The MyDigitalSSD SBX SSD Review: NVMe On The Cheap
by Billy Tallis on May 1, 2018 8:05 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
On the Light test, almost all NVMe SSDs have the opportunity to significantly outpace all SATA SSDs—when the test is run on an empty drive. When the drives are full, only some of the faster NVMe drives still need the extra bandwidth of PCI Express. The MyDigitalSSD SBX suffers more than most drives from being full, and the effect is more severe at lower capacities. The SBX is still faster than SATA drives in those difficult conditions.
The full-drive test runs show significantly higher average and 99th percentile latency, especially for the smaller capacities of the SBX. The empty-drive test runs show latency that is much more in line with other NVMe drives and is generally much better than how the smaller Intel 760p drives behave.
Almost everything shows a fairly large disparity in average read latency between full and empty drive conditions for the Light test, so the MyDigitalSSD SBX doesn't stand out too much. The full-drive average write latency scores for the SBX aren't the only poor results in the bunch, but they are still outliers compared to NVMe drives in general.
The 99th percentile read and write scores for the MyDigitalSSD SBX show reasonable QoS for the empty-drive test runs, but some of the worst results we've measured for full drive performance. The Intel 760p's results are probably worse for real-world scenarios, because its empty drive latency is almost as bad as the full drive latency.
The three capacities of the MyDigitalSSD SBX all have about the same energy usage on the Light test. Their efficiency scores are great by NVMe standards, but mediocre by the standards of modern SATA drives. The SBX has reduced energy usage almost by half compared to the Phison E7 drives.
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Samus - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Ditto. I think it'd crazy to use a 2.5" over an M2 if you have the M2 slot available, especially since M2 SATA drives are often cheaper than 2.5" drives (because they are less expensive to manufacture, and the OEM market is larger.)And as far as SATA M2 drives, if you have an M2 slot that supports NVMe, it's hard to justify not using an NVMe SSD when the cost difference is less than 20%...I picked up the WD Black 512GB NVMe drive last week for $150. A decent 540GB class SATA M2 SSD is at least $120.
Death666Angel - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
If every dollar counts and the performance increase is small or won't be used, it's pretty easy to justify getting a SATA M.2 drive instead of an NVME one.Death666Angel - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Especially since small capacities are likely to be very close in speed, when comparing NMVE and SATA M.2.Byte - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
As someone who does a lot of testing/tweaking, i love the easy formfactor, but hate having to screw and unscrew. We really need a tooless update.MajGenRelativity - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Honestly, I find it about the same amount of time/difficulty to (un)screw an M.2 drive as it is to work with even a toolless 2.5" drive. Unless the M.2 drive is under the GPU, in which case that really annoys meleexgx - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
Still £/$30 more for a customer who is not going to benefit from the nvme ssd (and less money for you)I hardly notice the difference between the sata and nvme ssd my self, main difference is them above 1GB/s speeds but day to day usage I don't really notice much the difference between them unless I am looking for the difference (as long as it's Not a HDD even a slow ssd is many times faster then a hdd)
Do Samsung 850 evo have am issue if they have been left on for to long (like 30 days) as my 850 evo just crap it self out smart fail at Bios and can't read it (only done basic not hirions boot CD yet)
MajGenRelativity - Thursday, May 3, 2018 - link
Actually, I'd technically make a little more money if I sold them an NVMe SSD (my labor cost scales with price of parts), but they wouldn't benefit from it, so I generally don't recommend them. 850 Evo's don't normally have that issue.peevee - Tuesday, May 1, 2018 - link
AT, how about a couple of user-reproducible, real life tests? Compilation of a large software package. Unzipping a large archive. Recoding video. Just to demonstrate the scale of improvement the buyers could actually SEE.SanX - Wednesday, May 2, 2018 - link
Two reasons come instantly. Because only salespeople left in IT. No one even discuss calling lawyers for such confusing people blatant claims like 1600MB/second read speed this product has. And because Windows for example will load something like in 17.6 seconds instead of 17.9 with this drive vs SSD.Funny also is that 2-3 times slower drive which does not deliver at all is just 25-30% cheaper then the leaders.
peevee - Friday, May 4, 2018 - link
This site is often for people for assemble their own PCs and/or choose what to buy for their companies. I'd think a few reproducible, real life tests vs proprietary and compressed tests would show the value of improvements.Maybe it is what AT really is afraid of, because tests show the improvements which do not exist in real life?