Addlink NAS D60 SSD review: Finally a good caching NVMe SSD

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The Addlink NAS D60 is a bit of a unicorn as far as our typical SSD testing goes. We haven't reviewed a NAS-focused SSD in a long time, so we don't have any alternatives in our SSD benchmarks other than standard consumer drives. We've included a selection of popular drives with 1TB, which means we have data from the older Samsung 980 and 980 Pro, but not the newer 990 Pro or 990 Evo.

We also have the WD SN850 and SN850X, Micron 3500, SK hynix Platinum P41, and a few other SSDs. Most of our testing focuses on consumer workloads, so the NAS D60 isn't likely to fare well in terms of performance, but we've discussed the reasons for this drive on the previous page. It fills a niche, but let's see how it performs.

Trace Testing — 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams. Future gaming benchmarks will be DirectStorage-inclusive and we also include notes about which drives may be future-proofed.

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We stated above that the NAS D60 doesn’t make much sense for a game drive, and the 3DMark results underline that. However, this is a somewhat misleading analysis. Games rely heavily on reads and, generally, the reads will be coming from the native flash — that is, the TLC or QLC flash — rather than from the pSLC cache. Therefore, the NAS D60 can work fine for game loading, but at this price per gigabyte it would be a poor value for that. If you’re someone who develops games or mods and you don't want to risk losing data, however, then the NAS D60 makes more sense.

Trace Testing — PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The results are particularly useful when analyzing drives for their use as primary/boot storage devices and in work environments.

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The NAS D60 doesn’t do great in PCMark 10, either, but that doesn’t come as a surprise. Again, the lack of a pSLC cache penalizes it in most synthetic tests. Heavier workloads, including content creation, could benefit from this drive’s features, though. pSLC caching on normal drives can be detrimental to some workflows where burst performance is less important than sustained performance.

Transfer Rates — DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We write 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to the test drive, then make a copy of that data to a new folder, and follow up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file. This is a real world type workload that fits into the cache of most drives.

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The lack of a pSLC cache hurts the NAS D60’s write performance in DiskBench, but the read performance is just as expected. The KC3000 and Rocket 4 Plus-G both use the standard Phison E18 controller, for comparison. Drives such as those two have sometimes been a good option for heavier workloads, but eventually they will bog down in spots where the NAS D60 will be more consistent.

Synthetic Testing — ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes and at different queue depths for both sequential and random workloads.

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The NAS D60 generally has a good showing in ATTO even if at first glance it doesn’t seem so. The drive handles smaller block sizes at QD1 exceptionally well. Reads are always fine, but there’s a plateau for writes as the TLC flash hits its maximum speed.

Unfortunately, 4KB random read and write latency are both pretty high. This is again due to the lack of a pSLC cache, which can especially hurt in synthetic benchmarks like CDM. Sequential read performance is okay, but sequential writes hit a wall due to TLC flash performance limits.

Looking purely at CDM, it would be easy to write this drive off. However, this performance isn’t bad for the NAS D60’s intended role. Enterprise and data center drives will perform like this when looking at synthetic consumer benchmarks. A pSLC cache is very useful there as most users will have I/O activity in bursts. In a NAS system as a caching drive, the NAS D60 would have to contend with more difficult situations, such as being consistently full with sustained workloads. It might also be in a RAID configuration where consistency is more important.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of pseudo-SLC (single-bit) programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC (three-bit) or QLC (four-bit) flash. Performance can suffer even more if the drive is forced to fold, which is the process of migrating data out of the cache in order to free up space for further incoming data.

We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes or more to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. This process shows the performance of the drive in various states as well as the steady state write performance.

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At its highest sustained point, the 960GB NAS D60 writes at up to 1.6 GB/s, which exceeds the datasheet’s 1.4 GB/s. This is a pretty good result and about what you would expect for sixteen TLC BiCS5 flash dies for interleaving. Our steady state result may be influenced by the method of benchmarking, but even so the 960GB NAS D60 can retain an impressive speed. For comparison, a 10 gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) connection has a maximum throughput of about 1.25 GB/s.

These drives are intended to be utilized in RAID, too. For NAS caching use, a RAID-1 mirror is not uncommon. The NAS D60 at this capacity — or at the higher 1920GB point — would be a pretty good solution for home or small business use. The 480GB model would still be fast enough for say, 5GbE, but you also have to consider the NAS mechanical hard drives. Take the 20TB WD Red Pro, which can sustain up to 272 MB/s. Depending on your configuration, the size and performance required for the SSD will vary, but the 960GB is not in a bad spot generally speaking. However, the 1920GB is the better value by gigabyte per dollar and offers a little more future-proofing.

