Storage

OCZ RevoDrive 350 Review

Richard Weatherstone
July 21, 2014 14 Min Read
2 0

The PCIe based OCZ RevoDrive 350 SSD looks to set new standards in workstation storage speed, overcoming the bandwidth restrictions of SATA…



Product on Review: RevoDrive 350
Manufacturer & Sponsor: OCZ Storage Solutions
Street Price: £599.99inc. VAT (GBP)

SSDs are fast but are limited by SATA bottlenecks. OCZ’s Revodrive 350 breaks these barriers by utilising PCIe. This isn’t the first time OCZ or indeed other manufacturers have made use of the PCIe ports which are traditionally reserved for bandwidth hungry graphics cards. The OCZ RevoDrive 3 x2 also used this technological advantage however, it was crippled by cost restrictions (circa £450). The new RevoDrive 350 sees a drop in price by £100 for the 240GB model to around the £370 mark. True enough, this is still considerably more expensive than an SSD but when you also factor in the speed difference (which we will discuss later) the OCZ RevoDrive 350 begins to make sense for those requiring the ultimate in performance. Nobody said the best was ever going to be cheap!



Speed isn’t the only feature of the RevoDrive 350 either. Aside from the utilisation of a PCIe port, freeing up SATA ports, especially if you use RAID, which may or may not be a positive, the RevoDrive is warranted for 50GB of host data writes per day. It comprises multi controllers so the host will see it as a single unit thus TRIM, Smart erase and SMART are features afforded by this drive.

Here’s what OCZ had to say about their latest product:

Specification


PERFORMANCE
Sequential Reads1 1800 MB/s
Sequential Writes1 1700 MB/s
Random Read Speed (4K, QD32) 90,000 IOPS
Random Write Speed (4K, QD32)2 140,000 IOPS
1. Maximum sequential speeds are determined using ATTO.
2. 4KB random performance is measured with IOMeter 2010, QD32, Incompressible data.

PHYSICAL
Usable Capacities (IDEMA) 240GB / 480GB / 960GB
NAND Components 19nm Multi-Level Cell (MLC) Flash
Interface PCI Express Gen. 2 x8
Form Factor Full-Height/Half-Length (FH/HL)
NAND Controller LSI® SandForce® SF-2282*
Storage Controller VCA 2.0 (Virtualized Controller Architecture™)
Dimension (mm) 180.9 (L) x 126.3 (W) x 21.6 (H)
Weight 310g (may vary by capacity)
* 2 x controllers on 240GB, 4 x controllers on 480GB & 960GB

ENVIRONMENTAL
Power Consumption 240GB: Idle 8.0W, Active 10.5W
480GB: Idle 9.5W, Active 14.0W
960GB: Idle 10.0W, Active 14.5W
Operating Temperature 0°C ~ 55°C
Storage Temperature -45°C ~ 85°C
Shock Resistance 500G/0.5ms
Vibration (Operational) 2.17Grms (7-800Hz)
Vibration (Non-Operational) 3.13Grms (8-800Hz)
Altitude (Operational) -1,000ft to 10,000ft
Altitude (Non-Operational) -1,000ft to 40,000ft
Airflow 300LFM @ 55°C
Certifications UL C/US, FCC, CE, C-Tick, KCC, BSMI, VCCI, WEEE

RELIABILITY / PROTECTION
Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) 2 million hours
Endurance Rating Rated for 50GB/day of host writes for 3 years under typical client workloads
Data Encryption AES-128 compliant
Product Health Monitoring Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology (SMART) Support

COMPATABILITY
PCI Express PCI Express x8 or x16 slot; Fully compliant with the PCI Express Electromechanical Specification Rev. 2.0, and PCI Express Base Specification Rev. 2.0
Operating System Microsoft Windows 7, 8, 8.1 32/64-bit, Linux support planned
Power Requirements PCIe 12V & 3.3V
Target Applications Client workstations and performance gaming systems

ADDITIONAL FEATURES
Performance Optimization TRIM (requires OS support), Garbage Collection
Service & Support 3-Year Warranty, Toll-Free Tech Support, 24 Hour Forum Support

Packaging & First Look



The front of the package shows us a picture of the drive while the rear of the goes into greater detail revealing the features and specification of the drive. Removing the outer sleeve reveals a discreet but glossy cardboard inner with just the new OCZ logo.


