quoted specs
Capacity: 120GB, 240GB 480GB, 960GB
Price: $57, $88, $185, $370
Sequential Read: 550 MB/s
Sequential Write: 450 MB/s (120GB), 520 MB/s (240GB), 530 MB/s (480GB+)
IOPS (read): 79,000 (120GB) / 90,000 (240GB+)
IOPS (write): 25,000, 43,000, 54,000, 64,000
Endurance: 30TBW, 60TBW, 120TBW, 240TBW
No sooner had we finished testing OCZ’s high-end Vector 180 SSD than a brand new model landed on the PC Gamer doormat. Aiming for the opposite end of the market, the Trion is the first triple-layer cell (TLC) SSD from OCZ, and one of the most affordable drives around.
SSDs are one of the best advances in modern PC technology, freeing users from the limits of mechanical hard disks, with their slow Windows boot times and lengthy application load times. We’re absolutely convinced that, after using an SSD as a system drive, you’ll never want to go back to a hard disk again.
Many people are put off by SSD pricing, though, which is still a lot higher, per gigabyte, than a traditional hard disk, despite consistently falling each year. So there’s still a vast untapped market of people who could be convinced to upgrade, at the right price, and OCZ is hoping to capture that with the Trion.
The secret to the lower pricing is TLC flash memory. We already explained this in our guide to the Best SSD for Gaming, but as a brief recap, TLC lowers costs by squeezing more data out of the same amount of physical silicon. With a TLC SSD, fewer chips, or chips of a lower density, are needed to provide a given drive capacity, which therefore lowers costs. Three bits of data are stored per cell, while regular MLC drives store two bits. But nothing’s free in life, and the penalty for this extra capacity is reduced performance and endurance.
There are some TLC SSDs already on sale: SanDisk’s Ultra II and Samsung’s 850 EVO. In addition, some SSD firms have seriously slashed the cost of their MLC drives. Crucial’s MX100, MX200 and BX100 are some of the most competitively priced MLC SSDs around, and OCZ’s own Arc 100 is similarly affordable.
The Trion 100 ships with Toshiba’s second-generation A19nm flash. Being TLC, it’s slightly different from the NAND used in other OCZ drives. SanDisk and Samsung both use their own TLC flash memory, with the 40nm flash in the 850 EVO being arranged in a 3D, rather than traditional planar structure, which has many advantages, and is something every SSD manufacturer is aiming for.
The Trion is sold in four capacities: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB and 960GB, roughly comparable with the capacities offered by many other current drives. Samsung offers the exact same four capacities with its 850 EVO, and the 960GB capacity is becoming ever more popular as it’s more affordable than ever with a TLC drive like the Trion. We were sent the 480GB version for testing.
Here’s how it compares with other drives on the market:
The SanDisk Ultra II and Samsung 850 EVO have a small (pseudo) SLC cache to mitigate the detrimental effects on performance and lifespan caused by the move to TLC flash memory.
SLC refers to flash memory where only a single bit of data is stored per cell, therefore it has the best possible endurance and performance. For the 850 EVO, Samsung uses a fixed-sized SLC cache, the exact amounts depending on the drive capacity, while SanDisk uses what it calls nCache 2.0, an SLC cache that grows and shrinks dynamically, depending on the drive usage.
For the Trion 100, OCZ has followed Samsung’s lead with a fixed-size cache. They wouldn’t say how big this cache is, but it’s fairly easy to find out by running a few tests.
The 120GB model has 1.8GB of space reserved as an SLC cache. With the larger drive capacities, the size of the cache increases with 1.8GB for each extra 120GB of space. So the 240GB model has a 3.6GB cache, the 480GB model has 7.2GB, and the 960GB model has 14.4GB of space reserved as a cache.
For comparison, Samsung’s 850 EVO has 3GB of cache in the 120GB and 240GB models, and 6GB in the 480GB and 960GB models, so depending on the capacity, it’s either more or less than the Trion 100.
DDR3 cache memory follows a similar incremental pattern. The 120GB model has 128MB of memory, with 256GB in 240GB model, and so on, with 1GB in the 960GB model.
The endurance looks very impressive, but OCZ is slightly massaging its numbers when quoting its Daily Usage Guidelines. These results are derived from dividing the total bytes written (TBW) by the warranty period, which is only three years. But for three of the four capacities, the TBW of the Trion 100 is lower than Samsung’s 850 EVO.
The 850 EVO offers 75 TBW for its 120GB and 240GB capacities, both of which are higher than the Trion 100’s respective 30 TBW and 60 TBW, while the 480GB capacity offers 150 TBW, again, a significantly better figure than the Trion’s 120 TBW. Samsung’s drive comes with a five-year warranty too, so it’s actually far better than the Trion 100.
There’s a bit more to the Trion though. It’s the first OCZ SSD to use a controller that’s been entirely developed by Toshiba. Previously, OCZ relied on third parties, or technology from its 2011 purchase of SSD controller firm Indilinx. The Vector, Vertex and Arc series of SSDs all use variants of an Indlinx Barefoot 3 controller, while the RevoDrive PCI-Express SSD uses a Sandforce controller.
