of this SK hynix chassis. It is a tool less design and can be pulled apart with minimal effort. It is very understated, but rather elegant.

The red stripe around the outer edge looks great. The SC300 measures 69.85 mm x 100 mm x 7mm making it an ideal solution for an ultra portable laptop. It weighs around 60g.

SK hynix back the drive with a five year warranty or 72TBW endurance – whichever happens first. On the PCB is their own controller – with the moniker Pearl (LM87810AA-A0). They are using a DDR2 cache chip and there are eight 16nm MLC NAND chips onboard. This is double the amount incorporated onto the PCB of the 256GB model.

For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.

This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.

Main system:
Kitguru Test Rig 3

Other Drives
Micron M600 256GB
Apotop S3C 256GB
Angelbird 512GB wrk
Hynix SH920/910A
OCZ ARC 100 240GB
OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB
Intel 520 Series 240GB
Intel 730 240GB
Samsung 840 EVO 1TB
OCZ Vector 150 256GB
OCZ Vector 240GB
OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
OCZ Vertex 4 512GB
OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (1.4 fw)
ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SDD
SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
Corsair Performance Pro 256GB
OCZ Agility 4 256GB
SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB
Samsung 830 Series 512GB
Patriot Wildfire 240GB
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS
ADATA S510 120GB
Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB
OCZ Octane 512GB (fw 1.13)
Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB

Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark.
CrystalMark 3.0.3.
AS SSD.
IOMeter.

All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3.


Overall performance is strong, and noticeably better than the 256GB model in the sequential write test (it scored 397.3MB/s)

This drive handles compressible and incompressible data equally well, which will help in certain environments – such as when dealing with large video files and images.


Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed.
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.


Read performance is excellent – peaking at 563 MB/s. Write performance hits around 491MB/s.


Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.


AS SSD deals exclusively with incompressible data, and we can see the SK hynix proprietary controller performs very well in this situation.

Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months.
IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology.

We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.


IOPS performance is excellent considering the drive price placement. We didn't quite achieve the official SK hynix figures – 4KB Random Read: 95,000 IOPS, 4KB Random Write: 85,000 IOPS.

Our results are around 5,000 lower than the official figures, but we would assume these minor differences are due to variances in testing methodology.
This is the third SC300 drive we have tested from SK hynix, and it is the largest and fastest of the three. The SC300 512GB is an excellent all round performer, delivering stellar, stable results with both compressible and incompressible data work loads.

The SK hynix SC300 512GB drive will saturate the SATA III interface when it comes to sequential read performance, and sequential write performance is just shy of 500 MB/s. In real world terms, there may be other solid state drives that deliver slightly superior write performance however IOPS performance from this drive is right at the top within what we would consider the ‘budget' sector.

You can buy the SK hynix Canvas SC300 512GB from Amazon for £134.99 inc vat. At this price point it really is a drive you won't want to ignore when making a final shortlist.

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Pros:

• Sk hynix controller is equally good with incompressible and compressible data.
• stellar IOPS performance.
• fantastic chassis design.
• good warranty terms.

Cons:

• The more widely known Samsung 850 EVO 500GB is the same price.

Kitguru says: The SC300 512GB is a capable, balanced and well designed Solid State Drive and the fastest drive we have tested in this specific range. At £134.99 it should be at the top of a final shortlist.

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