OCZ TRION 150 480GB SATA III SSD Review

Introduction, Drive Specifications, Pricing and Availability

OCZ is taking another stab at TLC with their newly launched TRION 150. The first iteration of the TRION, the TRION 100, performed overall much better than an HDD, but in comparison to competing SSDs, it fell short. The main issue with the TRION 100 was write performance. The Trion 100 delivered transfer rates of 150 MB/s with our transfer testing. A 150 MB/s transfer rate is actually lower than that of a high-performance HDD. In addition, at launch, the TRION 100 480GB SSD came with an MSRP of $184.99 which put into direct competition with Samsung's 850 EVO and many other value-oriented MLC SSDs that delivered vastly superior performance.

With the TRION 150, OCZ focused on improving transfer rates. To accomplish this, OCZ implemented direct to die write for sustained writes that exceed the drive's SLC caching layer capacity. With direct write to die, instead of all write data passing through the drive's caching layer and then flushing that data to the drives TLC flash array, data transfers that exceed the drives caching layer instead bypasses the caching layer and are directly written to the TLC NAND array. This isn't the first time we've seen this strategy implemented. My Digital SSD's BP5e also utilizes direct to die write and as we saw it provided a drastic improvement in comparison to TLC drives that pass all write data through a caching layer.

When the TRION 100 launched, we were concerned with its relatively high MSRP. The TRION 100 was just as expensive as solutions that offered much better performance, making it an unattractive option. OCZ has addressed this concern with the TRION 150. At launch, the TRION 150 480GB has an attention grabbing MSRP of $139.99. OCZ is able to lower the cost of the TRION 150 by leveraging a lower cost 15nm TLC flash array instead of more costly A19nm flash. Typically, lithography shrinkage brings with it lower performance, but in the case of the TRION 150 it does not. The TRION 150 is more powerful than the TRION 100 at a significantly lower price point.

At $139.99, the TRION 150 is priced $10 more than Crucial's BX200 480GB and $15 more than MDD's BP5e 480GB. However, OCZ provides a significant value add through their exclusive ShieldPlus warranty. In our opinion, ShieldPlus easily offsets the additional cost. OCZ's ShieldPlus warranty is their policy of no wait, no receipt necessary, and no shipping cost to the customer product replacement. In the unlikely event that you're OCZ SSD fails, OCZ will immediately ship you a replacement with a postage paid return envelope to return the original purchased product.

Lower cost and better performance sounds like a winning combination to us; now let's see exactly how the TRION 150 performs.

Specifications:

OCZ's TRION 150 SATA III 2.5" x 7mm FF SSD is available in four capacities: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB. Performance for the 480GB capacity we have on the bench is listed at up to 550MB/s sequential read, 530MB/s sequential write. Maximum random 4K performance for the 480GB capacity point is listed as 90,000 IOPS read, 54,000 IOPS write. Steady state random write performance checks in at 3,200 IOPS.

Warranted endurance for the 480GB model is up to 120TB or 110GB per day for three years. Reliability (MTBF) at all capacity points is 1.5 million hours. The Trion 150 supports SMART technology and drive maintenance is available through OCZ's SSD Guru toolbox.

Drive Details

OCZ TRION 150 480GB SATA III SSD

The TRION 150 retails in blue themed packaging. The front of the box features an image of the enclosed drive. Capacity is listed on the bottom right corner of the box.

The rear of the packaging lists the drives 2.5" x 7mm form factor, SATA 6Gb/s interface, the three-year warranty and a short spiel about some of the attributes common to SSDs.

Inside the box is a clear plastic enclosure containing the drive itself and a printed user's guide.

The front of the drive's textured aluminum alloy enclosure features an attractive manufacturer's label.

The back half of the all-aluminum alloy enclosure features a manufacture's label that lists the part number, model number, serial number, shipping firmware, capacity and various other bits of relevant information.

The drive's full-length PCB snaps into place. The entire enclosure is a screw-less design that snaps together.

