Crucial v4 (256GB) Review
by Kristian Vättö on November 22, 2012 1:01 PM ESTFinal Words
Building a low-cost SSD is not easy; we have witnessed that many times now. There are essentially two ways to build one: either you go with a cheap controller or cheap NAND. What Crucial chose was a cheap controller and higher quality NAND. Since Crucial is a subsidiary of Micron, that choice makes sense because their expertise lies in the NAND fabrication, not in the controller technology. NAND actually still has fairly big profits despite the decline in prices, so Crucial/Micron can use good quality NAND in low-end SSDs and still turn a profit. A powerful third party controller would basically make the v4 an m4 and defeat the purpose of a budget SSD.
A good example of the other approach, a powerful controller and cheap NAND, is OCZ's Agility 4. It uses the same Indilinx Everest 2 controller as found in Vertex 4 but is coupled with asynchronous NAND instead of faster but more expensive synchronous NAND. OCZ is a controller company, so that concept was the most sensible for them. You will have to buy NAND from someone anyway and an easy way to cut the expenses is to simply buy cheaper, lower quality NAND.
Both of these ways have something in common: neither of them really works. The Agility 4 isn't really worth the small savings as we found in our review, and neither is Crucial's v4. To be straight, the v4 is slow. I'm okay with it being SATA 3Gbps but in that case, it should at least be one of the faster SATA 3Gbps drives. Intel SSD 320 and first generation SandForce drives are beating it by a factor of three to five in both Storage Suites, which is unacceptable for a new SSD in 2012.
The v4 would have to be significantly cheaper than any other SSD to be worth buying. At the current prices, you can get an SSD that is several times faster for $5-20 more depending on the model and capacity. If you're lucky, you may be able to catch a hot sale and get a good SSD (say Samsung SSD 830 for instance) for less than the v4. Hence I really can't recommend the v4 at all; you're better off waiting a short while for a sale on a better SSD, or just pay slightly more now if you're in a position where waiting is not possible (a drive failure for example).
The only value SSD that really makes sense is Samsung's SSD 840. You really need a good controller and firmware to build a good SSD; if you just use the cheapest possible controller on the market you will end up with a bad SSD. Fast NAND doesn't help if the controller is the bottleneck because it simply cannot feed the NAND with data fast enough, but it's possible to get away with slower NAND if you have a great controller as we saw with the SSD 840. Even the 840 faces stiff competition from existing drives (e.g. Samsung's own 830), though, so until prices drop for TLC drives we suggest looking at the existing SSDs.
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Lone Ranger - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
On page two, you state that you are surprised to only find 8 packages on the board despite finding room for 16. In the next paragraph you state that the controller supports 8 channels. Is it possible to "gang" two packages together to one controller channel? If not, the controller is the reason that 16 packages aren't used.Kristian Vättö - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
The controller supports up to 32 NAND packages (i.e. 4 per channel). Pretty much all consumer-grade controllers have eight channels but support more than one package per channelLone Ranger - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
Thanks for the clarification.creed3020 - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
I stopped reading at Phison PS3105...Most people who know SSDs understand their controllers are useless even in a low end product.
Pessimism - Friday, November 23, 2012 - link
Phison is the new JMicron.tjoynt - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - link
We spend so much time looking at the upper range of prrformance, it's nice to get a lower bound, too. :)It also demonstrates just how important a good controller is and how hard it is to make one. Also gives me a better idea of why usb flash drives and most devices with flash have so much lower performance than SSDs. Any one know what the cost differential is between a Psion and a Sandforce or Indilinx or Samsung?
infoilrator - Saturday, November 24, 2012 - link
The article implied about $10 more buys a better controller. I do not know where firmware vs hardware may make a difference.Crucual will sell these on the basis of its M4 reputation. Unfortunately I believe it will leave a large number of customers unset with crucial.
I do not want one at any price (hey, i found way better prices.
Would RAID0 help these any?
jack.fxx - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
Well, even though benchmark results of V4 are considerably lower than other contemporary SSDs, it still is decent SSD. For example Windows boot time of V4 is the same as any other SSD (see http://www.legitreviews.com/article/2010/6/ ) , average user won't notice any difference between Samsung 840 Pro and V4.Benchmark results are pretty much useless when comparing desktop SSDs, because SSD drives in desktops/laptops are at least 99% of time idle, which means that 2x faster SSD will improve performace of your system at most by 0.5%.
crimson117 - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
Casual users have gotten used to having 500GB, or 1TB of hard drive space, but few will use more than a small fraction of that capacity.A $99 128GB drive is perfect for most users and they don't realize what they're missing!
JonnyDough - Monday, November 26, 2012 - link
At its current price, the Crucial V4 is not a good deal. However, Crucial is one of the few PC component manufacturers based in the USA (they employ American's as well) so when it comes to purchases for SSDs and RAM I often go with them or Kingston.