SK hynix SC300 256GB SSD Review

1. Introduction2. SK hynix SC300 256GB SSD3. Testing Methodology4. CrystalDiskMark5. ATTO Disk Benchmark6. AS SSD7. IOMETER8. Closing Thoughts9. View All Pages

Today we take a look at the new Solid State Drive from SK hynix – the SC300 – in 256GB capacity.  This drive is due to be launched in the United Kingdom over the coming weeks and faces stiff competition from many more established brands.  SK hynix have many years experience in the memory sector so they should be able to pull resources to create some really special Solid State drives.

SK hynix, to give them their full name, is a South Korean semiconductor specialist that was established in 1983 and it has over 17,000 employees spread across a number of sites. Technically, it was born out of Hyundai (HYundai electroNICS) and it bought the Maxtor hard drive company in 1993.

Behind rival Samsung, SK hynix claims to be the world’s second largest memory chip maker and sixth biggest semiconductor company overall.

At some stage or another, every major player on the planet is likely to have used SK hynix memory modules – including IBM (System X servers), Asus (Nexus 7) and Apple (some MacBook and MacBook Pro models).

The last drive we reviewed from the company was back in August 2014 – dubbed the SH920/910A. At that stage SK hynix wanted their name referred to as simply ‘Hynix' but since then things have changed. We have been instructed to call the drive the ‘SK hynix SC300' which in reality seems to make a lot more sense.

The SC300 is a multi level cell Solid State Drive and the NAND is built on the 16nm process. They will be shipping in 128GB, 256GB and 512GB capacities.

Specifications:

• Fully compliant with SATA revision 3.1, compatible with SATA 6.0Gb/s interface rates.
• Fully compliant with ATA-8/ACS-3 Standard.
• PIO, DMA, UDMA(up to 6, dependent on host) supported.
• SATA 6.0Gb/s Native Command Queuing (NCQ) : up to 32 commands.
• Power Saving Modes : HIPM and DIPM (Partial/Slumber mode).
• Data Set Management Command (Trim support).

The SK hynix SC300 256GB SSD that we received for review was an early pre-production sample. As such we have no idea what the final box artwork will be, or if any accessories will be supplied. If we get more information we will update this page accordingly.

Personally I am a big fan of the appearance of the SK hynix SC300. It is very understated, but rather elegant. The red stripe around the outer edge looks great. The SC300 measures 69.85 mm x 100 mm x 7mm making it an ideal solution for an ultra portable laptop. It weighs around 60g.

The back of the drive lists basic specifications and some details.

The chassis is easily taken apart but it is likely to invalidate the warranty if you do this.

SK hynix back the drive with a five year warranty or 72TBW endurance – whichever happens first. On the PCB is their own controller – with the moniker Pearl (LM87810AA-A0). They are using a DDR2 cache chip and there are four 16nm MLC NAND chips onboard.
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.


Overall performance is quite good, hitting 520 MB/s sequential read, and around 400 MB/s sequential write.

This drive 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 performance is excellent – peaking at 565 MB/s. Write performance is slightly less impressive- peaking around 400 MB/s.


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 we can see the SK hynix proprietary controller performs very well in this situation.

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 between the manufacturer’s quoted ratings.


IOPS performance is quite good, although our results fell a little short of the SK hynix official claims of up to 95k read and up to 85k write. We would assume SK hynix use different testing methodology to get the end result.
The Solid State Drive market is positively saturated with models from a wide selection of companies in 2015. This makes a final buying decision rather difficult. Do you aim for the ultimate speed and pay a little extra or aim for one of the less expensive drives? Thankfully it is actually quite difficult to go wrong now when buying an SSD – standards are constantly improving and most companies deliver very good products.

SK hynix are taking their move into the Solid State sector seriously. In the latter half of the year, they are ramping up availability and will be offering a solid selection of drives to a wide audience.

The SK hynix SC300 256GB drive performed well in our tests, and it delivers balanced performance with both compressible and incompressible data streams. The result in AS SSD indicates that this drive will perform right up there with the best of them when dealing with incompressible video, images and data.

It is critical to factor in long term warranty when considering the purchase of a new Solid State Drive and SK hynix offer full 5 year coverage with this particular drive – or 72 terabytes of transfer … whichever takes effect first.

Amazon will have availability of this drive soon, for £74.59 inc vat. It is almost identically priced against the Samsung 850 Evo 256GB drive, a popular drive with the enthusiast audience.

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Pros:

• Sk hynix controller is equally good with incompressible and compressible data.
• balanced IOPS performance.
• we love the chassis design.
• good warranty terms.

Cons:

• competition from all corners.

Kitguru says: The SC300 256GB is a capable, balanced and well designed Solid State Drive incorporating the new proprietary SK hynix controller.

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