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PNY are a company well known for their graphics cards, but today we take a look at one of their latest Solid State Drives – the CS2111 XLR8. The PNY CS2111 XLR8 (‘accelerate'- get it?) is available in 240GB, 480GB and 960GB capacities. The 480GB model we look at today is available in the UK for around £155.
Performance rating:
Sequential Read (Max) : up to 560 MB/s
Sequential Write (Max) : up to 455 MB/s
Random Read Operations (4kB) : up to 71,000 IOPS
Random Write Operations (4kB) : up to 75,000 IOPS
The CS1111 XLR8 is targeting the enthusiast gamer audience. PNY rate the drives to perform at up to 560 MB/s read and 455 MB/s write. The IOPS performance is officially stated at 71k read and 75k write. MTBF is 1 million hours with endurance up to 600TB. These are very healthy figures indeed.
PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB specifications:
Usable Capacities (IDEMA) : 480 GB
NAND Components : Multi-Level Cell (MLC)
Interface : Serial ATA 6Gb/s (SATA III)
Form Factor : 2.5 inch, 7mm
Dimensions (L x W x H) : 100 x 70 x 7 mm
Weight : 95g
MTBF : 1 million hours
End-To-End Data Protection : ECC: Up to 55 bits correctable per 512-byte sector Read
Secure erase and SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) support
Performance Optimization : TRIM (requires OS support)
Service & Support : 3-Year Limited Warranty
The PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB arrives in a small, flat box with an image of the product, along with details on the front.
The poor tiger is on fire. ‘Molten Lava' seems to the theme of PNY and this artwork put me in mind somewhat of the last generation Patriot Solid State Drives – such as the Wildfire and Pyro.
PNY are using Micron NAND along with the SM2246EN controller to power this drive. Based on our lab tests the Silicon Motion controller is proving popular with many companies in recent months. The NAND flash is L95B 16nm MLC and each module is set at a 32GB capacity.
After the drive has been formatted, there is 447GB available.
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
Plextor M6V 256GB
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 1TBSoftware:
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 – showing around 520 MB/s and 445 MB/s in the sequential read and write tests, respectively. 4K QD32 shows a mid table level performance score.
The Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller 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.
Sequential read performance is excellent, hitting 545MB/s. Write performance holds at 445 MB/s, short of the market leaders but close to the official rated figures.
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 Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller performs very well in this situation. Scores are in the mid table region again.
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 sometimes differ from manufacturer’s quoted ratings.
IOPS performance is not lacking in both 4k random read and 4k random write tests – scoring in and around the 70,000-75,000 mark. These figures are very close to the official PNY rated specifications (Up to 71k read, and 75k write), so it is good to see PNY aren't inflating figures.
The PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB is a well rounded Solid State Drive that delivers stellar, stable results in all the benchmarks. This is not really a surprise however, as it is the latest of many drives we have tested in recent months to use the popular Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller.
The PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB is able to almost saturate the real world limitations of the SATA 3 bus, delivering close to 550MB/s in leading sequential read tests. Write performance rates around 100 MB/s lower, although in most real world situations it is unlikely you will notice the differences. All of the SM2246EN controlled solid state drives we have tested so far have similar performance operating characteristics.
While sequential write performance may be a little lower than leading competitor products the Silicon Image controller copes equally well with incompressible and compressible data – meaning this drive is a good choice for the audience who may also be dealing with a lot of specialised image files and video files.
IOPS performance is certainly not lacking, although the throughput does fall a little short of the leading drives we have tested in recent months. Considering this drive is designed to cater for the enthusiast and gaming audience, the results are very satisfactory indeed.
You can buy the PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB from Dabs for £155.55 inc vat HERE. PNY are facing some stiff competition. The Sandisk Extreme PRO 480GB is available on Amazon for £155.96 HERE and the ever popular Samsung 850 Evo 500GB is available for £117.90 HERE.
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Pros:
- IOPS performance.
- Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller deals with incompressible and compressible data in equal measure.
- we like the appearance.
- reasonable pricing.
Cons:
- 256GB and 128GB models have much slower write speeds (335 MB/s and 170 MB/s respectively).
- facing incredibly stiff competition from the likes of Samsung.
Kitguru says: The Plextor M6V is a solid all round solid state drive, but unless you buy the biggest 512GB model the write performance will take a significant hit.
