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| Review: Adata S596 Turbo 128Gb SSD |
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| Posted by Will Smith | |||
| Saturday, 28 August 2010 01:43 | |||
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Introduction As NAND flash memory prices decrease, so will a lot of USB thumb/pen drives including SSDs (solid state drive). We're now seeing higher capacity USB thumb/pen drives at prices as low as USD $60.00 for a 32Gb module. SSD prices have also dropped, making 64Gb and 128Gb drives more accessible to a lot of consumers. Over past year, we've seen a flurry of SSD drives being released on to the market ... mostly from memory manufacturers such as Adata, Corsair, Crucial, Kingston, OCZ, Patriot and many others, including Intel and even Dell. What makes SSDs so attractive is the speed of the drive itself. Unlike conventional hard drives, SSDs have no moving mechanical parts, produces less heat and can withstand shock from the occasional bump or knock. And since it's entirely made from NAND flash memory, you can expect excellent performance over your standard conventional hard drive. Although SSDs currently cost a lot more than your standard hard drive, it is the increased performance from these drives that's irresistably attractive to a lot of power users and enthusiasts (including myself). Adata are well known for producing quality memory products. So when they asked us to take a look at their latest SSD, we were extemely excited. For those who are not too familiar with Adata, here's a little blurb taken from their website.
Many of you probably don't know this, but the performance of SSDs are determined by its built-in controller. At present, I know there are currently two major players (there could be more) in this field. One of them is JMicron, which you'll find in a lot of affordable mainstream SSDs ... and the other is Sandforce, which is mostly found on higher-end/performance SSDs. However, this is about to change ... you'll find out as you read on. Other things to consider are the different types of SSDs ... MLC based SSD drives store more data, but at the cost of read and write performance. SLC based drives on the other hand is king in terms of speed, but come in smaller capacities.
In this review, we'll be taking a look at the Adata S596 Turbo 128Gb SSD. The drive is based on a 2.5" inch form factor and has a total capacity of 128Gb, with 128Mb DDR2 ram cache buffer for increase performance. It also features a built-in mini USB2.0 port, which is great for users on the go. And as an added bonus, the S596 Turbo feature a brushed aluminum chassis, which is designed for fast heat dissipation, which helps to improve its durability and longevity. The firmware supports Windows 7 TRIM command, which significantly shortens the boot-up time. We also found out that the Adata S596 Turbo uses the faster and newer JMicron JMF616 controller. Apparently, Adata is the world's first manufacturer to use this new controller from JMicron. All of this should mean one thing ... exceptional performance.
I'm expecting the Adata S596 Turbo to produce some excellent scores in out tests. It will be interesting to see how well it performs against other similar SSDs in its class, which includes the OCZ Vertex and Patriot TorqX. One thing that makes the Adata S596 Turbo extremely attractive, is the built-in mini USB2.0 port. It means you can treat this SSD as an external hard drive ... perfect for any user on the go. We'll be testing the Adata S596 Turbo 128Gb SSD on our test rig which consist of an Intel Core i5 - 650 @ 3.2Ghz cooled by a Noctua NH-D14 CPU cooler, a Gigabyte P55 USB3 motherboard, a Geforce GTX 460 OC, 4Gb Crucial Ballistix Tracer and a Silverpower 650w power supply. All-in-all, a decent system that's fairly up-to-date. OK, let's not waste any more time and check out the specifications in our next page ...
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