The HP S700 And S700 Pro SSD Review
by Billy Tallis on September 7, 2017 9:00 AM ESTFinal Words
The HP S700 is in theory handicapped by its DRAMless controller. Random access performance in particular suffers without a DRAM cache, and garbage collection on a near-full drive is more of a chore. This doesn't necessarily translate to a significant disparity in real-world performance. The S700 falls behind on the heaviest real-world tests and performs much worse when it is full, but on more common lighter workloads and with plenty of unused capacity, it is not immediately obvious that the drive is DRAMless. On workloads where the S700's performance doesn't tank, it also offers great power efficiency. Its apparent inability to enter the slumber idle power state prevents me from recommending it for mobile use, but this issue may be fixable with a firmware update. The S700 also offers a surprisingly high sequential read speed, much better than any other SATA SSD using Micron 3D NAND, including the S700 Pro and even the MLC-based Crucial BX300.
The HP S700 Pro is in closer competition with the kinds of SATA SSDs we typically review. The S700 Pro uses the same NAND and the same controller as the ADATA SU800 we reviewed earlier this year. HP's firmware tuning clearly pays off, as the S700 Pro outperforms the SU800 across the board in both performance and power efficiency. The improvement is seldom enough to allow the S700 Pro to deliver mid-range performance like the Crucial MX300, but it's clear the S700 Pro is more refined than the SU800. The S700 Pro also handles operating in a nearly-full state much better than the SU800, and the 512GB S700 Pro's performance is barely affected by being full. We suspect the 1TB S700 Pro will also offer similarly good all-around performance with few caveats. The 256GB S700 Pro's performance will drop on a wider range of workloads but is still decent.
Building a SSD with decent performance in the 120/128GB capacity class is quite challenging with modern NAND flash chips that mean the drive will only have three or four dies to stripe accesses across. Several vendors no longer attempt this and start even their entry-level SSD product lines at 240GB or more. With NAND flash prices elevated by a shortage, there's still some demand for smaller SSDs. Crucial just re-entered this product segment with the MLC-based BX300, but we haven't yet had the chance to confirm whether the 120GB BX300 performs as well as its larger versions suggest is should. Aside from the BX300, it looks like the 128GB HP S700 Pro is probably one of the best performers in that capacity class from the current or previous generation of SSDs. However, everything in this capacity class is at a substantial disadvantage to larger drives, and this will continue to be the case unless someone starts manufacturing 128Gb 3D NAND dies.
| 120-128GB | 240-275GB | 480-525GB | 960-1050GB | 2TB | |
| HP S700 | $69.93 (58¢/GB) | $116.48 (47¢/GB) | $199.99 (40¢/GB) | ||
| HP S700 Pro | $59.97 (47¢/GB) | $106.99 (42¢/GB) | $207.86 (41¢/GB) | $369.99 (36¢/GB) | |
| Crucial BX300 | $59.99 (50¢/GB) | $89.99 (38¢/GB) | $149.99 (31¢/GB) | ||
| Crucial MX300 | $99.99 (40¢/GB) | $159.99 (32¢/GB) | $289.99 (29¢/GB) | $549.00 (27¢/GB) | |
| ADATA SU800 | $56.68 (44¢/GB) | $93.45 (37¢/GB) | $160.00 (31¢/GB) | $269.98 (26¢/GB) | |
| Samsung 850 EVO | $89.99 (36¢/GB) | $139.99 (28¢/GB) | $327.00 (33¢/GB) | $697.99 (35¢/GB) |
We're not sure if Micron is selling the Crucial BX300 at a loss, but they're certainly selling it with slimmer margins than most budget SSDs. While this pricing holds, there's no reason to consider drives with Micron's TLC, and the next step up would be the Samsung 850 EVO. At the moment, the 500GB 850 EVO is even cheaper than the BX300. Meanwhile, the HP S700 isn't consistently cheaper than the S700 Pro, and the latter is substantially more expensive than the BX300 except at the smallest capacity.
While the HP S700 and S700 Pro are not currently priced competitively, they do show that there's value in continued firmware tuning. More than a year after Micron's 32-layer 3D NAND hit the market, the HP S700 sets a new record for sequential read performance from a four-channel controller, and helps show that DRAMless SSDs can't be immediately dismissed from consideration. The S700 Pro improves on the performance that can be obtained from the combination of Micron's 32L 3D TLC and the SM2258 controller, which are now both nearing the end of their product cycles. These improvements bring the SM2258 controller into closer competition with the more expensive Marvell controllers.
