OCZ Vector 180 480GB and 960GB Review

Regular readers of KitGuru will know that OCZ have been making amends to repair their reputation with the enthusiast audience. They feel so confident in their latest technology that they asked us recently to kill 5 of their ARC 100 drives (latest update and links back HERE). Today it is time to take a look at their new SSD drive - the Vector 180. OCZ sent us their 480GB and 960GB models which feature power failure management, Toshiba A19 NAND flash, ShieldPlus Warranty and 100,000 random IOPS capabilities. These drives have a warranty of 50GB a day of host writes - for 5 years. The OCZ Vector 180 replaces the older Vector 150 drives which shipped with 19nm MLC NAND. The latest A19 MLC NAND is incorporated in the Vector 180 and the drives are equipped with a new Power Failure Management system. 'OCZ Power Failure Management Plus (PFM+)' detects power anomalies and helps to protect the SSD against 'bricking' while safeguarding at rest data. This new PFM+ feature utilises backup capacitors for power during the routine phase. To compliment the larger 480GB and 960GB models, OCZ are also releasing 120GB and 240GB units and are marketing this drive to target the 'enthusiast' audience. They position this drive above the rebadged AMD R7 Series SSD (review HERE) fitting into the Gamer sector but below the Power User sector, which features the REVO drives (review HERE). MTBF is rated at 2.3 million hours. Product Highlights: Proprietary OCZ Barefoot 3 controller technology combined with the latest Toshiba A19nm flash. Power Failure Management (PFM) helps prevent ‘brick drive syndrome’ that can occur during sudden power losses. Advanced firmware suite of NAND flash management keeps your drive at higher sustained performance over the long term comparing to competing solutions. Excellent endurance rating at 50GB/ day of host writes for 5 years perfect for power user applications and workloads. Excels in both incompressible and compressible data types such as multimedia, encrypted data, .ZIP files and software. Bundled with a 3.5-inch desktop adapter and Acronis® True Image™ cloning software to easily transfer data from your old hard drive or SSD. Sleek housing offers slimmer 7mm z-height for compatibility with the ultra-thin notebooks. OCZ ShieldPlus Warranty - an elite worry-free customer service experience, which eliminates all the hassle surrounding traditional support and warranty claims consumers often have to deal with. OCZ claim that UK pricing is said to be 120GB £69.99, 240GB £114.99, 480GB £214.99, 960GB £404.99. We don't have confirmed direct etailer pricing as we go live today, so check your local dealer in the coming weeks. Both 480GB and 960GB drives are rated to deliver 550MB/s read, and 530MB/s write with 100,000 IOPS read, and 95,000 IOPS. The 240GB drive can match the larger drives in regards to read and write speeds - but IOPS is slower at 95,000 IOPS read and 90,000 IOPS write. The 120GB drive is the slowest of the bunch, with write speed dropping to 450 MB/s and random read IOPS to 85,000. OCZ packaging is simple, yet effective. A close up of the drive features on the front of the box, with capacity and some basic information. The rear of the box lists technical data although there is no mention of the 120GB drive. We asked OCZ about this, and we were told that we had a very early sample of the box, and that the 120GB drive was added later. The box contains a drive adapter, some literature on the product, and mounting screws. The 3.5 inch desktop adapter is nicely branded with the company name on the front. The drives are instantly recognisable as OCZ products due to the artwork. The drives measure 7mm in height, meaning they are fully compatible with the thinnest ultra portable laptop systems. They measure 99.7 x 69.75 x 7mm. Weight is 115g. The only way you can tell the drives apart (without opening them) is to check the rear of the case. Above: OCZ Vector 180 480GB SSD. Above: OCZ Vector 180 960GB SSD. These drives use the latest Toshiba A19nm Multi Level Cell (MLC) NAND - tested in other reviews to be excellent with both compressible and incompressible data streams. The drive is powered by the OCZ Barefoot 3 M00 controller. While the pictures above don't show it - the controller ships with a thermal pad fitted, which connects it directly to the aluminum chassis - helping to ensure it is cooled. The drive offers 256-bit AES compliant data encryption. It is dynamically over-provisioned to increase endurance and sustained performance over time. OCZ have introduced a Power Failure Management Plus system which detects power anomalies and helps protect the SSD from “bricking” while safeguarding at-rest data. Drive endurance is rated at a 150% improvement over early models in the OCZ line up. Write endurance is increased from 20 GB Day to 50 GB per day of host writes for 5 years with typical client workloads. This works out at 18.2TB a year or 91TB over the five years of warranty coverage. 