The drive itself is contained in plastic blister pack to protect against ESD while this is held fast in a brace to prevent the drive from sliding around in the box. Other than a driver CD there is nothing else, not so much as a case badge to advertise your pride and joy. While we can understand not adding anything to keep the costs down, for the price of this item I would have expected something a little more luxurious, at least as far as the accessories are concerned. We aren’t even afforded a hard copy of an installation/instruction manual. Okay, this product is pretty much plug’n’play and you would have to be fairly dim not to plug this in a PCIe port but not having an instruction manual, not even a troubleshooting guide is poor.


The drive itself is a stunner all right and will certainly draw looks of admiration from passers buy if it should find itself on display in a ‘windowed’ enclosure. We liked the look of this drive so much it would be criminal not to have it on display. There are however some issues with the aesthetics which we will describe overleaf.

First Look



From a top down perspective we see that the drive resembles a kind of minimalist heatsink. The aluminium shield with chromed insert looks the business and allays itself to being a premium product without the need to plaster tacky stickers of dragons and fighter jets over itself. Very nice indeed!


Here’s where we have our major issue. Green power circuit board! What was OCZ thinking? IF ever there was a product that demanded a black PCB this was it. The drive this one replaces was black so I see no reason why they have made the switch back to 90’s green! Yuck!


Here is a profile view which is akin to a single slot graphics card, if a little slimmer. We would have preferred to have the shield made into more of a full cover shroud showing off the gorgeous aluminium effect and of course hiding that nasty green PCB but being exposed like this should assist in keeping the drive cool.


When in powered up, it gives us a soft blue glow. This glow is only interrupted when the drive is active which is indicated by multiple flashing green LEDs. Nice.


Overall we liked the look of the drive. Our complaints are obvious though and while it is fair to say you are unlikely to notice the green PCB when installed (likely beneath a graphics card) it is something we would like to see changed and banished forever! Measuring just 180.9mm (L) x 126.3mm (W) x 21.6mm (H) it should be easily accommodated by most modern PC’s assuming you have a spare PCIe (8x) port.

Closer Look



Removing the aluminium shield was simple enough as it is held on with just four screws. The only item it actively cools is the on-board raid controller (below) and during intense use we didn’t notice any excessive heat so we would question the need for such a large heatsink. Not that we are complaining of course because it looks great!


Above is a shot of the OCZ SAS RAID controller. The product code ICT-0262 tells us that this is most likely the same controller used on the previous Revodrive3x2


The SSD controller(s) are found on the exposed side of the product of which there are 4 leading us to believe that the 480GB is at its roots 4x120GB SSD’s crammed together on one PCB. Of course there is more tech’ to this theory but in essence this is how OCZ have managed to extract so much speed from the Revodrive. Strange though that OCZ chose to make use of the LSI SandForce SF-2282VB1 controller over their own Indilinx controller, given that it was used in their recent Vector drive.


Powering the card we find a combination of the LATTICE ispPAC-POWR1220AT8 controller. This is a general-purpose power-supply monitor, sequence and margin controller which coupled with three DC to DC converters, each with an integrated inductor, PWM controller, MOSFETs and compensation provides the smallest solution size in an 10x11x3mm 76-pin QFN module courtesy of Enpirion.


Finally we see OCZ’s parent company, Toshiba, are the company which have provided the 19nm Flash chips which are shared between both sides of the PCB.

Test Setup & Methodology


Our test system is formatted and a fresh version of Windows is installed with just drives in place – no additional applications. Windows is then updated to the latest release and the drivers are installed. Included in the list of benchmarks are the following applications:

Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark v2.46
AS SSD
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
Iometer + Sustained testing
SiSoftware SANDRA 2014


Test system



CPU Intel Core-i7 4770K
Motherboard GIGABYTE Z87X-OC
Graphics MSI R7970 Black Edition
Memory 16GB Corsair Vengeance Pro (2400MHz) CL10
HDD


– OCZ Revodrive 350 480GB (PCIe)
– Samsung 850 Pro 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force LX 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 730 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA Premier Pro SP920SS 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 460 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 150 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 500GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K Na’Vi 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 450 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 EVO 750GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 Pro 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 840 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Toshiba 256GB THNSNH256GCST (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vector 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Neutron GTX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Corsair Force GS 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– OCZ Vertex 4 128GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 3K 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Kingston HyperX 240GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– ADATA S510 120GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Intel 520 480GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung 830 Series 256GB (Sata 6Gbps)
– Samsung HD103SJ 1TB (Sata 3Gbps)
PSU Corsair HX1050 Gold
OS Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit

Benchmarks: ATTO


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.






*NOTE*Samsung 850 Pro is 128GB model and this may reflect an unfair write speed deficit against comparable 256GB drives.

Benchmarks: AS SSD

AS SSD Benchmark is a straightforward tool for measuring the speed of your SSD drive.

