Page 2 - A Closer Look, Test System
The Toshiba RC100 240GB looks nothing like your traditional Serial ATA solid state drive, and this is because it is not your traditional solid state drive. The Toshiba RC100 240GB is actually an M.2 2242 format SSD. If you are not familiar with the M.2 physical standard, M.2 2242 means it the size of the drive is 22mm by 42mm, hence its numerical designation. It is so small, there is only one integrated circuit chip on the green printed circuit board located behind the branding sticker, which we will take a closer look at in just a moment. The Toshiba RC100 240GB works on the NVMe 1.2.1 logical device interface and plugs into compatible motherboards directly. Electrically, M.2 NVMe interfaces with PCIe 3.1. The RC100 uses two lanes for up to 2000MB/s bandwidth in each direction compared to four lanes for higher end NVMe drives. The specified weight is a paltry 3.1g for this SSD.
Flipping the Toshiba RC100 240GB around, and you will find no components of interest. A label on the RC100 SSD itself carries miscellaneous information such as its model name, capacity, and regulatory certifications. Other than that, it is completely blank, as the one and only component is located on the other side, as shown in our photo above. Like many flash storage solutions we have reviewed in the past, this Toshiba drive is made in Taiwan.
Peeling the sticker back, and you can see what the Toshiba RC100 240GB is made from. There is only one component on it as aforementioned, where both the controller and flash memory reside in a single BGA package. The chip used is a Toshiba branded unit labeled KBG30ZPZ256G with a capacity of 256GB. There is not much information on the controller itself, but we do know the RC100 is based off Toshiba's BG3 OEM SSD. The RC100 has no onboard memory, and to mitigate the negative performance effects of such a design, the NVMe Host Memory Buffer feature was added. The RC100's flash memory are Toshiba manufactured 64 layer BiCS triple-level cells manufactured on the 15nm fabrication process. Its rated write endurance is 120TB, which equates to about 66GB per day for five years. This is pretty good for a 240GB drive. 16GB out of the 256GB total capacity -- just under 7% -- is provisioned for the drive controller for overhead, so the actual usable space is 240GB, as advertised. You will see 223GB in Windows.
Rated at 1600MB/s read, 1050MB/s write, up to 130,000 IOPS over NVMe 1.2.1 on PCIe 3.0 x2, these figures are much faster than SATA SSDs, but not as high as performance NVMe drives like the RD400. The rated power consumption of Toshiba's RC100 240GB is 5mW idle and 3.20W write, which is significantly lower than the RD400. To see how it translates to numbers in our benchmarks, we will pit it against other performance SSDs to see how this new budget NVMe drive from Toshiba steps up against the flagships of yesteryears in the next eight pages or so.
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 R6 Blackout TG
Storage: OCZ Vector 180 240GB; Crucial MX200 500GB
Power: Seasonic PRIME Ultra Titanium 850W
Sound: Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD
Optical Drive: LiteOn iHAS224-06 24X DVD Writer
Operating System: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Compared Hardware:
- Toshiba RC100 240GB
- Kingston HyperX Predator PCIe 480GB
- OCZ RD400A 512GB
- OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB
- Patriot Hellfire M.2 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
