The Mushkin Source 500GB SATA SSD Review: A Value Proposition For An Everyday PC
by Billy Tallis on November 21, 2018 10:00 AM ESTConclusion: Cheap, But Don't Fill It
Mushkin has been basing its SSDs off Silicon Motion controllers for years, and they have produced a few hits when they have managed to deliver a good-performing SMI platform at great prices. That was clearly the case with the last Mushkin drive we reviewed, the Reactor. The Mushkin Source isn't one of those clear winners. Instead, it's a cheap drive that makes some compromises and comes with some caveats.
The Mushkin Source provides about what we expect from an entry-level SATA SSD. The choice of a DRAMless SSD controller means that random I/O performance lags well behind mainstream SATA SSDs, but sequential I/O performance is for the most part competitive. The lack of DRAM lowers power consumption a bit, so for sequential workloads where the Source performs well, the power efficiency tends to be better than most mainstream SATA SSDs, but the power savings aren't enough to match the much lower performance on workloads with random I/O.
Like any other consumer SSD using TLC NAND, the SLC write caching used by the Mushkin Source is an important part of the overall performance profile. Without it, write performance would be unacceptable, but the cache on the 500GB Source we tested is adequately sized to handle most of our tests and most real-world consumer workloads. For the few tests that wrote enough data to overflow the SLC cache, the effects can be seen as substantially lowered write performance and worse read performance as the controller is too busy shuffling data around. The worst-case performance of the Mushkin Source is just as bad as other DRAMless SSDs we've tested, which is a bit of a disappointment given how mainstream SATA and NVMe SSDs have shown Micron's 64L 3D TLC to be significantly faster than their first generation 3D NAND. The Mushkin Source doesn't offer the kind of generational improvement we wanted to see over older DRAMless drives like the HP S700.
For lighter consumer workloads that don't routinely throw around multi-GB datasets, the DRAMless design of the Mushkin Source is a minor hindrance, not a crippling flaw. It's slower than mainstream SATA SSDs, but still far faster than a hard drive for both random and sequential I/O. When subjected to a more intense workload, the Source can offer adequate performance for a while before the SLC cache runs out and latency goes through the roof. Given its entry-level positioning, the Source is quite capable of handling the kind of workloads it can be reasonably expected to encounter.
| 120GB | 240-256GB | 480-525GB | 1TB | 2TB | |
| Mushkin Source |
$27.99 (23¢/GB) | $41.99 (17¢/GB) | $64.99 (13¢/GB) | $135.99 (14¢/GB) | |
| Toshiba TR200 |
$39.99 (17¢/GB) | $79.99 (17¢/GB) | $279.99 (29¢/GB) | ||
| Crucial BX500 |
$26.77 (22¢/GB) | $42.95 (18¢/GB) | $76.95 (16¢/GB) | ||
| Crucial MX500 |
$52.99 (21¢/GB) | $74.99 (15¢/GB) | $139.99 (14¢/GB) | $326.37 (16¢/GB) | |
| Samsung 860 EVO | $57.99 (23¢/GB) | $72.99 (15¢/GB) | $127.98 (13¢/GB) | $294.88 (15¢/GB) | |
| WD Blue 3D NAND | $53.65 (21¢/GB) | $79.99 (16¢/GB) | $134.99 (13¢/GB) | $311.00 (16¢/GB) |
Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are just days away (and in some cases, already underway), but there's a chance that this may not actually be the best week out of this year to buy a new SSD. NAND flash memory prices have been falling fast in recent months and that trend is set to continue well into 2019. A record-low price per GB this week could be the everyday going rate in a few weeks or months. In addition to this volatility, it appears that the sales are causing major online retailers to run out of stock of some of the SSDs they are offering the best deals on. So any assessment of the current market conditions and the pricing on the Mushkin Source will have a short shelf life.
But as things stand now, the Mushkin Source doesn't stack up very well against the best prices for mainstream SATA SSDs. The clearest niche for drives like the Source is at the 120GB capacity point that the mainstream drives have abandoned. At larger capacities, the Source is either more expensive than something like a Samsung 860 EVO, or jumping up to an 860 EVO or MX500 is only a few well-justified dollars more. Unless price per GB is the ultimate goal at the 500GB, then the Source is difficult to recommend. The annoying thing is, the performance when full means that users get the best when they do not fill it, so if the 'useable capacity' is reduced in this way, then price per GB goes up. That's when the MX500 comes into play at 500GB, or the 860 EVO at 1TB.
The Future Value is in QLC
Looking forward, DRAMless SATA drives like the Mushkin Source will be competing against the coming wave of QLC SATA SSDs. Many of these should be able to include DRAM caches and still offer lower prices per GB than DRAMless TLC SSDs. At high capacities (1TB+), QLC SATA drives will probably destroy the market for DRAMless TLC SATA SSDs. At smaller capacities, QLC drives will suffer even more severely from the performance limitations of only having a few NAND flash dies to use in parallel, and may not be able to beat a DRAMless TLC drive.