Simply launch the program, choose your drive, click Start, and it’ll test your SSD’s read and write speed in a variety of ways, delivering a score for each when it’s done. And if that’s not enough, there are also additional file copy and compression-related benchmarks available from the Tools menu. (The author’s support page is German only, but if you need further English explanations then there’s a thread on the program at the OCZ Technology forum.).





Benchmarks: CrystalDiskMark 3.0


CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.






*NOTE*Samsung 850 Pro is 128GB model and this may reflect an unfair write speed deficit against comparable 256GB drives.

Benchmarks: Iometer


Iometer is based on a client–server model, where one instance of the Iometer graphical user interface is managing multiple ‘workers’ (each one representing a separate Dynamo.exe process) which are doing the I/O. Iometer performs Asynchronous I/O – accessing files or block devices (later one allowing to bypass the file system buffers).

Iometer allows the configuration of disk parameters such as the ‘Maximum Disk Size’, ‘Starting Disk Sector’ and ‘# of Outstanding I/Os’. This allows a user to configure a test file upon which the ‘Access Specifications’ configure the I/O types to the file.


For the purpose of this test. The 4K 50%/50% read/write file will be under the examination with 100% Random Distribution – reporting back on IOPS and MBs per Second.



Benchmarks: Iometer (Sustained Test)

This is a new test for us but we have found that over a period of time, performance of SSDs slows down dramatically. For many of us this won’t be such a problem as it is unlikely we will be dedicating our PCs to small write over such a long period of time on a sustained basis however, it is a very valuable test which shows the sustainable performance of the drives with continuous small (4K)random writes in mind.

For this test we again run IOmeter only this time we set it to 4K Random Write but over a 12 hour period. IOP readings are taken at 15 minute intervals throughout the 12 hour test to see how durable and sustainable the performance of the drives on test really are.



*Note* as this is a new test we have not had time to add all of the drives on test however more drives will be added when time allows.

Benchmarks: SiSoftware SANDRA

SiSoftware Sandra (the System ANalyser, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information & diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices whether hardware or software.
Sandra is a (girl) name of Greek origin that means “defender”, “helper of mankind”. We think that’s quite fitting.

It works along the lines of other Windows utilities, however it tries to go beyond them and show you more of what’s really going on. Giving the user the ability to draw comparisons at both a high and low-level. You can get information about the CPU, chipset, video adapter, ports, printers, sound card, memory, network, Windows internals, AGP, PCI, PCI-X, PCIe (PCI Express), database, USB, USB2, 1394/Firewire, etc.






*NOTE*Samsung 850 Pro is 128GB model and this may reflect an unfair write speed deficit against comparable 256GB drives.

Conclusion


When we were asked to take a look at the new OCZ RevoDrive 350 we expected a blisteringly fast, ultra sleek, dominating product that would have us salivating as we watched the benchmark scores roll in. To this end we were not disappointed. Nobody can doubt that the performance of this drive is nothing short of exceptional. It does indeed break the boundaries of SATA as with read speeds in excess of 1500 MB/s (and beyond) it lives up to its name by being x3 faster than an SSD. While write speeds couldn’t always match this performance they were for the most part still very impressive. So if speed is your goal and money is no object the OCZ RevoDrive 350 will satisfy your cravings and then some.

There are a few negatives to owning such a device which we feel only fair to share with you. First and most obvious is the price. At £600 for the 480GB model we had on the test bed today it is anything but cheap. £600 buys you a lot of SSD and mechanical storage and while it is true, you will eventually saturate SATA bandwidth, the amount of storage on money saved may be enough to sway your thoughts in this direction. It is also worth considering that this card will require a PCIe port with 8 lanes available and thus if you have a SLI or Crossfire setup it may be difficult to accommodate this product. The same of course can be said about the limitation of SATA ports if you chose to go with standard SATA SSDs. Herein lays the choice will ultimately need to make.



Us? We adore this product and would happily sacrifice a PCIe port to give us what is probably the fastest storage solution on the planet saving standard SATA ports for our main mechanical storage. Whether we need it or not, we want it. It’s silly fast, looks the part and being OCZ it isn’t going to let you down any time soon. Love it!

In summary
While aimed primarily at workstation users, the OCZ RevoDrive 350 is product which is sure to satisfy every performance enthusiasts craving for speed.

Pros
+ Ultra all round performance
+ See above
+ 3 year warranty (50GB Host writes per day)

Cons
– Expect looks of envy
– Green PCB
– No instructions (hard copy)




Click here for an explanation of our awards at Vortez.net.

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Richard Weatherstone