Page 2: A Closer Look, Test System
Taking a closer look at the unit, you can see its shell is primarily made out of two materials; matte finished silver plastic for the top, and zinc alloy for its base. Picking up the Silicon Power Marvel M70, the USB flash drive’s curved contour and ergonomic design felt like I was holding a really small racquet. Really, it is solid. As you can see in the photo above, the M70 has a retractable connector to make sure it is easy to operate with the push of your thumb. It also has a function to protect the connector, to some extent, away from dust or debris. On top of the device, there is the logo for Silicon Power; also in a very small font the capacity of the model -- which in our case, is 64GB. In addition to the small font, it reminds the user it works on the USB 3.0 interface, which allows it to be connected to a USB 3.0 port to speed up file transfers. Of course, it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0, but you will lose out on the speed. On the back of the device, there are standard regulatory CE and FCC marks, in which CE stands for Conformité Européenne, and FCC which stands for Federal Communications Commission. Both CE and FCC marks signify that the Marvel M70 meets the requirement of the conformity assessment procedure in the European Economic Area and the United States respectively -- and this is why you can buy this product. Alongside the marks, there is an internal product or model number "D33B29", which the factory put on so they can identify which product line it belongs to. At the end of the USB flash drive on the side, there is a keychain hole for your trinkets, or you can attach a lanyard on to it.
The photo above shows the Silicon Power Marvel M70 64GB in extended form. When you plug in the USB flash drive, there is a subtle red LED light that flashes to signify that it is connected to your computer. Although the aesthetics of the product looks amazing in my personal opinion, the LED light seemed kind of lacking. I expected the region where the two different types of material met up to glow, or have a brighter LED color instead of a plain boring red flash color that is hidden inside the casing. I remember seeing some drives having the feature of a glowing light on the side when it is plugged in, and it made me feel as if the device had a lot of power inside of it. Anyway, this is just me picking on the design. Since we will not be staring at the Marvel M70 all day long, I will now move on to something even more important: Its performance.
Plugging it into the standard APH Networks test computer, let us see if it is as fast as it says on the packaging. Our test configuration as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K @ 4.50GHz
CPU Cooling: Thermaltake WATER2.0 Pro (Noctua NF-F12)
Motherboard: ASUS P8P67 WS Revolution
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws-X F3-14900CL9D-8GBXL 4x4GB
Graphics: Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 2GB OC
Chassis: Lian Li PC-B12
Storage: OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB; Western Digital Caviar Blue AAKS 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 7 Professional x64 SP1
Compared Hardware:
- Silicon Power Marvel M70 64GB (USB 3.0)
- ADATA DashDrive Durable HD650 500GB (USB 3.0)
- ADATA DashDrive Elite UE700 64GB (USB 3.0)
- ADATA DashDrive HV620 1TB (USB 3.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ G2 32GB (USB 2.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ G3 32GB (USB 3.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler microDuo 32GB (USB 2.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 3.0 64GB (USB 3.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G2 32GB (USB 3.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler Ultimate 3.0 G3 32GB (USB 3.0)
- Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy 3.0 32GB (USB 3.0)
- OCZ Rally2 Turbo 4GB (USB 2.0)
- Patriot Supersonic Magnum 64GB (USB 3.0)
- Patriot Supersonic Rage XT 32GB (USB 3.0)
- Patriot Stellar 64GB (USB 3.0)
- Silicon Power Armor A30 1TB (USB 3.0)
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 4.60
8. Conclusion
