Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
As always, before we move onto the fancy technical details about Toshiba's latest mainstream performance solid state drive based on their in-house TC358790 controller, let us briefly discuss the physical attributes of this SSD first. The VX500 512GB looks nothing like anything we have seen under the OCZ brand before, but those who are familiar with their parent company's enterprise grade drives will find it very familiar looking. The Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB uses the same metal casing as the Q300 Pro, which features a sleek industrial look. The front is a dotted metal plate with a label in the middle. It is vertically oriented, and gives the Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB a clean and modern look. You can discern between product lines based on the color scheme used. This predominantly blue label is present to ensure the user will make no mistake that this is a VX series drive -- where 'VX' is short for 'Vertex' -- but you will not find its capacity until you look at the back.
Measuring in at 100mm wide, 69.85mm deep, and 7mm tall, its thickness -- or lack thereof -- will ensure wide compatibility. It is also very light at 52g, which is very similar to the Trion 150 (Now rebranded as the TR150). Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB 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 VX500 comes with no accessories. Nowadays, it is hard to find a case without a 2.5" drive bay, so it is not a concern to me personally.
Turning the SSD around reveals the rest of its dotted metal plate construction. 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 VX500 512GB 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, firmware version, and serial number. In case you missed it, our particular unit is the Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB, haha. This is really a Toshiba SSD at heart, and it is made in the Philippines.
Moving on, the Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB's shell is attached to the aluminum backplate by four screws at the top. After removing all four screws, the cover will come off, and you are well on your way. There is no warranty seal. As such, you will not void your five year ShieldPlus warranty. ShieldPlus is OCZ's term for advance replacement, free return shipping, with no requirement for an original receipt. For an SSD manufacturer, this is one of the best warranty programs available in the market today. 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. You will see a full sized PCB, as you can see in our photo above.
At the heart of Toshiba's OCZ VX500 512GB is a proprietary Toshiba TC358790 controller; the same one found in the Q300 Pro. The only thing we know is the controller is normally used for client optimized SSDs; other than that, there is not much else we know that we can talk about here from a technical standpoint. It does not offer any enterprise features like Toshiba‘s Quadruple Swing-By Code (QSBC) ECC scheme, nor does the VX500 have any hardware encryption capabilities. On the SSD itself, it is rated at 3.6W active power, 125mW idle, and 5mW in DevSleep mode. These are excellent figures compared to other drives on the market today. Rated at 550MB/s read, 515MB/s write, up to 92,000 IOPS read and 64,000 IOPS write over SATA 6Gb/s, these performance numbers are quite comparable to the Vertex 460 it replaces, although the new controller should translate to a very different performance profile. To see how it translates to numbers in our benchmarks, we will pit them against all the drives we have tested in the past to see how this new mainstream drive from Toshiba steps up against the competition in the next eight pages or so.
A total of two NAND flash chips are found on the Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB solid state disk, with all of them on the same side. The chips used are Toshiba's TH58TF69DFLBA8C NAND flash memory, with a capacity of 64GB per integrated circuit chip. These are multi-level cells manufactured on the 16nm fabrication process. It has a very good rated write endurance of 296TB, which equates to roughly 162GB per day for five years. Unlike some SSDs we have used in the past, there is no over-provisioning, so they all come together and make up for its 512GB storage capacity. You will see 477GB in Windows. Models with 512GB capacity and below like this one is not equipped with any DRAM.
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 VX500 512GB
- Crucial BX100 500GB
- Crucial MX100 256GB
- Crucial MX200 500GB
- Crucial MX300 750GB
- G.Skill Phoenix EVO 115GB
- Kingston HyperX 3K 240GB
- Kingston HyperX 120GB
- Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB
- Kingston HyperX Savage 240GB
- Kingston SSDNow UV400 480GB
- Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB
- 2x Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB RAID 0
- OCZ ARC 100 240GB
- OCZ Agility 3 240GB
- OCZ Agility 4 256GB
- OCZ Octane 512GB
- OCZ RD400A 512GB
- OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
- OCZ Trion 100 480GB
- OCZ Trion 150 480GB
- OCZ Vector 150 240GB
- OCZ Vector 180 240GB
- OCZ Vector 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 2 160GB 25nm
- OCZ Vertex 2 60GB 34nm
- OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB
- OCZ Vertex 3.20 240GB
- OCZ Vertex 4 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 450 256GB
- OCZ Vertex 460 240GB
- Patriot Blaze 240GB
- Patriot Ignite 480GB
- Patriot Pyro 120GB
- Patriot Pyro SE 240GB
- SanDisk Extreme II 240GB
- SanDisk Extreme PRO 480GB
- SanDisk Ultra II 240GB
- Silicon Power Slim S80 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 8.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark Vantage
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
