PNY XLR8 CS3040 1TB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. PNY XLR8 CS3040 1TB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. 128KB Sequential Performance8. 4K Sustained Random Read9. 4K Sustained Random Write10. 4K Random 70/30 mix Read/Write.11. 4K Random Performance QD1-QD812. Throughput13. PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark14. Performance Stability15. Drive Temperatures16. Real Life File Testing17. Closing Thoughts18. View All Pages

The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure the performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.

The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.

Traces used:

Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).

The PNY XLR8 CS3040 handled the PCMark10’s Full System Drive benchmark pretty well with some good scores for all the test traces. The 711MB/s for the Heavy Use Adobe Photoshop trace and the cp1 write test result of 3,190MB/s are a couple of results that stood out.

The overall bandwidth figure of 363.24MB/s sees the drive in the penultimate place in our results chart.

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