okp11

Gimme that Surface Pro. My favorite* food is breakfast tacos *proper spelling of favorite

Youtube channel just hit 1,000,000 subscribers. Congrats on the feat!

If you haven't heard yet, there has been a lot of outrage in the community about PNY shipping out Optima SSDs with Sandforce controllers(as opposed to the Silicon Motion controllers that were initially reviewed in the drives). We were interested in figuring out what was under the hood of the new Optima drives so we bought one. We ended up getting one of the new Sandforce-based versions so we dismantled it and benchmarked it. Turns out, the new Sandforce based Optimas are actually just PNY XLR8 drives. They are identical apart from the case the drive is enclosed in. Here are some disassembly photos showing that the drives are, in fact, the same in every aspect. Here are the benchmarks I ran to make sure that the firmware/NAND weren't inferior on the Optima: CrystalDiskMark(Optima left, XLR8 right): Benchmark run #1: http://imgur.com/TyTpnil Benchmark run #2: http://imgur.com/ZV4B3EZ Benchmark run #3: http://imgur.com/yQ2mHLF AS-SSD(Optima left, XLR8 right): Benchmark Run #1: http://imgur.com/VmBBKoH Benchmark Run #2: http://imgur.com/Arhn9hf Benchmark Run #3: http://imgur.com/JH3v38e ATTO(Optima left, XLR8 right): Benchmark Run #1: http://imgur.com/zgZ9Qs8 Benchmark Run #2: http://imgur.com/x59jT3L Benchmark Run #3: http://imgur.com/O0OkRNg Anvil Storage Utilities(Tested at 0%, 54%, and 100% compression levels): Optima: http://imgur.com/a/SGqF4#1 XLR8: http://imgur.com/a/bhdUe#0 If you don't want to look through them I can tell you that they are all within the variance that you would expect. They perform the same. So I'm not here to tell you what to believe about PNY's actions. I'm just here to give you information that I haven't seen anywhere yet. The Optima is still a very good SSD at its price. Some would certainly even make the argument that it is now better. The PNY XLR8 is a synchronous Sandforce based drive and is a step higher than the XLR8 in PNY's pricing scheme. While I wouldn't go as far as saying that the XLR8 is a blatant upgrade over the SMI based Optima, I would definitely agree that it is at least an equivalent drive. In a strict sense, PNY is upgrading you from an Optima to an XLR8 with their move over to Sandforce. The vast majority of users would not be able to tell the difference between the Sandforce based Optima and the SMI based Optima. Being that the two drives will inevitably trade blows in synthetic benches, there is no clear cut better drive. Whether you agree or disagree with PNY's practices, it doesn't change the fact that the Optima is an amazing value for the drive you are getting. There is not a cheaper synchronous Sandforce drive(in the U.S. at least).

We know what kind of NAND is used on basically every SSD on the market. Their V+100 used 32nm Toshiba ONFI 1.0 NAND Their V+200 used 25nm Toshiba IMFT 1.0 NAND Their HyperX uses 25nm IMFT 2.x NAND Their 3K uses 25nm IMFT 2.x NAND Their KC100 uses 25mn IMFT 2.x NAND Their E series used 50nm IMFT ONFI 1.0 NAND Their original V series used 43nm Toshiba ONFI 1.0 NAND Their S50 used 43nm Toshiba ONFI 1.0 NAND Their S/V100 used 32nm Toshiba ONFI 1.0 NAND Their V200 used 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND Their V300 used 19nm Toshiba Toggle NAND(at launch but they switched it which is why this is a big deal) Their V+200 used 25nm IMFT ONFI 1.0 NAND Point being is that we have our ways for finding out what type of NAND is being used even when manufacturers rebrand it as their own. Its when they change it after all of the review samples go out that we have a problem.

Of course this changes things...The reason people bought them before is because they were the cheapest synchronous Sandforce drive. Now there are synchronous Sandforce drives for around the same price so there is absolutely no reason to buy a V300. Something like a PNY XLR8 is going to be a much better option.

