Toshiba THNSNF256GCSS 256GB SSD

Here we get our first look at the Toshiba THNSNF256GCSS drive. It's a system builder drive so there isn't a box for us to mull over and the drive itself is fairly plain and lacks the big in your face color scheme of a typical retail selling drive.

It's basically an SSD designed for endurance and low cost. This one just happens to be pretty quick and packs some cool features.

The GCSS model is a 7mm design.

Inside we found a thermal pad on each chip.

Here we see the empty space for a DRAM chip. This is significant because the only modern SSD design without a DRAM buffer comes from LSI SandForce.

All of the chips are on the top side of the drive. There are eight NAND flash chips in total.

The controllers are labeled with both Toshiba and Marvell. We know Toshiba built the firmware. We think Marvell just spun the hardware to Toshiba's specs.

Toshiba's 19nm Toggle 2 flash. We're starting to see this die size in more products as the existing supply of 24nm starts to fade away.