The TRION 150 employs a thermal pad to wick heat from the controller which is a feature that was not used on the TRION 100.

Toshiba's TC58 controller, eight flash packages, and single DRAM cache package are located on this side of the full-length PCB.

This side of the PCB features an additional eight flash packages.

The Toshiba TC58 8-channel quad-core controller that powers the TRION 150.

One of the sixteen 32GB 15nm TLC TSOP flash packages that populate the PCB.

A close-in view of the drive's 512MB Micron DDR3 DRAM cache package.

Test System Setup and Properties

Jon's Consumer SSD Review Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASRock Extreme9 Z97 - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.8GHz - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Cooler: Swiftech H2O-320 Edge - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Memory: Corsair Dominator DDR3 32GB 2400MHz - Buy from Amazon
• Video Card: Onboard Video
• Case: IN WIN X-Frame - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• Power Supply: Seasonic Platinum 1000 Watt Modular - Buy from Amazon / Read our review
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Professional 64-bit - Buy from Amazon
• Drivers: Intel RAID option ROM version 13.0.0.2075 and Intel RST driver version 13.6.0.1002

We would like to thank ASRock, Crucial, Intel, Corsair, RamCity, IN WIN, and Seasonic for making our test system possible.

Drive Properties

The majority of our testing is performed with our test drive as our boot volume. Our boot volume is 75% full for all OS Disk "C" drive testing to replicate a typical consumer OS volume implementation. We feel that most of you will be utilizing your SSDs for your boot volume and that presenting you with results from an OS volume is more relevant than presenting you with empty secondary volume results.

System settings: Cstates and Speed stepping are both disabled in our systems BIOS. Windows High-Performance power plan is enabled. Windows write caching is enabled, and Windows buffer flushing is disabled. We are utilizing Windows 10 Pro 64-bit OS for all of our testing except for our MOP (Maxed-Out Performance) benchmarks where we switch to Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit.

Synthetic Benchmarks – ATTO & Anvil Storage Utilities

ATTO

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.47

ATTO is a timeless benchmark used to provide manufacturers with data used for marketing storage products.

Sequential read/write transfers max out at 565/536 MB/s. Keep in mind this is our OS volume, and it is filled to 75% of its total capacity.

Sequential Write

The TRION 150 comes on strong at 8KB transfers and battles it out with MDD's BP5e for supremacy.

Sequential Read

The BP5e and the TRION 150, are very similar drives in terms of hardware, but the TRION 150 has better low-end performance. Overall, a win for the TRION 150.

Anvil Storage Utilities

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.1.0

Anvil's Storage Utilities is a storage benchmark designed to measure the storage performance of SSDs. The Standard Storage Benchmark performs a series of tests; you can run a full test or just the read or write test, or you can run a single test, i.e. 4k QD16.

Scoring

Anvil's scoring gives a good indication of a drive's overall performance. The TRION 150 places second in our test pool with a stout score of over 5,000. Compare that with the TRION 100 and we see that the TRION 150 is a much better performing drive.

(Anvil) Read IOPS through Queue Depth Scale

The TRION 100 has excellent read performance, but the TRION 150 is even better. Both are outperformed by the BP5e.

(Anvil) Write IOPS through Queue Scale

This chart really illustrates what a huge improvement the TRION 150 is over the TRION 100. The TRION 150 outperforms the BP5e and takes the win for this round.

Synthetic Benchmarks – CrystalDiskMark & AS SSD

CrystalDiskMark

Version and / or Patch Used: 3.0 Technical Preview

CrystalDiskMark is disk benchmark software that allows us to benchmark 4k and 4k queue depths with accuracy. Note: Crystal Disk Mark 3.0 Technical Preview was used for these tests since it offers the ability to measure native command queuing at QD4.

Overall, the BP5e delivers the best read performance. We notice a nice improvement over the TRION 100 in 4K random performance.

