A list of the drives that have hit or will soon hit my test bench.
In case anyone reading this is eager to know what other drives I’ll be testing in the near future, I figured I’d provide some lists:
| SATA SSDs | ||
|---|---|---|
| Drive | Capacity | Notes |
| Crucial MX500 | 500GB | Retail Drive |
| Intel 520 | 180GB | Sandforce-based SSD from yesteryear |
| Samsung 850 EVO | 500GB | Retail Drive |
| Samsung 860 EVO | 1TB | Retail Drive |
| Samsung PM871b | 128GB | OEM Drive |
| NVMe SSDs | ||
|---|---|---|
| Drive | Capacity | Notes |
| Intel 660p | 1024GB | Intial QLC entry, Retail Drive |
| Samsung 960 Pro | 2048GB | Retail Drive |
| Samsung PM981a | 256GB | OEM Version of 970 EVO |
| Samsung PM981a | 512GB | OEM Version of 970 EVO |
| Samsung PM991 | 256GB | Larger capacity of previously reviewed PM991 128GB |
| Toshiba XG6 | 256GB | Smaller capacity of previously reviewed XG6 1024GB |
| Western Digital SN520 | 256GB | Larger capacity of previously reviewed SN520 128GB |
| Western Digital Blue SN550 | 1000GB | Retail Drive |
It is my intention to review each of these drives, either individually or in a roundup, before moving onto my next generation Testbed - v2.0. I’ll likely iterate my testing Methodology as well - also to v2.0 to include some more real world tests and possibly retool or retire some of the existing tests.
The idea is to get a bit of a baseline published for a moderate sample of SATA and NVMe SSDs in varying capacities from different vendors before retiring my first testbed. I purchased the Asrock Z97E-ITX/ac to replace an existing system, not to act as a dedicated testbench. In my mind Tesbed v1.0 should already be EoL, I just need to get around to replacing it.
There’s a chance that I might provide reviews for a couple more drives, but that’ll depend on my ability to purchase them or swap them out of existing systems.
Once I transition to Testbed v2.0, I’ll retest all of the previously tested drives and then begin adding more, including PCIe 4.0 drives.