DEAD Sandisk SSD PLUS 120GB $39.99 FS @ Newegg

[VirtualLarry]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820173071

This is one of the new breed of cheaper "DRAM less" SSD controllers. About time they've dropped below $50/120GB.

Edit: Also available at BestBuy, for $47.99.
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/sandisk...lack/3076048.p?id=1219570105299&skuId=3076048

Edit: 2015-07-28 Newegg raised their price from $44.99 to $49.99.

Edit: 2015-08-04 Newegg lowered their price to $39.99 with Free Ship! HOT!
Edit: OOS!

Edit: 2015-08-06 Not just OOS, but dead. $55.99 + $0.99 ship now at Newegg. Let's hope that they drop the price down again in the future.

 

[richierich1212]

Write speed is horrible. Spend another $10 to get something better.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Write speed is horrible. Spend another $10 to get something better.

LOL. Looks perfectly normal to me, for a drive of this size. Remember, many SSD companies give those specs based on a drive "family", meaning that the "max" read/write speeds are based on the fastest drive out of the bunch, and often the smaller drives (120GB) have much lower write speeds in practice.

I don't think the M500 120GB SSD had much better seq. write speeds either, and it was a solid drive.

 

[cbn]

Controller for this one is SM2246XT:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/9357/...ys-upcoming-sm2260-pcie-30-x4-nvme-controller

Another product Silicon Motion had on display was the SM2246XT, which is a DRAM-less version of the popular SM2246EN. There is a slight performance impact from the lack of DRAM cache as only parts of the NAND mapping table can be stored in the controller's internal SRAM cache, but in return the SM2246XT offers lower cost due to a smaller die (no need for DRAM controller). Obviously the drive requires no separate DRAM either, which further reduces the cost for the assembler of the drive. SM2246XT is already used by SanDisk in the SSD PLUS and Z400s that was released a couple of weeks ago. I believe we will see the low-end market shift more towards DRAM-less designs in the next year as the race to the bottom gets tougher and with more sophisticated controllers it's possible to have decent performance even without the DRAM cache. Currently Silicon Motion has no plans for an XT version of the SM2256, although I would personally see TLC NAND and DRAM-less controller as the ultimate value play.

And according to the Anandtech product announcement the NAND is MLC:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8827/sandisk-announces-entrylevel-ssd-plus-ultra-ii-msata

Quite surprisingly, the SSD Plus isn't based on TLC NAND, but uses SanDisk's second generation 19nm MLC NAND instead, similar to the high-end Extreme Pro. SanDisk didn't really go into detail about the hardware itself, so at this point I'm not sure where the cost savings are coming from (perhaps it's just lower binned MLC). The controller remains a secret too, although given SanDisk's history I'm pretty confident that it's a Marvell silicon with SanDisk's in-house firmware.

Availability is slated for this quarter (Q1'15) and the SSD Plus will only be available in capacities of 120GB and 240GB due to the entry-level focus. MSRPs are $70 and $110 respective with a warranty of three years. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the technological placement of the SSD Plus as it seems a bit weird to have MLC in the entry-level offering and then TLC in the one level up, but I should have a better understanding of the product once I have a sample on hand.

 

[Justinbaileyman]

I am looking to get a new SSD ASAP..
Would it be better to buy one larger 256GB SSD or two of these and put them in raid array for increased write speeds for say windows 7 64bit? cause right now there is something screwy with my Sandisk 64GB SSD and windows. It all of the sudden started filling up the whole drive for no reason and its not from a virus cause I dont use this PC for any kind of Internet use except for Windows Updates. I even tried to reinstall 3 different versions of windows "Vista,7,and 10 and all 3 are doing this.I even went as far as disabling Hibernation,page file, and lowering my allowed update space to 5gb's.
I am at a loss here and have no clue as to what is causing this my only guess is maybe to get a new SSD?Right now I am using Ubuntu-Mate 15.04 on that same SSD and it has never filled up the the drive not once but I kinda want windows back due to better windows support for apps and games Vs. using Wine. Anyways sorry to thread cap and thanks for this post this is a great deal.

 

[SunRey]

Thank You!

 

[cbn]

LOL. Looks perfectly normal to me, for a drive of this size. Remember, many SSD companies give those specs based on a drive "family", meaning that the "max" read/write speeds are based on the fastest drive out of the bunch, and often the smaller drives (120GB) have much lower write speeds in practice.

I don't think the M500 120GB SSD had much better seq. write speeds either, and it was a solid drive.

I ran CrystalDiskmark on my Sandisk 64 GB SSD and the sequential write runs ~185 MB/s to 190 MB/s.

If the 120 GB SSD PLUS gets around the same (and the other metric compare favorably), I would be interested in this type of drive for use in a very low cost notebook. Maybe a refurb Windows 7 Business notebook?

With that mentioned, I would hope the price drops fairly quickly to $35 for 120GB DRAM-less + MLC and maybe $30 for 120GB DRAM-less + TLC. Maybe within 12 months we see this happen?