The TRION 150 has the best 4K random performance of the bunch at QD4 and QD32 and ties the BP5e for best sequential write performance. Again we see a massive improvement over the TRION 100.

AS SSD

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.7.4739.38088

AS SSD determines the performance of Solid-State Drives (SSD). The tool contains four synthetic as well as three practice tests. The synthetic tests are to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD.

AS SSD is a demanding test, and the TRION 150 cuts through it with ease, delivering the best total score in our test pool.

Benchmarks (Trace-Based OS Volume) - PCMark Vantage, PCMark 7 & PCMark 8

Moderate Workload Model

We categorize these tests as indicative of a moderate workload environment.

PCMark Vantage - Hard Disk Tests

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.2.0.0

The reason we like PCMark Vantage is because the recorded traces are played back without system stops. What we see is the raw performance of the drive. This allows us to see a marked difference between scoring that other trace-based benchmarks do not exhibit. An example of a marked difference in scoring on the same drive would be empty vs. filled vs. steady state.

We run Vantage three ways. The first run is with the OS drive 75% full to simulate a lightly used OS volume filled with data to an amount we feel is common for most users. The second run is with the OS volume written into a "Steady State" utilizing SNIA's guidelines. Steady state testing simulates a drives performance similar to that of a drive that been subjected to consumer workloads for extensive amounts of time. The third run is a Vantage HDD test with the test drive attached as an empty, lightly used secondary device.

OS Volume 75% Full - Lightly Used

OS Volume 75% Full - Steady State

Secondary Volume Empty - FOB

There's a big difference between an empty drive, one that's 75% full/used, and one that's in a steady state.

The important scores to pay attention to are "OS Volume Steady State" and "OS Volume 75% full." These two categories are most important because they are indicative of typical of consumer user states. When a drive is in a steady state, it means garbage collection is running at the same time it's reading/writing. This is exactly why we focus on steady state performance.

We see a nice improvement over the TRION 100, but the SMI powered drives are able to deliver better workload performance. Moderate workload performance is an area where we would like to see some improvement.

PCMark 7 - System Storage

Version and / or Patch Used: 1.4.0

We will look to Raw System Storage scoring for evaluation because it's done without system stops and, therefore, allows us to see significant scoring differences between drives.

OS Volume 75% Full - Lightly Used

This test backs up our Vantage results. The TRION 150 is able to outperform the TRION 100, but the SMI powered drives again deliver better moderate workload performance.

PCMark 8 - Storage Bandwidth

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.4.304

We use PCMark 8 Storage benchmark to test the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and a selection of popular games. You can test the system drive or any other recognized storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 8 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices.

OS Volume 75% Full - Lightly Used

PCMark 8 is the most intensive moderate workload simulation we run. With respect to moderate workloads, this test is what we consider the best indicator of a drive's performance. The TRION 150 is again able to outperform the TRION 100, but other than that it is outperformed by the rest of the test pool.

Benchmarks (Secondary Volume) – Max IOPS, Disk Response & Transfer Rates

Iometer – Maximum IOPS

Version and / or Patch Used: Iometer 2014

We use Iometer to measure high queue depth performance. (No Partition)

Max IOPS Read

Max IOPS Write

With our configuration, we are easily able to outperform OCZ's specification of 90/54K maximum 4K read/write IOPS.

Iometer – Disk Response

Version and / or Patch Used: Iometer 2014

We use Iometer to measure disk response times. Disk response times are measured at an industry accepted standard of 4K QD1 for both write and read. Each test runs twice for 30 seconds consecutively, with a 5-second ramp-up before each test. We partition the drive/array as a secondary device for this testing.

Avg. Write Response

Avg. Read Response

Response times are as expected for a TLC SSD. The TRION 150 again outperforms the TRION 100.

