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There is no doubt that the Solid State sector is booming this year, especially in the budget arena. Today we look at the latest budget oriented drive from OCZ – named the ‘ARC 100'. This drive is focused on delivering a high ‘bang for the buck', priced at $0.50 per GB. OCZ are releasing the ARC 100 in three different flavours – a 120GB, 240GB and 480GB model.
OCZ are marketing the ARC 100 to the widest consumer audience possible. The Vector RevoDrive 350 and Vector 150 take the high end, the Vertex 460 is in the mid range with the ARC 100 targeting the budget sector.
| Performance | ARC 100 – 120GB | ARC 100 – 240GB | ARC 100 – 480GB |
| Max Read | 475 MB/s | 480 MB/s | 490 MB/s |
| Max Write | 395 MB/s | 430 MB/s | 450 MB/s |
| Max Random Read IOPS (4K QD32) |
75,000 | 75,000 | 75,000 |
| Max Random Write IOPS (4K QD32) |
80,000 | 80,000 | 80,000 |
| Steady State Random Write IOPS (4K QD32) | 12,000 | 18,000 | 20,000 |
The 120GB ARC 100 drive is the slowest of the three and performance slowly scales upwards as the capacity increases. Sequential write performance will increase from 395 MB/s via the 120GB drive to 450 MB/s via the 480GB model.
We don't have confirmed retail pricing as we go live with NDA breaking today, but we have been told by OCZ that expected points are ARC 100 120GB for £58, Arc 100 240 GB for £94 and Arc 100 480 GB for £185.
Today we look at the OCZ ARC 100 in a 240GB capacity – which should hit retail around £95. One of the biggest challengers for this drive will be the very competitively priced Samsung 840 EVO model.
OCZ sent us an update on the warranty just before we went to publication today:
OCZ said ‘All ARC 100 SSDs are engineered and tested to ensure superior quality, reliability, and compatibility and also come backed with OCZ’s brand new “ShieldPlus Warranty”, an industry-leading approach to service that eliminates all the hassle surrounding support and warranty claims consumers often have to deal with. With no original proof of purchase required, end-users simply provide their ARC serial number and a dedicated OCZ customer service representative will provide high-caliber troubleshooting and support. In the event that the product is determined to be defective, a brand-new ARC SSD of the same capacity will be advance shipped to the customer. When the replacement is received, end-users will find a pre-paid return label and need only to place their original drive in the box for a free return to OCZ. With the value added ShieldPlus Warranty there is no support hassle, no endless return loops, no shipping costs, and end-users will benefit from significantly reduced downtime to maximize their SSD experience and productivity. OCZ ShieldPlus is available in both North America and EMEA at time of launch, and additional supported regions will be announced in the future. With the security of the ARC’s ShieldPlus Warranty, OCZ’s valued customers will have the peace of mind that they not only have a quality solid state drive, but also the very best service and support should they ever require it.'
The OCZ ARC 100 ships in a small blue box with the product clearly visible on the front.
No bundle as such, just a simple leaflet in the box. No cloning software is supplied with this drive – that is only included with the Vertex 460 and Vector 150 drives.
The ARC 100 measures 100.2 mm x 69.75 mm x 6.7 mm. It will fit into the smallest Ultraportable laptop cases which is always good to note.
Be aware if you want to access the internals of the drive you need to remove the front sticker on the chassis. It loses all stickiness when it is removed and also invalidates the warranty so we don't advise you to do this at home – that is why we are here after all!
The ARC 100 is using the OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 controller and it features A19nm Toshiba Multi Level Cell Flash NAND. It supports 256 bit AES compliant encryption and has full Self Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology.
OCZ rate the ARC 100 at an endurance level of 20GB per day for 3 years under typical client workloads. This is the same rating they give the Vertex 460 drive, although the high end Vector 150 is rated at 50GB per day across a 5 year period.