 

[Klinky1984]

I bought this drive a few days ago for a refurbished Toshiba laptop. Performance is great, much better than the 750GB 5400 RPM drive in there before. It's kind of funny that we've come to a point where someone would label the performance below as "horrible". If you need to upgrade a hard-drive-based laptop at the lowest cost, this will do just fine. It would even work well for a budget-desktop build where every dollar counts.

This SSD is also available on Amazon for the same price. Good for people with Amazon Prime.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 4.1.0 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 549.395 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 211.178 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 149.946 MB/s [ 36607.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 201.129 MB/s [ 49103.8 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 272.813 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 211.384 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 20.524 MB/s [ 5010.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 87.478 MB/s [ 21356.9 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 18.6% (20.7/111.3 GiB)] (x3) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2015/07/25 13:09:53
OS : Windows 8.1 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

 

[cbn]

I bought this drive a few days ago for a refurbished Toshiba laptop. Performance is great, much better than the 750GB 5400 RPM drive in there before. It's kind of funny that we've come to a point where someone would label the performance below as "horrible". If you need to upgrade a hard-drive-based laptop at the lowest cost, this will do just fine. It would even work well for a budget-desktop build where every dollar counts.

This SSD is also available on Amazon for the same price. Good for people with Amazon Prime.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 4.1.0 (C) 2007-2015 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

Sequential Read (Q= 32,T= 1) : 549.395 MB/s
Sequential Write (Q= 32,T= 1) : 211.178 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 149.946 MB/s [ 36607.9 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 32,T= 1) : 201.129 MB/s [ 49103.8 IOPS]
Sequential Read (T= 1) : 272.813 MB/s
Sequential Write (T= 1) : 211.384 MB/s
Random Read 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 20.524 MB/s [ 5010.7 IOPS]
Random Write 4KiB (Q= 1,T= 1) : 87.478 MB/s [ 21356.9 IOPS]

Test : 1024 MiB [C: 18.6% (20.7/111.3 GiB)] (x3) [Interval=5 sec]
Date : 2015/07/25 13:09:53
OS : Windows 8.1 [6.3 Build 9600] (x64)

Compared to my Sandisk 64 GB SSD (which I believe has a DRAM cache), the 4K numbers are much better with the 120 GB SSD Plus. (4K Q32 T1 for my drive was 38.35 MB/s for read and 16.43 MB/s for write. 4K was 13.85 MB/s for read and 15.02 MB/s for write) The Sequential read is though much slower though at 272.8 MB/s for the 120 GB SSD Plus vs. 442.7 MB/s for my 64 GB Sandisk.

With that mentioned, even if Sequential read stays at 272 MB/s despite firmware updates that is still plenty for a refurb Laptop with SATA 3 Gbps. (Example: Lenovo Thinkpad T410).

 

[cbn]

Klinky1984,

Just wondering, did the sequential read results turn out fairly consistent?

The reason I am asking is because the SSD Plus has a DRAM-less controller and the following review (using the older DRAM-less S9 controller from Phison from did mention a good deal of variability in the sequential read)

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/6924/patriot-blaze-120gb-low-cost-ssd-review/index.html

Here were the results of the sequential read (355.4 MB/s, 190.5 MB/s, 122.8 MB/s):

Notice only the Phison S9 drives (Patriot Blaze and Patriot Torch) are the ones with variation in min, average, and maximum read speeds. Here is what tweak town wrote about that:

The Blaze 120GB was unable to read sequential data at a consistent pace in our test. The Torch 120GB was the same way when we tested it. I think the lack of a DRAM buffer to cache the table data played a role in the wide separation between minimum and maximum performance.

My hope is that these new DRAM-less controllers like the one found in SSD Plus are much more consistent than what we saw with the DRAM-less Phison S9.

 

[Klinky1984]

Just to follow up, I didn't test this drive too much. CrystalDiskMark does run the same test 3 times in a row though, so there's a little consistency there?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Now $39.99 with Free Ship (8/04). Hot!

With that mentioned, I would hope the price drops fairly quickly to $35 for 120GB DRAM-less + MLC and maybe $30 for 120GB DRAM-less + TLC. Maybe within 12 months we see this happen?

Getting closer... now all we need is a ShellShocker for $34.99 FS. I'll buy more for that price.

 

[dualsmp]

Price is back up to $62.77

 

[VirtualLarry]

Price is back up to $62.77

That's because that listing is sold by antonline.com . Newegg sold out of their $39.99 units.

 

[cbn]

With that mentioned, I would hope the price drops fairly quickly to $35 for 120GB DRAM-less + MLC and maybe $30 for 120GB DRAM-less + TLC. Maybe within 12 months we see this happen?

Now $39.99 with Free Ship (8/04). Hot!

Getting closer... now all we need is a ShellShocker for $34.99 FS. I'll buy more for that price.

Nice find!

Its getting there quicker than I expected.

 

[hans007]

if you have never bought anything at jet.com

you can use the first time buyer $15 off $35 coupon and get this for under $30. its $44 there right now.