11-Drive DRAMless SSD Round Up

By Chris Ramseyer
published

Phison S11 3D Reference Designs

Phison S11 controllers are already available at retail, and the Patriot Spark further down this page touts the same controller.

Image 1 of 4

The first Phison S11 model uses Micron's L06B 256Gbit MLC NAND. This is the first time we've tested any product with Intel/Micron's (IMFT) new 3D MLC. At this time, the Intel DC P3520 enterprise NVMe SSD is the only retail product armed with IMFT 3D MLC.

The second reference design uses Toshiba 48-layer BiCS 2, which is similar to the NAND shipping in the new iPhone products released just a few months ago. There is not an SSD currently shipping with this flash in retail channels. Like the Micron 3D MLC, this is the first time we've tested Toshiba's 3D BiCS NAND.

Technical Specifications

Swipe to scroll horizontally
Header Cell - Column 0 Phison S11 Micron 3D MLC Reference DesignPhison S11 Toshiba 3D TLC Reference Design
Capacity (Raw / User)240GB / 256GB240GB / 256GB
Form Factor2.5"2.5"
Interface / ProtocolSATA 6Gbps / AHCISATA 6Gbps / AHCI
NANDMicron 3D 256Gb MLCToshiba BiCS2 TLC
ControllerPhison S11Phison S11

Unlike the rest of the SSDs in this roundup, these two are not currently shipping with this configuration. We may see retail products appear in January, or later in 2017.


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Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
Topics
SSD
Storage
31 Comments Comment from the forums
  • ponchato
    Look you guys need to get rid of this autoplaying, auto-resizing video or I'm done here. A tech website should not be this unusable. Skipping half a page down when I scroll slightly too far is incredibly annoying and you KNOW it irritates people and kills site usability. If it's not fixed or removed by this time next week (that's February 18th, 2017) I'm never coming to Tom's again.
    Reply
  • MCMunroe
    I agree with ponchato. Every page has this big video that plays the same damn thing that is usually the biggest image on the screen. For months it was a smaller video of Doom that played over and over, and now is a big video of cherry keys. WTF.
    Can't you just tuck in normal ads?
    Reply
  • hixbot
    Agreed. And these click bait "from the web" ads are fake news scams at best and misogynistic and offensive at worst.
    Reply
  • JimmiG
    I have a WD Green 240 GB SSD (DRAM less Marvell 88SS1074 and TLC) as a Steam games drive. It works fine for that purpose, since it's mostly sequential/random reads and very few writes (only when a game updates). No reason to not get one for that purpose, even as an "enthusiast". However, I wouldn't use them as system drives. I'm using a Samsung 850 Evo for that.
    Reply
  • Mindrax
    Use uBlock or Adblock to prevent that.
    :)
    I can't believe you don't already.
    Internet is a horrible place without blockers.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Gosh, I'm getting so paranoid about these ads that I wasn't even sure if the

    Was this helpful?
    Tom's needs your feedbackbanner was legit. Seems to be.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    Thanks for the tests, Chris (and the correction, Jon).

    Some of these SSD definitely need to come with a warning label!
    Reply
  • jakjawagon
    You guys need to fix your UK website. Half the graphs are missing. Posting this here as well because it's more likely to be seen.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    19284248 said:
    You guys need to fix your UK website. Half the graphs are missing. Posting this here as well because it's more likely to be seen.
    On some articles, with pages that have lots of graphs, occasionally not all of them load for me. I'd say try restarting your web browser or use a different one & see if that makes a difference.
    Reply
  • derekullo
    Firefox + Noscript + Adblock + Hosts file from www.winhelp2002.mvps.org/hosts.htm

    Stop complaining and just block them.

    I literally see 0 ads on Toms when I use the above with Firefox.

    The host file i would say is the most important.

    Even when I open Chrome 90% of the ads are gone, including the super annoying Doom video some guy was posting about yesterday. I literally had to go to another computer that didn't have the custom host file to see it. lol

    I don't have adblock nor noscript with chrome so the hosts file alone is blocking those ads.
    Reply