Mushkin Source 500GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
When we talk about entry-level solid state drives we typically expect really bad performance, but that was not the case with the Mushkin Source. Even with its DRAM-less design it performed good enough for us to not really consider it entry-level, or at least put it at the top of the list for entry-level solid state drives. The big reason for the great performance is the 3D NAND, which really improves on the poor performance of planar TLC NAND.

In our tests the drive averaged around 500-530 MB/s in reads and 470-490 MB/s writes. In ATTO Disk Benchmark, the drive maxed out at 534.57 MB/s read and 484.16 MB/s write. In AIDA64’s Write test we saw the drive perform pretty great until 35% of the drive was written. So like most drives that make use of SLC caching as long as you are not doing a ton of writes you won’t even see this degradation in write performance.

If you are looking at an entry-level solid state drive or maybe you might be replacing that older game drive, which is a normal hard drive the Mushkin Source is a great choice. Right now you can pick it up at our favorite online retailer for $89.99, that is $0.17 per GB. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Mushkin Source 500GB Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.

rating9 10

Pros:
– Price
– Great overall performance
– Metal chassis (many entry-level drives are plastic)

Cons:
– No DRAM cache

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