DiskBench - Directory Copy

Version and / or Patch Used: 2.6.2.0

We use DiskBench to time a 28.6GB block (9,882 files in 1,247 folders) composed primarily of incompressible sequential and random data as it's transferred from our DC P3700 PCIe NVME SSD to our test drive. We then read from a 6GB zip file that's part of our 28.6GB data block to determine the test drives read transfer rate. Our system is restarted prior to the read test to clear any cached data, ensuring an accurate test result.

Write Transfer Rate

Read Transfer Rate

This is a big win for OCZ because it shows that they were able to achieve exactly what they set out to do with the TRION 150. Direct to die write is paying dividends in the form of vastly improved sustained write transfer rates. The TRION 150 smokes the competition in this TLC crippling test.

Benchmarks (Secondary Volume) – PCMark 8 Extended

Futuremark PCMark 8 Extended

Heavy Workload Model

PCMark 8's consistency test simulates an extended duration heavy workload environment. PCMark 8 has built-in, command line executed storage testing. The PCMark 8 Consistency test measures the performance consistency and the degradation tendency of a storage system.

The Storage test workloads are repeated. Between each repetition, the storage system is bombarded with a usage that causes degraded drive performance. In the first part of the test, the cycle continues until a steady degraded level of performance has been reached. (Steady State)

In the second part, the recovery of the system is tested by allowing the system to idle and measuring the performance after 5-minute long intervals. (Internal drive maintenance: Garbage Collection (GC)) The test reports the performance level at the start, the degraded steady-state, and the recovered state, as well as the number of iterations required to reach the degraded state and the recovered state.

We feel Futuremark's Consistency Test is the best test ever devised to show the true performance of solid state storage in an extended duration heavy workload environment. This test takes on average 13 to 17 hours to complete and writes somewhere between 450GB and 14,000GB of test data depending on the drive. If you want to know what an SSDs steady state performance is going to look like during a heavy workload, this test will show you.

Here's a breakdown of Futuremark's Consistency Test:

Precondition phase:

1. Write to the drive sequentially through up to the reported capacity with random data.

2. Write the drive through a second time (to take care of overprovisioning).

Degradation phase:

1. Run writes of random size between 8*512 and 2048*512 bytes on random offsets for 10 minutes.

2. Run performance test (one pass only).

3. Repeat 1 and 2 for 8 times, and on each pass increase the duration of random writes by 5 minutes.

Steady state phase:

1. Run writes of random size between 8*512 and 2048*512 bytes on random offsets for 50 minutes.

2. Run performance test (one pass only).

3. Repeat 1 and 2 for 5 times.

Recovery phase:

1. Idle for 5 minutes.

2. Run performance test (one pass only).

3. Repeat 1 and 2 for 5 times.

Storage Bandwidth

PCMark 8's Consistency test provides a ton of data output that we use to judge a drive's performance.

We consider steady state bandwidth (the blue bar) our test that carries the most weight in ranking a drive/arrays heavy workload performance. Performance after Garbage Collection (GC) (the orange and red bars) is what we consider the second most important consideration when ranking a drives performance. Trace-based steady state testing is where true high performing SSDs are separated from the rest of the pack.

In a steady state, the TRION 150 performs quite well. The potent SMI reference design takes the win, but the TRION 150 leads the rest of the field in steady state performance. The TRION 150 stumbles a bit in the recovery phases but clearly outperforms the TRION 100 across the board. The steady state performance of the SP550 illustrates just how badly TLC can get hammered.

We chart our test subject's storage bandwidth as reported at each of the test's 18 trace iterations. This gives us a good visual perspective of how our test subjects perform as testing progresses. This chart sheds a little more light on how the drives perform as they progresses through the testing phases.

Total Access Time (Latency)

We chart the total time the disk is accessed as reported at each of the test's 18 trace iterations. The TRION 150 maintains excellent latency across all 18 phases of this brutal test.

Disk Busy Time

Disk Busy Time is how long the disk is busy working. We chart the total time the disk is working as reported at each of the tests 18 trace iterations.

When latency is low, disk busy time is low as well.