With the controller, firmware, flash memory and end product now sold and developed by a single firm, OCZ is almost in the envious position of Samsung, whose entirely in-house development helps them bring technology to market quicker, and (one might imagine) with better profit margins. We say ‘almost’ because OCZ admitted it isn’t quite there yet, and some of the components still come from third parties, but the end goal is to produce and design every aspect of its SSDs, and an in-house controller is a big step towards it.
Unfortunately, we really don’t know much about this controller, called Toshiba Controller TC58, as OCZ and Toshiba are keeping quiet on any detail right now.
It lacks any form of drive encryption, or power-loss protection. It does support DevSleep though, a mode where it uses as little power as possible when a laptop is placed in sleep mode which obviously improves battery life, quoted as 6mw by OCZ.
The drive itself has a white chassis and is 7mm high. Being a low-priced drive, it comes with no accessories. There’s no 2.5-inch mounting bracket included, for example. However it’s fully compatible with OCZ’s new toolbox software, SSD Guru, which we first saw with the Vector 180.
This software provides easy access to functions such as secure erase, firmware updates and so on. It allows for manual over provisioning and has a manual TRIM command too, in case you’re using an older version of Windows that lacks built-in support, such as XP or Vista. It works just as well with the Trion 100 as it does with the Vector 180. Although unlike the Vector, we couldn’t secure erase the Trion 100 within Windows, it instead pointed us in the direction of the bootable copy of the software available on OCZ’s site.
It comes with a three-year warranty, slightly lower than the five years OCZ offers on the Vector 180, but it’s similarly being called ShieldPlus. This refers to OCZ’s new service which aims to streamline the RMA process. If you run into any issues, just enter your drive’s serial number on the returns website, print out the shipping address label, and if the drive is found to be defective then OCZ sends a new drive to you as quickly as possible.
MSRP prices are pegged at $57 for the 120GB model, $88 for the 240GB, $185 for the 480GB and $370 for the 960GB. This places the 480GB model at only $35 more than the current pricing for the 240GB Vector 180.
Of course, by the time you read this, you might find prices have gone up or down slightly, and as always, retailers run promotions that lead to short-term discounts. Shop around, and many alternative drives are the same price, just slightly more or even slightly cheaper than the Trion 100. For example, we had a quick look on NewEgg and noticed the 480GB version of OCZ’s own Arc 100 drive is (currently) $10 less than the Trion 100, despite being based on MLC flash rather than TLC.
However, there’s a strong chance the prices for the Trion 100 might fall below these quoted MSRPs in time.
Deep Dive: Getting to the numbers
Crystaldiskmark
That leaves performance as the last remaining question. With a relatively large SLC cache and TLC flash, the Trion 100 delivers good all-around read performance, but it’s hit by some of the slowest write speeds we’ve seen from a modern SSD.
We tested the OCZ Vertex 180 in a desktop PC running Windows 7 SP1 and the following hardware configuration. (This was the very same PC used to test the OCZ Vector 180.)
- Intel Core i7 4790K, clocked at 4GHz
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 970
- 16GB DDR3-1600 RAM
- Asus Z87 Pro Motherboard
Although the sequential read speeds in CrystalDiskMark look OK, the write speeds, and specifically the 4K QD32 results are significantly lower than those achieved by, for example, the OCZ Vector 180. Given the results from the Vector 180 were taken from a drive with a lower capacity, which affects performance, the gap with write performance is quite wide indeed. The same is true with AS SSD, where the 4K-64Thrd write IOPS are half those of the Vector 180.
In PCMark08, these lower write speeds slightly reduce the (simulated) results from real-world testing. There’s a two second difference in the InDesign benchmark, for example, and a difference of 48 points in the overall score.
Conclusion
The Trion 100 isn’t the trying to be the fastest SSD on the market, and overall, it provides reasonable performance for a good price.
Although it’s low on features, none are absolutely essential for basic use. We can live without drive encryption, and the lack of power-loss protection is to be expected, given how few consumer SSDs offer such a feature. While we haven’t yet needed to test the efficiency of OCZ’s ShieldPlus warranty system, it certainly sounds good, but bear in mind they’re only offering three years with the Trion 100, rather than the five or ten years you get with more expensive drives. SSD Guru also works very well, and it’s nice there’s a low power DevSleep mode.
Write speed in synthetic tests definitely suffers from the move to TLC flash memory, but as we’ve stated many times, it’s real-world performance that matters. And here, with the PCMark08 scores, it measures just slightly worse than other drives, with a fraction of a second or two difference to complete certain tasks.
Overall, a Trion 100 would still make someone happy who is upgrading to an SSD for the first time. But while it’s very affordable, it’s competing with other drives that offer similar value. We were quite surprised to see the 480GB version of OCZ’s own Arc 100 available for a lower price.
With any luck, the Trion 100 will become cheaper in the next few months though, in which case it will be a far more attractive purchase, but for now, we’d choose a different SSD.
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