The Toshiba OCZ RD400 (256GB, 512GB, 1TB) M.2 PCIe SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on May 25, 2016 8:02 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here.
Samsung's PCIe 3 SSDs all clearly outclass the RD400 on the Heavy test, but the RD400 is slightly ahead of the Intel SSD 750 and much faster than everything else.
Average service time on the Heavy test shows clear separation between drive classes. The RD400 is relatively slow for a PCIe 3 SSD, but has less than half the latency of the good SATA drives and is five to ten times better than low-end TLC SATA drives.
The inclusion of a few TLC SATA drives shows how almost everything else handles the Heavy test without being overwhelmed, but the RD400 is also clearly lagging behind the other PCIe 3 drives and the 256GB model needs to perform better when full.
The three capacities of the RD400 all use very similar amounts of energy over the Heavy test, and significantly more than the other drives we've measured.
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tarqsharq - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Interesting article as always. I had been hoping for a larger price gap between this and the Samsung 950 Pro. At current prices, I think the choice is fairly obvious unless you need a 1TB SSD.Chaitanya - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
You have a choice of Sandisk X400 as well if you want 1TB capacity in M.2 form factor.edzieba - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
There's also the OEM version of the OCZ drive, the Toshiba XG3, which is also available in a 1TB m.2 SKU.Lord of the Bored - Thursday, May 26, 2016 - link
And who DOESN'T need a 1TB SSD?MrSpadge - Friday, May 27, 2016 - link
I think you're mixing up "want" and "need".DanNeely - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
"Unlike most cheap adapter cards, the RD400's adapter draws power from the PCIe slot's 12V supply and converts it to the 3.3V required by the M.2 drive."PCIe slots provide 10W of 3.3V power directly. (I believe this was originally done to make converting legacy cards via a bridge chip easier.) Why would the card need to do any DC-DC conversion?
Byrn - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
I'd assume that if they convert they can get cleaner 3.3V than if they use the feed through the PCIe slot, or that they can design in better resilience to sudden power demand changes...Basically, by converting I would have thought they can better fit the power supplied to the drive to the demands it makes.
digitalgriffin - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
You can filter any volt feed with enough capacitors. But you lose power efficiency when you do.Alexvrb - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
Yeah but they're filtering the power either way so converting from 12V -> 3.3V is less efficient than using 3.3V to start with. But getting back to what Byrn was saying... Byrn, they don't have a choice: This drive draws too much power to use the 3.3V supply.Look at idle power figures in this article. ~2.5W @ 12V. At 3.3V that would already be pushing it (right around 9W already). Under a load it's going to draw too much. So they had to use the 12V rail.
Wardrop - Wednesday, May 25, 2016 - link
2.5 watts is 2.5 watts. If it's a higher voltage, it's less amps, and vice versa. I think you've confused watts with amps?