The Mushkin Source 500GB SATA SSD Review: A Value Proposition For An Everyday PC
by Billy Tallis on November 21, 2018 10:00 AM ESTIdle Power Measurement
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
Idle power management for NVMe SSDs is far more complicated than for SATA SSDs. NVMe SSDs can support several different idle power states, and through the Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) feature the operating system can set a drive's policy for when to drop down to a lower power state. There is typically a tradeoff in that lower-power states take longer to enter and wake up from, so the choice about what power states to use may differ for desktop and notebooks.
We report two idle power measurements. Active idle is representative of a typical desktop, where none of the advanced PCIe link or NVMe power saving features are enabled and the drive is immediately ready to process new commands. The idle power consumption metric is measured with PCIe Active State Power Management L1.2 state enabled and NVMe APST enabled if supported.
The active idle power consumption of the Mushkin Source seems a bit high given the lack of external DRAM to power, but in the slumber state it is quite competitive against other SATA drives.
The Mushkin Source has a notably slow wake-up from sleep, taking more than 2.6ms when a typical time for SATA SSDs is around 1ms. The Toshiba TR200 also has a similarly long wake-up latency, and the HP S700 likely only avoids that by not having a working slumber state at all.
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benedict - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
This needs to be less than 10$/GB to make any sense.deil - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
it might be, wait 3-4 months from initial start. Still its cheapest 500 GB I've seen so far, and that is good sign.Small Bison - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Yeah, charging over five thousand dollars for a 500GB DRAM-less drive *does* seem like a bit much.excelle08 - Thursday, November 22, 2018 - link
Well you aren't referring to US Dollars, right?😂PeachNCream - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
The scatter plots on pages 6 and 7 may benefit from the addition of color to differentiate storage types. As they stand, they're difficult to extract meaningful data from for a few reasons, but the worst offenders are too many data points in the given space and poor contrast between data types.Billy Tallis - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
The purpose of those scatter plots isn't to enable comparing the highlighted drive against any particular competitor, but to show where it falls relative to the limits of what is possible/normal. The data points for the non-highlighted drives are deliberately low-contrast because their exact value or identity aren't what's important for that graph. They're supposed to blend into a cloud.PeachNCream - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Hmm, well I wasn't implying that there ought to be individual products highlighted. I was suggesting that using a categorical color in addition to the shape would help with overall visibility. For example, make TLC red, MLC green, and Optane black or something. It would allow us to extrapolate trend-like significance to the categories that were defined in the chart and position the Source among them.Great_Scott - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
SSD prices are so compressed right now that I'm considering getting a Samsung 860 EVO... as the 'cheap' option.There's really no point in getting a 'budget' 2.5" form-factor drive as every brand falls within about a 10% total price range.
Ratman6161 - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Absolutely. In the SATA space, there is no reason to even look at anything other than the Samsung 860 EVO or the Crucial MX500. The 860 EVO is even cheaper than this piece of junk at the 1 TB level and only $7 less at 500 GB. There is no reason for this drive to exist unless they cut the price...a lot.heffeque - Wednesday, November 21, 2018 - link
Well the BX500 is a pretty decent drive and is somewhat cheaper than both 860EVO and MX500.