At first we would like to thank OCZ for offering a sample of their Trion 100 480GB SATA III SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

About OCZ:

"San Jose, California-based OCZ Storage Solutions - A Toshiba Group Company, is a global leader in the design and manufacturing of industry-leading solid state drives (SSDs), a disruptive, game-changing technology that is replacing traditional rotating magnetic hard disk drives (HDDs). OCZ develops best-in-class solid state drive solutions for professionals, enthusiasts, and gamers, and is committed to driving storage innovation. With a rich portfolio of consumer SSD offerings for laptop, desktop, and workstation applications covering a range of popular interfaces and media formats, our SSDs utilize proprietary in-house controllers and firmware to deliver exceptional I/O performance, differentiated features, lower power consumption and superior reliability, all of which translate into faster file transfers, instant system boot-ups, and an enhanced computing or gaming experience.

 

OCZ has a worldwide presence with regional offices and manufacturing in key regions to support our valued clients, and has earned outstanding brand equity and a reputation for quality products and customer service."

Product Features:

 

Product Specifications:

 

After OCZ was acquired by Toshiba, we have seen more and more OCZ SSDs with the reliable Toshiba NAND, while using the Barefoot 3 in-house developed controller. The Trion 100 is the first OCZ-branded product which sports both controller and TLC NAND from Toshiba (OCZ helped with validation only), and thanks to the technology used, the new breed of SSDs have an incredibly low price per SSD, making them ideal to be pre-installed in laptops or most desktops which do not need the latest and the greatest in terms of performance (which means normal users, mainstream category). TLC (Tri Level Cell) NAND is taking the MLC model to a new level by creating more states in the memory cell so you can now store 3 bits per cell; the downside is significantly lower endurance/write cycles. Let’s take a look at the Trion 100 480GB and see what we have got; the product is shipped inside an iconic packaging model, which features a photo of the main product on the top, along with the total storage capacity:

 

 

 

A small product description is available on the back side of the packaging, along with the main product features:

 

 

 

What will we find inside? Well, we have the main product sitting inside a transparent plastic mold, a quick installation guide but also some words related to the warranty on a separate leaflet:

 

 

 

 

The Trion 100 SSD chassis is entirely made of aluminum and on the top cover there are no mounting screws under the sticker as other reviewers have mentioned:

 

 

 

The bottom aluminum cover is snapped together with the top component so it is quite difficult to take apart without causing a bit of damage to the enclosure:

 

 

 

In the middle we can observe a sticker which holds the product serial numbers, power rating, capacity, currently installed firmware and other info like supported standards:

 

 

 

A closer look will also reveal the SATA Data and Power ports:

 

 

 

After the removal of the cover, we will be able to expose the PCB of the Trion 100, which is smaller than expected and there are no TLC NAND chips on its back:

 

 

 

By switching the PCB on the other side we will be able to spot the main Toshiba controller, which is placed on the surface like on SSDs with Silicon Motion or Phison controllers, the RAM cache but also four TLC NAND chips:

 

 

 

The D9PXV Micron DDR3L 1600MHz buffer does have 512MB capacity and runs at 1.35V:

 

 

 

Each A19nm TLC NAND package holds 128GB of raw storage capacity and it is also important to mention that Trion 100 is using quasi-SLC cache (7.2GB in size for the 480GB version) for improving write performance; what usually happens when starting to write to the drive is that Trion 100 starts using the SLC portion first and when IDLE occurs it will be flushed to the slower TLC NAND regions. At the testing phase of our article we will try to exemplify this and also show what happens when writing a large file to the drive:

 

 

 

The Toshiba TC58 controller incorporates QSBC (Quadruple Swing-By Codes) error correction technology:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

CPU : Intel I5 3750K Retail

CPU Cooler: Noctua NH-D14

Motherboard : ASRock Z77 Extreme6

RAM :GeIL PC3-17000 2133MHz 8GB EVO Leggera

Video : Sparkle X560 Calibre

Power Supply : Cooler Master 850W

HDD : OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

The drive is shipped unformatted:

 

 

Here is the total free space reported by Windows:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

 

Thanks to the brand-new SSD Guru utility from OCZ, we can check more details regarding the drive, but also perform different actions; the utility menu items are located in the upper area like Overview, Tuner, Maintenance, Settings or Help. From the Overview menu, we can check the drive capacity, connected interface, AHCI mode, health meter but also update the firmware on-the-fly:

 

 

 

Some extra SSD Details can be found from the respective tab:

 

 

 

Next, we can browse the System details sub-menu:

 

 

 

The S.M.A.R.T. area will report if something wrong is happening to our drive and it would need replacement:

 

 

 

By navigating to the Tuner page, we will be able to send a Trim command to the drive or set the over provisioning space:

 

 

 

From the Maintenance tab, we will be able to perform a firmware update or a secure erase:

 

 

 

The Settings tab allows us to modify some of the application options:

 

 

 

Finally, we have the Help tab from where we can contact OCZ support options or navigate to the forums area:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

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HDTach Long Test

 

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CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

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PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

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AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

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ATTO Disk Benchmark

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TLC NAND, even with its lower performance, is setting the baseline for the next breed of affordable SSDs so now we will be able to look a step further at 480GB capacities which were never chosen before by the mainstream segment of buyers. Thanks to the pseudo-SLC cache Trion 100 employs, which varies in size depending on the total storage capacity of the drive, regular users which use the drive for activities which do not require sustained writes of large files will not get to see a big difference between this SSD model and other, higher priced MLC variants because they will mostly work with the included cache.

 

One example of a usage scenario Trion 100 was not built for is being shown in the following HD Tune Pro write benchmark, which shows the exact behavior of the drive after the cache SLC has been fully filled. In most mainstream activities, where no sustained writes of large files occur (over 7.2GB in size for the 480GB model), this won’t happen because in IDLE mode, Trion will transfer the data from SLC to TLC, in order to empty up the cache and prepare it for high speed writing again.

 

 

 

Another real-life example of what will happen if you start writing a very large file on the SSD can be seen here; the transfer speed will hover around 500MB/s mark until the SLC has been filled and afterwards it will start to fall gradually until it will reach 138MB/s and stay there until the transfer has been completed.

 

 

With the arrival of TLC-based SSDs, we really hope that the laptops and other portable computers will start to include them because they offer a lot of storage space at a low cost, while providing considerably better transfer speeds even in the worst usage scenarios (like full SLC buffer consumption) than their mechanical 2.5’’ counterparts.

 

The OCZ Guru SSD software adds value to the product since we have more control over it, including monitoring, forced TRIM capabilities, over provisioning setup, firmware updates or secure erase.

 

Speaking about the current prices, the 120GB version can be found for about 48 Euros, the 240GB can be snatched for just about 69 Euros, the 480GB is next for about 129 Euros and the 960GB can be had for just about 260 Euros.

 

OCZ Trion 100 480GB SSD is Recommended For:

 

 

We would like to thank again to OCZ for making this review possible!