87% health? OCZ told me that the drives I received are pre release samples which have been through a myriad of firmware updates before reaching me. It goes without saying that when a user receives one of these drives they should show 100% health. OCZ are offering the ShieldPlus Warranty system with all their products. In case of problems you speak to someone in OCZ directly, not a call centre drone. You can watch our interview with OCZ over on this page for further information on ShieldPlus (among other things). On this page we present some high resolution images of the product in our studio with a Fuji XT1 camera. These will take much longer to open due to the dimensions, especially on slower connections. If you use these pictures on another site or publication, please credit Kitguru.net as the owner/source. You can right click and ‘save as’ to your computer to view later. For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system. This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits. Main system: Kitguru Test Rig 3 Other Drives Micron M600 256GB Apotop S3C 256GB Angelbird 512GB wrk Hynix SH920/910A OCZ ARC 100 240GB OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 480GB Intel 520 Series 240GB Intel 730 240GB Samsung 840 EVO 1TB OCZ Vector 150 256GB OCZ Vector 240GB OCZ Vertex 450 256GB OCZ Vertex 4 512GB OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (1.4 fw) ADATA Premier Pro SP900 128GB Intel 730 240GB OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid 1TB HDD/SDD SanDisk Extreme II 240GB Corsair Performance Pro 256GB OCZ Agility 4 256GB SanDisk Ultra Plus 256GB Samsung 830 Series 512GB Patriot Wildfire 240GB OCZ Vertex 3 240GB MAX IOPS ADATA S510 120GB Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB OCZ Octane 512GB (fw 1.13) Samsung Spinpoint F3 1TB Software: Atto Disk Benchmark. CrystalMark 3.0.3. AS SSD. IOMeter. All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active. Crystalmark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSD’s. We are using V3.0.3. Performance from both drives is stellar, hitting in the top 10% of our overall test results of all time. This OCZ Vector 180 handles compressible and incompressible data equally well, which will help in specific situations, such as when dealing with large video files and images. Above, some included compares from other leading solid state drives which we have reviewed. The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. Read and write performance is class leading - pretty much at the limits of the SATA 3 interface. Some comparison results from other leading products available on the market today. AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures. AS SSD deals exclusively with incompressible data and the results from both 480GB and 960GB drives are excellent - the overall score of 1,111 and 1,166 are class leading. The Barefoot 3 controller doesn't exhibit weaknesses when shifting between compressible and incompressible data streams. Some other comparisons from leading manufacturer drives, which we have tested in recent months. IOMeter is another open source synthetic benchmarking tool which is able to simulate the various loads placed on hard drive and solid state drive technology. We test with both random read and write 4k tests, as shown above. There are many ways to measure the IOPS performance of a Solid State Drive, so our results will often vary (slightly) from the manufacturer’s quoted ratings. IOPS performance falls a little short of OCZ's official claims of 100,000 read and 95,000 write. Both 480GB and 960GB drives performed to a similar level in our own tests, scoring (approximately) 90,000 write and 95,000 read. These are great results and we would point out that the differences are likely related to variances in testing methodology. It seems only fair to give OCZ credit for their recent activity in highlighting the reliability of their latest Solid State Drives. While many skeptics may argue their credibility is almost beyond repair it is worth bearing in mind that no other company has ever offered to send us five solid state drive from their production line 'to kill' ... without any stipulations. If you are interested you can follow this rather interesting little experiment over HERE. There is no doubt in my mind that the OCZ Vector 180 performs to a level that the discerning enthusiast user will demand. Our results highlight that on a pure performance level the Vector 180 rates within the top 10% of all the drives we have tested in the last 3 years. The OCZ Barefoot 3 M00 controller with Toshiba A19 MLC NAND makes for a formidable pairing. The drive performs equally as well with incompressible and compressible data, and the IOPS performance is within the top 5% of all SATA 3 drives tested to date. This is a good drive to use in database intensive situations, such as within a workstation or server environment. The addition of Power Failure Management will be welcomed by all. This detects power anomalies and helps protect the SSD from 'bricking' while safeguarding at-rest data. Pricing in the SSD sector is very important. The 480GB drive is due to ship at £214.99, the 960GB drive £404.99. These prices seem fairly competitive to me, although you can pick up the Samsung 500GB 850 EVO for £179.81 from Amazon. The Samsung 1TB 850 EVO has also recently been reduced in price, to £337.83. Samsung drives continue to be a firm favourite with our audience right now, based on reader feedback from our Facebook page. That said, we do feel the OCZ Vector 180 deserves some serious consideration from our audience, especially with the new ShieldPlus warranty system that the company have initiated. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE Pros: incompressible and compressible performance is fantastic. very strong IOPS performance. Power failure management system in place. using the latest high performance A19 NAND flash from Toshiba. Cons: intense price competition from the likes of Samsung. Kitguru says: The Vector 180 should be making a final shortlist based on the performance results alone. The latest Barefoot 3 controller is very capable.