Patriot Hellfire SSD Review (480GB) – Fast & Efficient

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND PROTOCOL

SSD testing at TSSDR differs slightly, depending on whether we are looking at consumer or enterprise SSDs. For consumer SSDs, our goal is to test in a system that has been optimized with our SSD Optimization Guide. To see the best performance possible, the CPU C states have been disabled, C1E support has been disabled, Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology (EIST) has been disabled. Benchmarks for consumer testing are also benchmarks with a fresh drive so, not only can we verify that manufacturer specifications are in line but also, so the consumer can replicate our tests to confirm that they have an SSD that is top-notch. We even provide links to most of the benchmarks used in the report.

TSSDR 2017 Z170 Test System

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to those who jumped in specifically to help the cause. Key contributors to this build are our friends at ASRock for the motherboard and CPU and be quiet! for the PSU and cooling fans. Also, a big thank you to Thermaltake for the case and Kingston for the RAM. We have detailed all components in the table below and they are all linked should you wish to make a duplicate of our system as so many seem to do, or check out the price of any single component. As always, we appreciate your support in any purchase through our links!

PC CHASSIS: be quiet! DARK BASE 900
MOTHERBOARD: ASRock Z170 OC Formula
CPU: Intel Core i7-6700K
CPU COOLER: Corsair H75
POWER SUPPLY: be quiet! Dark Power Pro 11 1000W
SYSTEM COOLING: be quiet! Silent Wings 2
MEMORY: Patriot Viper Elite Series DDR4
STORAGE: Samsung 850 Pro
OS: Windows 10 Anniversary 64-bit
IRST DRIVER: 14.8.0.1042

BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software in use for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of Crystal Disk Info, TRIMcheck, ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal Disk Mark, AS SSD, Anvil’s Storage Utilities, PCMark Vantage, and PCMark 8. We prefer to test with easily accessible software that the consumer can obtain, and in many cases, we even provide links. Our selection of software allows each to build on the last and to provide validation to results already obtained.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER. 6.8.2

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

480GB Patriot Hellfire CDI

In Crystal Disk Info, we can see that SMART is supported and there are quite a few useful metrics one can monitor, including total host reads and writes, temperature, and more. The firmware we are testing today is E7FM02.1. This is the latest firmware from Patriot as we updated it from their SSD Toolbox before all testing.

TRIMCHECK

We’ve covered TRIMcheck in the past. It is a great tool that easily lets us see if TRIM is actually functioning on a SSD volume in your system.

Patriot Hellfire 480GB TRIMCheck

As can be seen in the screenshot above, TRIMcheck’s result shows that TRIM is indeed working as intended.

ATTO DISK BENCHMARK VER. 3.05

ATTO Disk Benchmark is perhaps one of the oldest benchmarks going and is definitely the main staple for manufacturer performance specifications. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data and, for our benchmarks, we use a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance of various transfer sizes ranging from 0.5 to 8192kb. Manufacturers prefer this method of testing as it deals with raw (compressible) data rather than random (includes incompressible data) which, although more realistic, results in lower performance results.

480GB Patriot Hellfire ATTO

ATTO’s results are all positive. The Patriot Hellfire ramps up to nearly 3GB/s read and 2.4GB/s write as expected. Performance vs file size ramps up faster than the PNY CS2030 we reviewed before, which has the same components, though at a smaller capacity point.

4 comments

  1. blank

    The 960 EVO’s also have a 3-year warranty; the 960 Pro series has a 5-year warranty.

    • blank

      Yes, you’re right, but 960 EVO is a TLC drive, while Hellfire is MLC, MyDigitalSSD BPX is better here, it is the only one of this class with 5 years warranty

  2. blank

    Hopefully this model doesn’t die spontaneously.

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