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ddriver - Thursday, September 7, 2017 - link
1.1 - SATA is OK for most tasks, there will be no perceivable difference to a NVME. Besides some NVME drives are almost as slow as SATA drives, such as the p600.1.2 - most boards come with a single M2, those that have more are very expensive, and require expensive CPUs to get actual PCIE lanes
2 - because HP is paying
ddriver - Thursday, September 7, 2017 - link
Even the most expensive mobos have at most 3 m2 slots, so if you want more than 3 SSDs, what do you do then? In contrast, even low end mobos come with at least 4 SATA ports.You can get some very decent speed from SSDs in raid 0, on top of the higher capacity, SATA ssds go as high as 4TB, m2 cap out at 2TB.
8steve8 - Thursday, September 7, 2017 - link
sure, but do you think most people who can't afford a higher end motherboard are buying more than one SSD for their system?ddriver - Friday, September 8, 2017 - link
It depends on what you need. You can save plenty on money on mobo and cpu and spend on much affordable sata ssds. Just because you may need to spend 1000$ on storage doesn't mean you have to be forced to spend another 1000 on cpu and mobo.A 2 TB evo will cost you 700$, the cheapest and "onlinest" 2TB m2 drive is 1200$ - over 70% more expensive. The mx300 is even cheaper - you can have a full 4 TB for less than 1200$.
yankeeDDL - Thursday, September 7, 2017 - link
Loads of people. I have 3 SATA SSD on my PC and 2 laptops.M.2 is still much pricier, so only premium laptop use them, and I find it easier to buy a laptop with a regular HDD, and upgrade it to the SSD of my liking and size. SSD still carry a huge markup on many laptops, and in many cases you cannot even select one which is bigger than 128GB, which is preposterous.
sonny73n - Friday, September 8, 2017 - link
I am still buying SATA SSDs for my OCed Sandy Bridge system. Have 3 SSDs in there but I'm considering a big one for storage.evilspoons - Sunday, September 10, 2017 - link
Yep, I've got a friggin GTX 1080 in my i7-2600k and a random collection of hard drives and SSDs populating pretty much every SATA port on my ASUS P8Z68-V PRO. M.2? Neato, but... what's that? Lol.Up next, I would not mind a nice ol' 2 TB SSD to put the majority of my Steam games on, but I really don't have $1400 CAD to special order an 850 Pro (or Evo). Both of which are SATA, good luck with anything over M.2... I think the 960 Pro is like $1700 CAD?
mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
To the both of you, just use an SM951 or SM961 on a PCIe adapter card. I get very good results with either model on my ASUS M4E, am about to move my main photo/video archive from a 500GB 850 EVO onto a 512GB SM961. I'm getting around 2GB/sec with the SM951, 3GB/sec with the SM961, and even more with SB-E mbds (3.5GB/sec on an R4E). In the UK where I am, the Akasa PCIe adapter card is only about 13 UKP, so the total cost is still less than mainstream SATA SSDs, though I did manage to get a 960 Pro 512GB for a good price for my R4E gaming setup.Also, the 950 Pro has its own boot ROM, so on older mbds you can use it as a boot drive via legacy BIOS settings. I know someone who's done this with their X79 and I plan on doing it with my own setups. Alas the 960 Pro does not have its own boot ROM so it can't be used in the same way by default. Other NVMe models also have their own boot ROM though, such as the Intel 750.
Also, for ASUS X79 systems, there's a thread on the ROG site where a guy is posting modded BIOS files to allow various ASUS mbds to boot from any NVMe SSD, not just units like the 950 Pro. Thus, I plan on replacing my R4E's 850 Pro with a 960 Pro which was originally going to be just for game data alone.
There's still plenty of life left in older mbds, much to the annoyance I'm sure of Intel and other vendors. :D Beats me though why Samsung didn't include a boot ROM in the 960, that was bizarre.
PM/email me if you'd like screen captures of these SSDs being tested on various configs (so far mostly an M4E, R4E ans P9X79-E WS), ie. AS-SSD, CDM and Atto.
Ian.
mapesdhs - Wednesday, September 13, 2017 - link
Forgot to mention, I also plan on testing them with some P55 and X58 mbds, should be interesting, and perhaps a Striker II Extreme aswell if I have the time. Might try a couple of older AMD boards aswell, I have a few.FunBunny2 - Friday, September 8, 2017 - link
-- Who is buying SATA SSDs in 2017most computers, modulo gamers and stats and RDBMS, don't do much more than e-mail and web surfing. the home PC reached good enough a decade ago. swapping spinning rust for just about any NAND device gets you as much improvement as a new i7 machine. I guess the idle rich would choose the latter, but the rest of us just get a SSD.