Patriot Hellfire 240GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. Patriot Hellfire 240GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMeter8. Throughput9. PCMark8 - Storage Consistency10. PCMark8 - Individual Test Suites11. PCMark8 Storage Test - Individual Test Suites12. Performance Stability13. Real Life File Testing14. Closing Thoughts15. View All Pages

Patriot have a wide portfolio of Flash based drives from memory cards to standard 2.5in SSDs. The one gap in the current product line was a PCIe interfaced drive, a gap that has been more than adequately filled by the Hellfire M.2, the company's first NVMe drive, which has a PCIe Gen3.0 x4 interface.

The 240GB Hellfire uses a combination of an 8-Channel Phison PS5007-E7 controller and Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND memory to good effect with quoted Sequential read/write performance figures of 3,000MB/s and 2,300MB respectively. We could confirm those figures using the ATTO benchmark, the tested drive producing 3,056MB/s for reads and 2,314MB/s for writes.

Random 4K read/write performance is quoted as up to 170,000 IOPS for reads and up to 185,000 IOPS for writes. Using our IOMeter test setup we couldn't match the official write figure, the review drive topping out at 148,534 IOPS. On the other hand the drive sailed past the official read figure, producing a score of 200,720 IOPS.

The drive had no problems dealing with our real life data transfer tests, topping 500MB/s for writes on all tests bar the 50GB File folder transfer where the write performance drops to just over 400MB/s while read averaged out at 476.7MB/s for all nine tests. Once again dealing with the small bity files of the 50GB File folder caused the drive to stumble a little bit with the read performance dropping to 395.1MB/s.

The endurance for the 240GB drive is quoted as 175TBW (the 480GB drive is rated 350TBW) which works out at around 159GB of writes per day over the 3-yr warranty that Patriot back the drive with.

Patriot's SSD management software, the Patriot PCIe Tool Box (v1.00) looks a bit basic compared to some of its flashier competitors but the basic functions are all included with one notable exception. It shows information on firmware version, serial number, total capacity and the power-on time, if TRIM is enabled and SMART data. It also allows the secure erase of the drive and updating of the drives firmware. The one thing missing is any form of drive cloning utility, which fingers crossed, may be included in later versions of the Tool Box.

We found the 240GB version of the Patriot Hellfire for £102.90 (inc VAT) at alza.co.uk HERE

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Pros

• Overall Performance.
• Price.

Cons

• 4K write performance a little down in some of our tests.
• SDD Management software lacks a disk cloning option.

Kitguru says: Although Patriot's fast performing Hellfire drive has been around for a while it's still a very capable drive. In an ever increasingly competitive market segment Patriot have given the drive a fighting chance with an aggressive price point.

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