PNY CS1311 SSD Review (120GB/480GB)

REAL WORLD FILE TRANSFER

Finally, we wanted to see how performance was in a real world use when transferring large files to the SSDs. As we know, most TLC NAND based SSDs utilize a SLC caching algorithm to help improve performance, especially writes. This is needed due to the inherent slowness of TLC NAND. For this test we are going to simply stress write performance by transferring over a 30GB folder of movies off of one SSD to this one and time how long it takes. Once complete we can calculate the average speed.

PNY CS1311 30GB Transfer

During our real-world file transfer test we can see that while benchmarks display high sequential write speeds within their testing file size of just a few GB, when testing more than that these TLC SSDs will slow during transfers. For the most part, the 120GB model is second to last at an average write speed of 96MB/s, however, the 480GB model was able to maintain above 200MB/s during testing.

To build upon this test we also looked to see where the speeds leveled off to by using HD Tune Pro.

120GB Left/480GB Right

PNY CS1311 SSD 120GB HDTune PNY CS1311 SSD 480GB HDTune

Again, we can see that once the initial SLC cache is saturated, write speeds will drop off significantly when conducting large file transfers. The 120GB model drops off to the mid 90MB/s range and the 480GB model drops to about 180MB/s.

POWER CONSUMPTION

For our power consumption testing, we have the drive connected to the system as a secondary drive. To record the wattage, we are now utilizing a Quarch Technology Programmable Power Module. It allows us to accurately measure power consumption over time and is flexible enough to allow us to test any SSD that comes our way.

Quarch Technology Power Module Angle

Our power analysis may change as time goes on, but for now we are looking at just a few metrics with the main goal of measuring our results against the manufacturer’s ratings. One, idle power consumption. Because most consumer systems are at idle for about 80% of the time, idle power consumption is an important measure to look at when understanding the efficiency of a drive. Next we look at startup consumption. This tells you how much power the device needs during startup and while it is usually more important when looking at HDDs and enterprise class storage, it is still something worth quantifying. After that we did averaged out the active power consumption from the 30GB file transfer. Finally, we went through our power logs during testing and listed the maximum power draw.

PNY CS1311 Power Consumption

The active rating by PNY is 2.2W and the idle rating is 0.17W. Active power ratings can be measured in many different ways, but looking at our results, it seems that the PNY CS1311s are well regulated. Overall, better than that of the Crucial BX200s we reviewed a few months ago and about on par with the PNY CS2211.

Finally, we wanted to post up a graph of the difference in idle power consumption between many of the current SSD options in the market. Again, idle accounts for the majority power draw of a drive and considering the use a drive in laptop, idle power consumption can greatly affect battery life, therefore we feel we should compare it in its own graph.

PNY CS1311 Idle Power Consumption

Idle power consumption is also very good, each model sips less than 60 milliwatts at idle, which is good news for those of us who could use a few more minutes of juice in our laptops.

22 comments

  1. blank

    Thats a pretty good price for a 240G version. Too bad its for the states 🙂

    But 15nm TLC is worrying for me personally. Its bad enough we went sub 20nm, let alone 15nm. But hey, everything for that price/gb 🙂

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    It seems that the “entry level, value oriented” ox is itself being gored by a matador named PNY. Its offerings are the first that I have seen that seem to attempt to give features in line with their price point. That, my friends, is value.

    I am not currently in the market for an SSD but I will be when Intel comes out with Generation 8 processors so I am following developments closely. I personally would go for the 2211 – pay more to get more – but the value is there in both of them.

    I have a few PNY items and they are fine. I made two purchases last month and had awful problems ordering through their website but it was easy to get genuine human interface and complete the order by phone.

    It seems that a lot of SSD manufacturers compete mainly against HDDs and not against each other. It seems that PNY is here to compete against both.

    Jim

    • blank

      Hi Jim, we are sorry to hear you experienced issues with our website. Please e-mail offers@pnytechnologies.com with additional details so we can ensure this does not happen again in the future. Thank you.

      • blank

        The whole string was documented under the e-mail subject line “PNY Account will not accept my address”.

        It all was satisfactorily resolved at the time, albeit with considerable effort on the part of your people and me.

        I mentioned it here more as a disclosure/disclaimer.

        Jim

      • blank

        A genuinely unbiased comment here. Don’t see those too often in the wild.

  3. blank

    Mine failed in 6 months. Never again.
    I received an RMA number but need to pay shipping to send the dead drive back to PNY. I sent two emails asking if I’ll get a refund and I have not received a reply.
    I don’t know if I should waste any more money on this ‘thing’.

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    i have one thes drive for the last 6 months but the last two or so i have had nothing but issues with it. i dont think pny drives are very relible for there price.

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    I think the measured performance here is misleading, you don’t buy a SSD then marvel at how fast the empty drive is, it’s going to have stuff on it. As such results would be much more representative of actual real world situations if the drives were filled to around 20% capacity, in terms of a 120GB SSD that would be about the size of a OS install with drivers.

  6. blank

    I bought two of the 240GB CS1311 drives and configured them in a RAID0. The drives cannot sustain their max speeds for very long. The drives slow down during large file transfers, so I assume the DRAM cache that is being used to buffer the slower TLC NAND and it chokes after a couple GB of sustained transfer. It does feel like false marketing to list the “cache” speeds and IOPS, but I guess you get what you pay for. I think that SSD reviews need to start benching larger workloads than 256MB and 1GB in the era of TLC NAND.

    Also, after a week and a half one of the drives failed and died. I’m attempting RMA now…

  7. blank

    what is the country of origin for PNY SSD? Thanks.

  8. blank

    How about been able to see the reviews without eating a ton of carrots.

  9. blank

    How about been able to see the reviews without having to eat a ton of carrots

  10. blank

    Got 4 of these, there so cheap, in raid0 not bad…

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