We mentioned earlier in the review that one of the biggest challenges the ARC 100 will face will be against the very popular Samsung 840 EVO drive. We can see that according to OCZ's own charts, the Samsung 840 EVO outperforms the ARC 100 in sequential read and write tests, as well as Random read and write IOPS. OCZ do claim the ARC 100 is the clear market leader when it comes to sustained Random Write IOPS however – rating at 20,000 (against 11,000 for the 840 Evo).
On this page we present some high resolution images of the product taken in our professional studio. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source.
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
Hynix SH920/910A
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
Intel 730 240GB
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 good, although the sequential read and write speeds are a little down from the market leaders which can hit in excess of 500 MB/s in this test. Still, 4K QD32 performance is strong, hitting the middle of our performance chart.
This drive handles compressible and incompressible data equally well which is always beneficial.
Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed in the last year.
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 rates around 500 MB/s in the ATTO 2,048kb test, a little behind the market leaders which can completely saturate the SATA III interface in excess of 550 MB/s. Write performance rates at just over 430 MB/s, around 100 MB/s behind the fastest Solid State Drive's we have tested in the last year.
According to OCZ, the larger ARC 100 480GB drive is around 10 MB/s and 20 MB/s faster in the read and write tests respectively. We don't have one at hand to confirm unfortunately.
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 strength of the OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 controller, scoring in the upper half of the chart. The total score of 1,047 points puts it just ahead of the Hynix SH920/910A which we reviewed last week.
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 actually very strong – OCZ rate this drive at 75,000 IOPS 4k read and 80,000 IOPS 4k random write. Our results are actually a little higher at 78,276 and 88,206 respectively.
OCZ are focusing on the long term sustained write capabilities of the ARC 100 SSD. They sent over an IOMETER icf file just before launch named ‘precondition_12hr.icf' which they recommended we include in our tests today. We did test both OCZ ARC 100 240GB and Samsung 840 EVO 1TB drives with these settings and our results were very close to those in the table above. We need to look into this a little further before we include these results in our own SSD reviews from this point onwards however.
The OCZ ARC 100 is a drive that has been designed and released to target the widest possible audience in the budget sector.
There is no doubt that the OCZ ARC 100 is a very capable drive – I rate the OCZ Barefoot 3 M10 controller very highly as it can deal with incompressible and compressible data without suffering performance degradation. Sequential read and write performance may be down a little (430MB/s-500 MB/s) on the market leaders that are able to completely saturate the SATA 3 interface (around 550MB/s), but in the real world you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
The IOPS results today are also very impressive, especially when factoring in OCZ's claims of sustained long term performance. We generally only get a solid state drive a couple of days before publication so testing these claims for a review is impossible.
We do believe there is only one way to measure long term performance and that is by actually using the solid state drive for many months under real world conditions. That said, the custom .icf file we were sent by OCZ would indicate the ARC 100 should hold up well across longer periods of time.
The biggest challenge that OCZ face is the incredibly competitive market in 2014. The Samsung Evo 840 for instance has proven a firm favourite among KitGuru readers on our Facebook page. The prices continue to drop with the 840 EVO 250GB model now available for £83.99 inc vat. OCZ have confirmed before publication that the ARC 100 240GB will be retailing for around £93.99 inc vat, making it a full £10 more expensive.
Prices could obviously drop after the ARC 100 is released, but customers in this market do tend to aim for the best deal they can find. I think it is important that OCZ manage to match the price of the 840 EVO drives if they want to claim market share.
Based on OCZ's own media kit before launch, it would appear that they know the Evo 840 outperforms the ARC 100 in all areas, apart from sustained random write results. We did analyse this by using the ‘precondition_12hr.icf' that OCZ sent over, however it is honestly difficult to state whether this is a completely accurate test to represent sustained long term performance in the ‘real world'.
Is the OCZ ARC 100 worth buying? It is certainly a well balanced drive with no discernible weaknesses, it does however face considerable challenge in the market today from other, less expensive drives in the budget arena.
Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE.
Pros:
- IOPS is strong.
- incompressible and compressible data equally good.
- Low pricing.
- key indicators point to good long term performance.
Cons:
- Facing stiff competition from the likes of Samsung.
Kitguru says: A versatile, well balanced drive that is definitely worth buying.