In some configurations, there will be no important data-in-flight on the caching drives, which reduces the advantage of the PLP. Additionally, you might want to run these in a RAID-0 or stripe for performance, which is less reliable by default due to a loss of redundancy. In these cases you will still benefit from the predictable performance of the NAS D60 as well as the higher endurance afforded by the eTLC flash.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider for laptops, but for a NAS drive it's not going to matter too much. Also consider that the capacitors and E18DC controller aren't tuned for mobile use.

For temperature recording we currently poll the drive’s primary composite sensor during testing with a ~22°C ambient. Our testing is rigorous enough to heat the drive to a realistic ceiling temperature.

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The drive is rated for 8.8W in its highest power state, but in the datasheet this particular capacity is rated from between 9.5 and 11.55 watts. We usually reach a lower peak than this, and that’s the case here at 8.35W. Note that at the expected power draw level even at 1920GB, the capacitors should be more than sufficient.

As this drive is not using a pSLC cache, we would not expect it to be efficient. Writing in the single-bit pSLC mode is “easier” with fewer voltage steps per bit, and of course it’s faster for a similar reason. However, in certain cases a drive with no pSLC cache will be more efficient, such as when the cache would otherwise run out with a fuller drive trying to manage a heavy workload. This drive is designed for NAS systems, workstations, and servers, where this makes more sense. Since our test normally fits in the cache, a drive like this is going to be woefully inefficient, even before considering any impact that the PLP might have.

Likewise, as the NAS D60 is an enterprise drive, we would expect a high idle power draw result, although power saving options could reduce this. Generally speaking, though, the exit and enter latency penalties — that is, responsiveness when a drive can be in an idle state — are such that you would want to run a drive like this in a ready state anyway. However, for niche use this drive could idle lower with appropriate settings.

In our testing, the drive hit a maximum temperature of around 75°C. This is more than 10°C off the first throttling state which means it could be run bare. However, it’s probably advisable to use a heatsink on this drive if possible. Temperatures might be higher with some workloads and in some environments, and prolonged operation at high temperatures could put a strain on the hardware, including the capacitors. Cooling just the controller will work, but spreading heat to the DRAM and NAND flash is preferable.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, Windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Addlink NAS D60 Bottom Line

We would love to give the Addlink NAS D60 a higher score, but our largely consumer-leaning benchmarks show it in a negative light. While this drive would be serviceable for any task, there are better options in terms of price for everyday usage. This means it’s not great for your OS or gaming drive. Rather, it’s designed for servers and workstations where its unique features are much more useful.

In such a system we would rank this much higher, but we have to emphasize that this is more of a small office/home office, prosumer, or small business server type of solution. True enterprise drives have a wider array of features, larger capacity options, and superior management support. The NAS D60 falls somewhere in-between and, frankly, its price is perfect for that niche, even if we don’t list that specifically as a pro or con.

Another missing pro/con is the drive’s lack of a pSLC cache. Having no cache makes it a poor solution for general use, even if some people might prefer a more reliable drive. Likewise, the drive supports TCG Pyrite but not Opal, which seems like a significant oversight, but for the most part you won’t be using hardware encryption with a NAS caching drive. The power loss protection feature is a net positive, but many file systems preclude the need for this sort of protection. This ultimately means that the NAS D60’s use of enterprise TLC flash is probably its best selling point. To be fair in the other direction, its extremely weak power efficiency and weaker all-around performance are not that important for its intended application.

Looking at the flash, we have a good warranty of 1 DWPD with high-quality TLC flash. Backed by PLP, this kind of drive is going to be reliable and consistent. Consistency is perhaps a bigger selling point than even the rated endurance as this drive will retain good performance with sustained workloads. In a single- or dual-drive configuration, it’s pretty hard to beat. Many retail consumer SSDs today rely on large caches that would falter here, the Crucial T500 being a good example. Drives like the older Samsung 970 EVO Plus work okay in a NAS server but it’s niche to have a PCIe 4.0 solution that is relatively easy to buy. Not to mention, yes, it has PLP if that’s something you want.

For this reason we think the Addlink NAS D60 is a neat drive that could certainly find some niche use in a server or workstation, even if it’s just for peace of mind. The premium is reasonable and, while we would like to see more features and maybe even newer hardware, it’s a good product for a market that generally doesn’t offer this kind of drive anymore. It’s nice to see Addlink take a risk with it as there certainly is a market for a drive like this, although supporting such a drive introduces some risk to the manufacturer. We hope to see more of this sort of hardware in the future. 

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