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Amandtec - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
On PC Partpicker you can chose a chinese brand 500GB for about $42 vs about $72 for the Samnsung. So it is a little more than 10% difference.piroroadkill - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
So $30 to not lose your data? Sounds like a good deal.piroroadkill - Wednesday, November 28, 2018 - link
Yeah, the SSD market is filled with wrong decisions.I just basically go for a TLC Samsung drive that fits the budget, and pretty much ignore everything else.
kmmatney - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Microcenter has their Inland 480GB SSD for $59.99. I have bought about 10 of the Inland SSDs so far, in various sizes (mostly the 240GB for $33). They have all worked great for normal everyday workloads, and most of these were installed as boot drives. The Microcenter SSDs are also DRAMless - maybe they don't bench as well, but they still have that SSD feel to them, and perform well doing normal tasks.fmcjw - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Well written article, thorough but not verbose, thank you Billy! Reminds me of Anand and Bruce...Recently bought a 480GB no name SSD that uses the same controller and NAND for only around $40 (singles day deal here in my home market in Taiwan). It has similar characteristics to the Source as you described (full disk SLC cache, etc.), but returned it because it makes a loud/hi-freq electrical noise when written to and read from. Forums here say that the 2258XT (or its ASMedia licensed copy) can overheat under heavy use and die before the NAND expires, so thermal design and general electrical design/component quality is critical. I'm not sure if you examined these design flaws or if you plan to add them to future routines? Granted it's probably specific to each production batch, but might be worth checking on each drive that you come across if it's not too much work.
I understand you include links to Destroyer methodology, but it will be helpful to briefly describe what constitutes a "full" and "empty" drive in brief, for faster reading without having to click through.
Also, a bit curious about SLC caching, its different types and what that means for real world usage. I imagine frequently accessed operating system files should be kept in SLC, and not moved into TLC, but unsure if any firmware is so smart about this. If if keeps moving files without discretion it will also be bad for write amplification.
Thanks again!
Billy Tallis - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link
I hadn't heard about 2258XT controllers dying or overheating. It hasn't happened to any of my drive samples yet. I also don't recall hearing coil whine coming off the Source, though I have heard it from a few SSDs during testing.For the full-drive ATSB Heavy and Light test runs, the drive is filled with sequential writes of random data to every single sector, then given a five minute break to cool off and flush caches before the test begins.
TLC drives generally treat the SLC cache as a write buffer, and will aggressively migrate data from SLC to TLC blocks during idle times. The QLC drives on the market so far are much more willing to keep data in SLC until it is necessary to compact it into QLC blocks, so the SLC cache helps with write and read performance. I'm not aware of any drives that move frequently-read data from TLC/QLC blocks back to SLC to optimize read performance.
gglaw - Saturday, November 24, 2018 - link
Billy - I don't get the indications of when the performance falls off after the SLC cache is full. The graphs indicate it drops off after around 170GB of data is written. How is this possible on a budget TLC drive? Does this mean there is 170GB of SLC cache on this drive? That couldn't be true for a budget DRAM-Less drive since it would add way much to the cost of the drive that the market it is targetting would not need. No one buying this type of drive would be doing workloads to push it past this threshold so it makes 0 business sense to equip it in this way. Basically no performance sense either since this large of a cache will never be used by customers buying bottom barrel drives.I'm probably reading it entirely wrong - do you have a clearer explanation of what is going on?
Billy Tallis - Saturday, November 24, 2018 - link
The full-drive sequential write test is essentially a best-case scenario that illustrates the maximum possible SLC cache size for drives with variable-size caches. The drive starts out empty so the SLC cache is at its largest size, and sequential writes are easier for the controller to handle than random writes.It looks like the Mushkin Source more or less runs all of its NAND as SLC initially, which is why it takes so long for the write speed to drop. It's also possible that the write throughput from the controller to the NAND is significantly faster than the SATA link, so the drive might have some slack to start folding data from SLC to TLC blocks in the background before the cache fills up.
The other SM2258 drives appear to start folding before the cache is full, but with the slower 32L TLC that did have an impact on the write speed.
At some point I may expand the SLC cache test to better show the range of behaviors for variable-size caches.
WasHopingForAnHonestReview - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link
Great review, thank you.excelle08 - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link
This could benefit for non-power user consumers who just want faster booting or everyday software loading. However the price is not reasonable for such a piece of junk - Intel's 660p already sucks, let alone this unknown brand who is likely to use "who knows" black/white flash chips, plus without DRAM cache. If I only have $30 budget for storage I'd rather go to ebay and search for a used older SATA2 MLC stuff(such as Intel X-25M) than this 120G QLC drive.