Tag Archives: Crystal DiskMark

If you look back over the past several years, there have always been three constants that needed to be addressed in order for SSDs to become a viable consumer solution to storage; value, reliability and capacity.  One of our first SSD reviews was on an MTron 32GB SSD with a whopping price tag of more than $1500…and they sold!  Both …

I could write a book on the leaps forward we have seen in flash technology within the past few years.  Many might argue that it is one of the fastest segments of technology growth today.  It touches all of our lives.  Without SSDs, or flash technology, the world of cell phones might revert back to flip phones, ultrabooks to 5lb …

Our SSD of the Week series became a little side tracked over the past few weeks. With Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals going on, almost any SSD was a good buy. Now however, prices are back where they should be and the holidays are just around the corner. If you weren’t lucky enough to score a good deal yet, …

If we were to look at the flash controller hierarchy, Phison has typically placed as a mid-tier company.  We met with Phison at the Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, this past August and they spoke of a new controller that might move them up in the stack, the Phison Quad-Core PS3110 6Gbps controller.  Capable of 550MB/s read, 530MB/s …

A few weeks back, Zotac sent us a ZBox Pico PI320 Mini PCS and, for the life of me, I could find a place to start.  At 115.5mm x 66mm x 19.2 mm, this mini-PC is just about the size of two iPhones on top of one another and has to be the smallest full feature PC available. No matter …

If you are going to introduce a new motherboard to the world, perhaps the best marketing feat one could achieve would be to set a new overclocking world record for that board close to the time of its release.  Nick Shih of ASRock did that with the new ASRock X99 OC Formula recently by overclocking the latest Intel i7-5960X chip …

In examining the flash industry over the past eight years, I don’t think many would argue that there has been insurmountable growth, paired with enough growing pains and obstacles along the way to frustrate even the best in the business.  Flash technology has grown so fast that today it would be seemingly impossible to find anyone not tied to flash …

SSDs have been around for several years now, but some could argue that they have yet to hit mainstream.  When you compare SSD sales today to the hard drive, we could make a case when we state that they are still in their infancy.  The biggest reasoning for this, of course, has been industries lack of ability to find that …

Being niche in a dog eat dog tech market can be very risky. Being niche in the SSD industry is straight up crazy as NAND manufacturers price their SSDs so low that 3rd party SSD manufacturers find it very hard to compete; or they shut down.  More than a few companies have slowed, or shut down their SSD production and, …

It has been quite a while since we have seen a value oriented SSD from OCZ. Their last two releases where the Vector 150 and the Vertex 460, the latest updates to their enthusiast and mainstream drive lines. The market need for value drives is very apparent when we consider the popularity that the Samsung 840 EVO and Crucial MX100 …