PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

The PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB is a well rounded Solid State Drive that delivers stellar, stable results in all the benchmarks. This is not really a surprise however, as it is the latest of many drives we have tested in recent months to use the popular Silicon Motion SM2246EN controller.

The PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB is able to almost saturate the real world limitations of the SATA 3 bus, delivering close to 550MB/s in leading sequential read tests. Write performance rates around 100 MB/s lower, although in most real world situations it is unlikely you will notice the differences. All of the SM2246EN controlled solid state drives we have tested so far have similar performance operating characteristics.

While sequential write performance may be a little lower than leading competitor products the Silicon Image controller copes equally well with incompressible and compressible data – meaning this drive is a good choice for the audience who may also be dealing with a lot of specialised image files and video files.

IOPS performance is certainly not lacking, although the throughput does fall a little short of the leading drives we have tested in recent months. Considering this drive is designed to cater for the enthusiast and gaming audience, the results are very satisfactory indeed.

You can buy the PNY CS2111 XLR8 480GB from Dabs for £155.55 inc vat HERE. PNY are facing some stiff competition. The Sandisk Extreme PRO 480GB is available on Amazon for £155.96 HERE and the ever popular Samsung 850 Evo 500GB is available for £117.90 HERE.

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Pros:

• IOPS performance.
• Silicon Motion SMI-2246 controller deals with incompressible and compressible data in equal measure.
• we like the appearance.
• reasonable pricing.

Cons:

• 256GB and 128GB models have much slower write speeds (335 MB/s and 170 MB/s respectively).
• facing incredibly stiff competition from the likes of Samsung.

Kitguru says: The Plextor M6V is a solid all round solid state drive, but unless you buy the biggest 512GB model the write performance will take a significant hit.

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