Solid State drive pricing keeps on getting lower and lower, but we still see 2.5-inch drives distinguished into three segments, entry-level, mainstream, and high performance. New entry-level drives more than likely do not have a DRAM chip for caching. That is the case with the Mushkin Source, which sits at the bottom of Mushkin’s solid state drive product stack. This drive is powered by the Silicon Motion SM2258XT controller teamed with Micron 3D TLC NAND. Mushkin tells us this combination boats sequential read and write speeds of 560 MB/s and 520 MB/s respectively. The 500GB version we are checking out today sells for only $89.99! Let’s jump in and see what it can do!
Special thanks to Mushkin for providing us with the Source 1TB Solid State Drive to review.
Specifications:
Form Factor: 2.5″
Capacity: 500GB
Memory Components: 3D TLC
Interface: SATA 6Gb/s
Controller: Silicon Motion SM2258XT
Height: 7mm
Width: 69.85mm
Depth: 100.45mm
Max Sequential Read: 560MB/s
Max Sequential Write: 520MB/s
4KB Random Read: 75,000
4KB Random Write: 81,000
Seek Time: <0.1ms
MTBF: 1,500,000 hours
Warranty: 3-year limited warranty
Packaging
The Mushkin Source drive comes in a clear clamshell-type package. This allows us to get a look at the drive.
Flipping over the package we can see that there are some details on the drive, but they are covered up a little bit by whats inside the box.
Getting everything out of the package we have the Source Drive, a small Mushkin sticker, and a little note from the Mushkin CEO.
