Crucial C300 SATA 6Gb/s SSD Review
In Close Up
Published: 23rd June 2010 | Source: Crucial | Price: £297.26 |
Getting a Good Look
Crucials packaging for the C300 is an exercise in minimalism. That isn't to say it's bad by any stretch. It's exactly what it needs to be. Big enough to contain the product and some foam, and sturdy enough to protect it. No more. No less. Given the energy savings from a SSD it would be silly to put it in a rain-forests worth of packaging.
Flipping the lid we can see a fair amount of foam protecting the drive itself. The drive is, by virtue of it being a memory device, in an anti-static bag. Upon removal we have a gorgeous metal casing with a front sticker that perfectly apes the box.
Flipping the C300 onto its back we find the standard barcode sticker that has been a feature of storage devices since the dawn of time. We also have four standard mounting holes on the bottom and four on the side as well, ensuring a very flexible mounting system for any case or caddy.
Chips
Micron have broken through with MLC NAND that conforms to ONFI 2.1 standard and therefore provides incredible performance. Whilst at the Enterprise level ONFI 2.2 is available, naturally it takes a while before business class performance is available to the home user at a price point remotely affordable. Here we have a Micron OAD12 cache chip that should ensure even at these incredible speeds there isn't any stuttering. This, along with the controller below, is paired to some Micron NAND MLC that are labelled as OCB12 and ODB12.
The Crucial C300 uses the Marvell 88SS9174-BJP2 controller, which is rated for 355MB/s read and 215MB/s write. It has native SMART, Secure Erase and, most importantly, TRIM support out the box. TRIM is vital in ensuring that your drive remains at its optimum performance.
Let's move on to page three, where we wont see busty Debbie from Essex, but rather something very flat indeed from Boise, Idaho.
Most Recent Comments
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Originally Posted by name='Warzone'
Indeed but all that blazing still burns a hole in the wallet
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Ohhh the one my ex wife took off with.
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives,
Release Date: 5/20/2010
Change Log:
•Improved Power Consumption
•Improved TRIM performance
•Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11)
•Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss
•Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency
•Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data
•Improved Data Integrity
I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3
Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !!
Rick
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Originally Posted by name='fmsam'
Cheers for the review TTL,
did you know there is a firmware upgrade for these drives, Release Date: 5/20/2010 Change Log: •Improved Power Consumption •Improved TRIM performance •Enabled the Drive Activity Pin (Pin 11) •Improved Robustness due to unexpected power loss •Improved data management to reduce maximum write latency •Improved Performance of SSD as it fills up with data •Improved Data Integrity I can vouch for the improvments as Im running a pair on the marvell 6gb/s controller on the RE3 Im getting 450 reads and 250 writes !! Rick |
There are many ppl out there who are still under the impression that you cant use raid on the marvell 9128 6gb/s contoller on Rampage 3 !
Well do they really think Asus would drop such a clanger, when the board its competing against has the same chip and uses raid.
my advice to those ppl is shut up unless youve actually tried it.
http://i696.photobucket.com/albums/v...00raidsnip.png
Rick
I see you have 2 128 gb ssds i n raid 0
what knid of speeds do you get ?
No wonder you have quick speeds with raid0, I was starting to think we had missed something huge with a firmware update! Ours came with the latest FW anyways I just checked.
and crucial use garbage collection when raided and not trim, I test the drives every 3 days and they are actually getting faster, go figure !!
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