Synology SAT5200 960GB Enterprise SATA SSD Review

Synology recently entered the SSD market, announcing two new solutions designed for caching and storage in their own All-Flash Arrays and DiskStation NAS products.

To do this, Synology teamed up with Phison to design a custom firmware for the proven S12DC SSD controller. They came away with a rather solid build that includes end to end data protection and power loss protection. Capacity options reach upwards of 1.92TB with 960GB and 480GB options as well. For review, Synology sent over the 960GB model.

Marketing performance offers 530 MB/s read and 500 MB/s write at 128K Q32. Random read and write will see 98K IOPs and 67K IOPS, respectively, 4K Q32. MTBF is rated at 1.5Million hours with a drive endurance rating of 2290 TBW or 1.3 DWPD for the 960GB model in house. The Synology SAT5200 uses a SATA 6Gbps interface.

The MSRP of the 960GB Synology SAT5200 comes in at $349.99 with a five-year warranty.

The packaging is simple - a brown box with the model and capacity listed to the left.

The drive itself is retained in the second piece of cardboard along with an anti-static bag.

Ready for all drive trays with the standard SATA connection.

Of course, I had to open it up and confirm the build. On this side, we have two DRAM packages at the top and five NAND packages that look like BiCS TLC, but could just as easily be Micron. We have power loss capacitors with the S12DC and two more DRAM packages to the right along the top.

CDM is a staple in performance testing; version 7 has seen some updates in the workloads used for testing. Filling the SAT5200, we get to testing reaching 479 MB/s read and 537 MB/s write.

Moving into more DataCenter based workloads, we pit the Synology against the IronWolf 110 in the same capacity. SAT5200 in blue, we see performance start to pull away around QD4, eventually reaching a peak of 92K IOPS.

Once again, SAT5200 in blue with a 4K Random Write workload, we see steady performance slightly above the IronWolf 110, peak IOPS around 90K once again.

80/20 gives a better idea of how this drive is tuned, gaining performance up to Q32, reaching a peak around 40K IOPS.

Throwing in some consumer benchmarks, the SAT5200 is a very good drive handling the Quick System Drive test with a score of 1617, second to the FireCuda 120.

Like many drives of this nature, when compared to consumer solutions, the Price/Performance goes out the window. In the case of the SAT5200, it receives a score of 95.5%.

What a drive! With this being Synology's first try, they have done a remarkable job collaborating with Phison to get the firmware how they wanted to offer the best performance possible for their intended market. Also, no corners were cut with the SAT5200, a full build including caps residing on the PCB.

Sequential read started off our testing, reaching 479 MB/s. That was quickly followed by a fantastic 537 MB/s write number, drive half full. Moving into random workloads, the SAT5200 was able to keep a sizable advantage over the IronWolf 110, especially once the queue depth started to climb. At peak, we saw 90K IOPS read and write from the SAT5200.

Slamming in the last few benchmarks, we were able to compare the SAT5200 against other consumer solutions in PCMark10 Quick System Drive, the Synology thrashing the competition tasking second place only to the FireCuda 120.

Pricing will catch you off-guard if you aren't used to looking at enterprise/datacenter drives. $349.99 for a 960G solution is undoubtedly a bit of coin and more than we are used to for sure, but this drive packs some of the highest endurance ratings I've ever seen from a 960GB solution. At 2290 TBW, you can write 1.25TB per day for five years and still be in warranty. Amazing!

Tyler's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS Crosshair VIII Formula X570 (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• RAM: Corsair Vengeance 16GB 2x8GB DDR4 3600 (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Corsair Hydro H60 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: Corsair Carbide 275R (buy from Amazon)
• OS Storage: Corsair MP600 1TB (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair RM850x (buy from Amazon)
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 (buy from Amazon)