Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
As always, before we move onto the fancy technical details about Toshiba's latest value oriented solid state drive based on the Phison S11 controller, let us briefly discuss the physical attributes of this SSD first. The Toshiba OCZ TR200 comes with a facelift over the TR150 and TR100, thanks to a new label design. Featuring traditional 90-degree angle corners and a large label with Toshiba's branding and logo covering the entire front surface, the graphics on the Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB is a clean, modern, and good looking. There is no OCZ branding anymore either. You can discern between product lines just by the label design. This black and green label on top of the flat aluminum cover is present to ensure the user will make no mistake that this is a TR200 series drive, but you will not find its capacity until you look at the back.
Measuring in at 100.45mm wide, 69.85mm deep, and 7mm tall, its thickness -- or lack thereof -- will ensure wide compatibility. It is also very light at 45.6g, which is roughly the same as the TR150. Toshiba OCZ TR200 drives will have no problems fitting into your laptop hard disk bay if you want to boost mobile computing performance, considering all new laptops with removable drives have 7mm bays. On the other hand, if you want to use it in your desktop and your chassis has no 2.5" mount, then you will need to find your own solution, since the Toshiba OCZ TR200 comes with no accessories. Nowadays, it is hard to find a case without a 2.5" drive bay, and considering this is a barebones value drive, I am not complaining.
Turning the SSD around reveals a flat metal backplate. This is something users will come to expect from a solid state drive, as there are no exposed printed circuit boards like you would normally see with a traditional hard disk. The only thing that is common between the Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB SSD and a traditional hard disk drive is its SATA 6Gb/s and corresponding power connector at the end. As shown in our photo above, you will find a large label with the usual series of certification logos, along with information such as the brand, capacity, and serial number. In case you missed it, our particular unit is the Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB, haha. Like other Toshiba SSDs, the TR200 is made in China.
Moving on, the Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB's shell is attached to the aluminum backplate by friction clips only, just like its predecessor. As aforementioned, a quick pry, and you will be well on your way inside. No screws, no warranty seals; nothing. As such, you will not void your three-year standard warranty. In case you are uncomfortable with taking apart your brand new SSD, to save you some trouble, I cracked mine open to take some photos of its internals for you to see. As it is with many value oriented SSDs nowadays, you will not find a full-sized PCB, but rather, one that occupies about only two-thirds of the room inside.
The heart of Toshiba's TR200 is the Phison S11 controller, although the company does not officially confirm this. The PCB itself is held secure to the shell by more friction clips. As the drive controller is fundamentally very important to any SSD, let us dig more into the details of its brain.
Unlike the Phison S10, the S11 is a 40nm chip updated for modern technology like 3D NAND compatibility and LDPC error correction, but is significantly smaller and cheaper, being a two channel controller. TRIM and idle time garbage collection is supported. There is no DRAM attached to the Phison S11, so there will be a hit in performance, but it theoretically makes the drive cheaper and consume less power. In case you are not familiar with the company, Phison is a Taiwanese manufacturer of NAND flash controllers since 2000. In the past, they have focused on non-SSD applications like USB flash drives. The rated power consumption of Toshiba's OCZ TR200 480GB is 10mW sleep, 100mW idle, and 1.7W active.
A total of eight NAND flash chips are found on the Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB solid state disk, with four of them on each side. The chips used are Toshiba branded flash memory labeled TH58TFG9T23TA2D, with a capacity of 64GB per integrated circuit chip. These are third generation Toshiba manufactured 64 layer BiCS triple-level cells manufactured on the 15nm fabrication process. Its rated write endurance is 120TB, which equates to about 65GB per day for five years. This is really good, considering it is more than some high end drives out there. 32GB out of the 512GB total capacity (Just under 7%) is provisioned for the drive controller for overhead, so the actual usable space is 480GB, as advertised. You will see 447GB in Windows. There is no DRAM as aforementioned.
Our test configuration is as follows:
CPU: Intel Core i7-4790K @ 4.6GHz
CPU Cooling: Noctua NH-D15S
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-Z97X-UD3H-BK
RAM: Patriot Viper 3 Low Profile PC3-17000 4x8GB
Graphics: Gigabyte G1 Gaming GeForce GTX 960 4GB
Chassis: Fractal Design Define R5
Storage: OCZ Vector 180 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: PC Power & Cooling Silencer Mk III 1200W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi Bravura
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Toshiba OCZ TR200 480GB
- Crucial BX100 500GB
- Crucial BX300 240GB
- Crucial MX100 256GB
- Crucial MX200 500GB
- Crucial MX300 750GB
- Kingston SSDNow UV400 480GB
- OCZ Trion 100 480GB
- OCZ Trion 150 480GB
- Toshiba OCZ TL100 240GB
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. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