This is extremely misleading. It entirely depends on how you are using the drive. If I were to say that its virtually impossible to tell the difference between a 780 Ti and a 750 Ti in Minecraft I would be right, but thats a stupid way to compare hardware. The difference in performance between ONFI 1.0 and 2.x is very real. You probably are looking at metrics like OS load times which are notoriously bad gauges for performance. Look at file copy times, look at file transfer times, look at encoding and unzipping times of large files.

I made a post about this about 2 months ago http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/99724-psa-about-the-kingston-v300-possibly-switching-nand-without-telling-anyone/ I also made some posts to OC.net and Reddit that have some good discussion on it http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1ur11x/discussion_psa_about_the_kingston_v300_ssd/ http://www.reddit.com/r/buildapc/comments/1vfbrw/discussionupdate_on_the_psa_about_the_kingston/ http://www.overclock.net/t/1457629/psa-about-the-kingston-v300-ssd-probable-foul-play-by-kingston

I don't think I believe you. Someone who has never touched a computer could tell the difference between an SSD and a mechanical hard drive.

As many of you probably know, the Kingston V300 is regularly one of the cheapest SSDs you can buy. The 120GB version is currently on Amazon, Newegg, and Tiger Direct for $70. For the last 6 months or so it has regularly been the cheapest Sandforce based drive with synchronous flash. However, with their latest revision of the drive there have been numerous accounts of people getting much lower benchmark scores than they should and they are all version 506. Here are a few examples: http://www.overclock.net/t/1380526/kingston-v300-help http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1762558/kingston-ssdnow-v300-low-read-performance.html http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=35676298 Many Newegg Reviews: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=20-721-107&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=10&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=%28keywords%29&Page=1#scrollFullInfo Most people think that it is the firmware causing this and others think that its the location of the drive's production(Taiwan vs China). If you look over the other threads you'll see people are experiencing the problem on drives from both countries though. As for the firmware I'm confident that's not what is causing the slower speeds. Sandforce is very strict with the extent that SSD manufacturers can alter their controller's firmware. They can't really do that much, hence why all Sandforce drives perform comparably if they use the same type of NAND. I'm led to believe that Kingston has changed the type of NAND in the V300 v506 to asynchronous flash...Which is a huge deal. The benchmarks that people are showing on v506 drives match up to what other asynchronous Sandforce drives perform at. The most compelling evidence is from what Kingston itself said: The fact that they are using ATTO to benchmark drives isn't at all surprising. Every company that makes a Sandforce drive advertises ATTO scores because Sandforce is so much better at Compressible data. This also allows them to advertise their asynchronous drives with very high speeds. This is why I always advise against paying attention to manufacturer specs. What IS interesting is that Kingston says "Incompressible data can negatively affect benchmark performance on both the read and write speeds of our V300 drive depending on which NAND is being used". They then go on to say "This is irrespective of the firmware revision of the drive". It looks very much like Kingston has switched from synchronous to asynchronous flash in these drives. If this is the case then Kingston is doing something very shady and unethical. While their advertised speeds may be correct, the NAND changing in the drive is huge for performance. If you have a Kingston V300(every case I've seen so far has been the 120GB capacity) check the revision you have and benchmark it. If you have a v506(product code-506ABBF0) and are willing to open it up and take a picture of the PCB/NAND modules I can probably confirm/deny this. I understand if you aren't comfortable doing that though.

http://martinsliquidlab.org/2013/05/07/fan-testing-round-12/ Listen to the fans yourself if you don't believe me. This shows the NF-F12s performing not-so-great. It makes no sense to me why they are recommended when they are so expensive. The SP-120s perform okay but certainly not great. They are cheaper than the fans that beat it though. Its a drastic difference. Not only that but in MLL's tests(which are on a radiator btw) the NF-F12 wasn't even able to get to 600 FPM let alone 700, which both the AP-45 and the e-loop were able to. The NF-F12 didn't even perform well acoustically, being the loudest at 400 and 500 FPM.

Post some pictures please. You really didn't show any good glamour shots of the internals during the vid.

Thanks linus!