Data Written

We measure the total amount of random data that our test drive/array is capable of writing during the degradation phases of the consistency test. Pre-conditioning data is not included in the total. The total combined time that degradation data is written to the drive/array is 470 minutes. This can be very telling. The better a drive/array can process a continuous stream of random data, the more data will be written.

Combined read/write latency, capacity and overprovisioning are the biggest factors that determine the outcome of this portion of the test. Due to excellent latency, the TRION 150 is able to write a large amount of random data in 470 minutes. The TRION 150's direct to die write is a huge improvement over the TRION 100.

The TRION 150 is able to write 76% more random data than the TRION 100 in the same amount of time.

Benchmarks (Secondary Volume) – 70/30 Mixed Workload

70/30 Mixed Workload Test (Sledgehammer)

Version and / or Patch Used: Iometer 2014

Heavy Workload Model

This test hammers a drive so hard we've dubbed it "Sledgehammer". Our 70/30 Mixed Workload test is designed to simulate a heavy-duty enthusiast/workstation steady-state environment. We feel that a mix of 70% read/30% write, full random 4K transfers best represents this type of user environment. Our test allows us to see the drive enter into and reach a steady state as the test progresses.

Phase one of the test preconditions the drive for 1 hour with 128K sequential writes. Phase two of the test runs a 70% read/30% write, full random 4K transfer workload on the drive for 1 hour. We log and chart (phase two) IOPS data at 5-second intervals for 1 hour (720 data points). 60 data points = 5 minutes.

What we like about this test is that it reflects reality. Everything lines up, as it should. Consumer drives don't outperform Enterprise-Class SSDs that were designed for enterprise workloads. Consumer drives based on old technology are not outperforming modern Performance-Class SSDs, etc.

Contrary to what we've seen to this point, the TRION 100 is able to outperform the TRION 150. SMI's reference design mops the floor with the rest of the drives in our test pool, and the BX200 gets absolutely crushed by the sledgehammer.

Maxed-Out Performance (MOP)

This testing is just to see what the drive is capable of in an FOB (Fresh Out of Box) state under optimal conditions. We are utilizing Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit for this testing. Same Hardware, just an OS change.

Final Thoughts

The TRION series is back on track. OCZ's TRION 150 is a decent performer with an outstanding price point, which is quite the opposite of what we got from the TRION 100. Enthusiasts will want to steer clear, but for the average user looking for something more than a spinning HDD can deliver, the TRION 150 fits the need almost perfectly; exactly as OCZ intended. As enthusiasts, we tend to focus on the best performance, but the vast majority of users don't need or care about having the latest and greatest performing hardware. They want something that will give them good performance at a low cost. For those users, we certainly have no reservations in recommending the TRION 150.

For the most part, the TRION 150 480GB performed at or near the top of our TLC equipped value drive test pool. OCZ's direct to die write strategy definitely makes a huge difference as illustrated by our transfer testing results where it not only outperformed the field, but it outperformed its predecessor by a whopping 61%. The TRION 150 is capable of outstanding burst performance, and that's going to make a huge difference for the average user where small transfers are the most commonly occurring file transactions.

We are satisfied with the SSD experience that the OCZ TRION 150 480GB SATA III SSD delivers. While running the TRION 150 as our OS disk loaded up with data to 75% of its capacity, the drive still delivered an excellent user experience. We feel the performance is right, the price is right and that OCZ's ShieldPlus warranty is about as good as it gets. OCZ is advertising the TRION 150 as the ultimate replacement for an HDD. While we don't completely agree with their assessment, we do agree that for first time SSD users, the TRION 150 is an excellent choice that will breathe new life into a laptop or desktop computer that is running on an HDD.

The TRION 150 delivers as advertised and that's something we can get behind. OCZ's TRION 150 480GB SATA III SSD is TweakTown recommended.

Pros:

• Low Price Point
• Acceptable Sustained Write Performance
• Hassle-Free Warranty

Cons:

• Moderate Workload Performance