PNY CS1311 240GB SSD review

[Godlygamer23]

Hello everyone,

I recently bought the CS1311 SSD for my laptop(and the motherboard in there died unfortunately, so not 100% what to do with this drive). Unfortunately, it was not able to saturate the SSD at all, and therefore I put it into my everyday PC for benchmarking. But before we get into that, let's take a look at the product itself, shall we? Also, all images will be in spoilers to prevent unnecessary scrolling.

 

Below, we have the front side of the packaging:

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Highlights include the SSD itself, a 3-year warranty, "high performance," live US tech support, and Acronis True Image software(more on that later). I can't test for the last one, so I have no view there. However, I would say for a drive that cost me about $68, a 3-year warranty isn't bad, and the box itself isn't bad to look at either.

 

Below is the back of the box:

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Here we have the general drive information, including highest performance, power consumption, and operating temperature that it can handle. You can also see what's included with the SSD, including a 2.5mm spacer, and a full Acronis license which will be shown once we get inside of the box. We also have the compatibility list as well as the warranty information. Bear in mind that you can still use this SSD in an older OS, like Windows XP, but you won't have more advanced features like TRIM.

 

A matrix on the side of the box that you can scan to learn more about PNY SSDs:

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I have not scanned it, so I have no idea how great of an addition it actually is.

 

And now we get into the box itself:

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Here, we have a tray, and the drive itself. I personally find the drive to be appealing, but for those of you who do not like black/red color schemes anymore, you may feel differently.

 

Next, we have the items that come with the drive:

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Here, we see the aforementioned spacer, and the key to the Acronis software. The documentation highlights how to get the software, but there's nothing that guides you through the process of actually upgrading the hard drive to the SSD.

 

Some images that highlight the drive itself, including its power specs(the same specs we can see on the rear side of the box):

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So we saw the drive, and everything that comes with it. Let's get to the benchmarking. I chose two other drives to compete with the PNY drive. My Intel 520 240GB SSD that I bought about four years ago, and a WD Blue 1TB hard drive(part number: WD10EZEX-00BN5A0). 

 

First up is the CS1311 SSD:

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Here, we can actually see it exceed the performance that was listed on the box. Bear in mind that the file size was 1GB, so a longer read or write may have different results if it has to sustain operations.

 

Now moving onto the Intel SSD that has gone through countless benchmarks:

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The biggest different between the two drives is the write speeds, which are significantly lower on my Intel SSD versus the PNY, which I think is to be expected with the age of the Intel drive. However, when you hit the 4K area, you can see the Intel drive is a fair bit slower than the PNY drive when it comes to read speeds. The write speeds are slightly higher, but nothing to really get excited about.

 

Last drive up is the WD 1TB Blue drive:

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I mean honestly, you would be fine going with either SSD against a hard drive, but we're going to try addressing PNY's claim of the SSD performance, though we can't do apples-to-apples as I do not own PCMark Vantage(which is what they used). However, that being said, when it comes to 4K operations, the PNY SSD is significantly faster than the WD drive. In 4K read speeds, it's 66x faster. Write speeds creates an even bigger difference.

 

So conclusion time: PNY made a solid drive with a solid price. It's amazing that SSDs have come down in price so much over the last few years, and I hope they get even lower. My Intel SSD was about $1 per gigabyte, and now this drive can be had for about 28 cents per gigabyte. I personally think the SSD looks decent and is not super flashy either. For a budget SSD, I was pleasantly surprised that they included a license for the Acronis software. I'm not sure that I'll ever use it, but it's awesome that it's there. The 3-year warranty isn't bad either for a drive this cheap.

[Guest]

This is a very nice review. Especially most PNY CS drives are often one of the cheapest out there and for the price tag it doesn't suck

 

[johnt]

Your results against the Intel SSD is very interesting to me. I have both an Intel SSD and this PNY CS drive in 480gb versions. However I have the Intel 730 and my experience has been the different than yours. Both drives are very consistent over time. My Intel is 90% full and PNY only about 25%, and they were pulling similar numbers the last time I benchmarked. 

[Godlygamer23]

27 minutes ago, JohnT said:

Your results against the Intel SSD is very interesting to me. I have both an Intel SSD and this PNY CS drive in 480gb versions. However I have the Intel 730 and my experience has been the different than yours. Both drives are very consistent over time. My Intel is 90% full and PNY only about 25%, and they were pulling similar numbers the last time I benchmarked. 

How hard have you benchmarked your 730?

[johnt]

12 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

How hard have you benchmarked your 730?

I'm not sure what you mean by "how hard." I used CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 x64 with default settings: Five passes with 1 GB. It had been a while since I last tested my drives, so I just ran these tests.

 

Intel 730

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PNY CS1311

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I'm definitely not arguing against the PNY CS1311 drive. PNY is an established company with a great reputation. The PNY drive is a better value without question. It is definitely underestimated given its price tag. My tests also show that it is superior to my Intel drive; however, I need to mention my PNY is a back up and it is very rarely used. It is also nearly 2 years newer than my Intel drive. Cam software logs my Power On Hours as follows:

 

Intel 730: 2185 hr

PNY CS1311: 785 hr

 

Now my experience with the Intel 730 has been quite positive. This drive has been very consistent with age and usage. I don't see the slower write speeds you're experiencing. IMO my tests are quite impressive for a drive that's three years old and 84% full. I use this drive regularly for photo editing and very frequent gaming (high cycle rate of data). But the 520 is even older than my drive, so I'm not sure how my drive will be performing in two more years.

[Godlygamer23]

26 minutes ago, JohnT said:

I'm not sure what you mean by "how hard." I used CrystalDiskMark 5.2.0 x64 with default settings: Five passes with 1 GB. It had been a while since I last tested my drives, so I just ran these tests.

 

Intel 730

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PNY CS1311

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I've benchmarked my SSD a lot in the past. According to CrystalDiskInfo, I've written 30TB to the drive.