Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 120GB Solid State Drive Review

Introduction

If you are an enthusiast, you should know a little bit about Mushkin. Back in the day when being an enthusiast meant owning an ABIT motherboard and knowing a thing or two about jumpers, thermal management and having a lot of patience. Mushkin was helping build the foundations for the enthusiast market as we know it today. In those days we had real multiplier adjustments and RAM was the sizzling hot product used to boost system performance. Mushkin was one of the first companies offering PC-133 SDRAM with 2-2-2 timings, but the company really made a name for themselves when they introduced some of the first, if not the first PC-150 memory modules. Since then the company has changed hands a few times, but the enthusiast spirit lives on in the Denver area.

Today system wide performance increases come from high speed storage products and Mushkin is still using their knowledge to help enthusiasts make everything better, faster and more reliable. Unlike many SSD manufacturers, you can buy Mushkin products on their website directly from the company. Mushkin also has a network of resellers, but in many cases the best prices come from Mushkin directly. Because of this, Mushkin, the SSD Company that you rarely hear about, has some of the lowest priced SandForce based drives available on the market today.

Mushkin has jumped head first into the SF-2281 era and released two products on the market. The Chronos brand is a low cost offering and uses asynchronous flash with a SandForce SF-2281 controller. Today we are looking at the stepped up Chronos Deluxe model that uses the same SandForce SF-2281, but pairs it with premium 3Xnm Toshiba Toggle Mode Flash. To date there are very few companies offering SSDs with Toshiba Toggle flash. We've already seen the Patriot Wildfire, OWC Mercury Extreme Pro 6G (latest revision) and OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS, but now it's time to see what the Chronos Deluxe has to offer.