Mushkin Triactor SSD Review

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Conclusion

Mushkin is one of the SSD companies that just plugs along making quality products without a lot of positive recognition. The company has never had a recall or emergency firmware release to fix a destructive data bug. The Mushkin SSDs usually sell for less than many competing products with a similar hardware configuration, but if you don't know to look for the Mushkin brand, you might overlook a diamond in the rough.

Mushkin occasionally releases a high-performance SSD, but most of its success stories come in the form of entry-level products that don't garner a lot of attention regardless of how high the quality is. The Triactor serves as an excellent example. It utilizes premium SanDisk flash that the manufacturer packaged, and it has sensible cost-reduction technologies that don't have a negative impact on the user experience.

Mushkin's choice of SanDisk flash is wise; it is the same as Toshiba's planar NAND and only takes a backseat to Samsung's planar NAND. The SanDisk 15nm TLC outperforms Micron 16nm TLC and Intel 20nm. The decision to use the older SM2256 controller instead of the newer SM2258 is another move to reduce costs. In our testing, the newer SM2258 doesn't bring much to the table with the planar NAND that Mushkin used with the Triactor. SMI primarily designed the SM2258 to add support for 3D NAND.

It would be interesting to find a similar combination of SM2258 and Toshiba 15nm MLC in a 480GB SSD to investigate if the newer controller reduces the recovery time. As long as you don't write a lot of data at one time, the high service time shouldn't be an issue. Idle time is the key to keeping the drive feeling fresh, along with not filling the Triactor to the brim with data.

The Triactor is about pricing, though. The Triactor 480GB SSD retails for just $112 online. The 240GB model is $70, so we feel users should spend the additional $40 to get the larger SSD. At these low price points, there isn't a reason to keep using a platter-based drive for anything other than cold storage. These entry-level SSDs offer a surprising amount of performance per dollar. If you need more than 480GB of space for games or other application data, you should consider adding one as a secondary volume. Then you can install your software on the non-boot drive to keep performance high on both the OS and secondary volume.

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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.
55 Comments Comment from the forums
  • josejones
    LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.

    Remember, VGA got pretty cheap too and it took like 10 years to get rid of it. We certainly need SATA for now but, it should start being considered obsolete by 2020 and begin to disappear from motherboards to make more room for more NVMe SSD connections. I just hope SATA doesn't turn into the next VGA and linger for 10 years. No point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.

    "The SATA 1.5Gb/s bottleneck was quickly exceeded, followed by SATA 3.0Gb/s, and within a year of SATA 6.0Gb/s there were drives that could saturate even that interface. Faster alternatives were needed, but the interface was only part of the problem."
    http://www.pcgamer.com/best-nvme-ssds/

    "Starting in October, the DemoEval lab will be hosting clusters for Silicon Valley startups using all NVMe SSDs. A year ago, these were SAS/ SATA clusters so the change is clearly upon us."
    https://www.servethehome.com/going-fast-inexpensively-48tb-of-near-sata-pricing-nvme-ssds/

    NVLINK Unified Virtual Memory (UVM) = 5 to 12 times faster than PCIE 3.0
    http://wccftech.com/nvidia-pascal-volta-gpus-sc15/



    Reply
  • Game256
    Samsung has changed the release dates of Samsung 960 (once again) on their site and set specific dates.

    The release date of Samsung 960 PRO 512GB/1TB is November 18. The release date of Samsung 960 EVO (all versions) and Samsung 960 PRO 2 TB is December 19.
    Reply
  • joz
    In all my years building and servicing computers for myself, family, friends and various odd-job commissions for strangers - I will, and will always trust Mushkin for my RAM, and lately - SSDs. As a budget-quality oriented guy, Mushkin is the one company who's RAM has never failed me; and their SSD's work well without putting pressure on the wallet. For most people, the high performance gains of the EVOs or other 'high performance' SSD's is a non-noticeable gain over any half-decent SSD. And Mushkin is not just a half-decent SSD. Mushkin is a GOOD SSD that is designed towards a specific segment without sacrificing quality. The Reactor was a fine 1TB drive, the ECO series was cheap, but of the six I've used so far in builds, not a single issue has popped up.

    I will definitively be looking into the Atlas series if I need more m.2 drives (which seems to be the growing trend.) But still, I love Mushkin ram the most.

    Anyway, in my semi-professional system building and tech troubleshooter, and yes, biased opinion, Mushkin is one of the best tech companies out there and we should be supporting them and their products.
    Reply
  • apk24
    18809517 said:
    LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.

    Remember, VGA got pretty cheap too and it took like 10 years to get rid of it. We certainly need SATA for now but, it should start being considered obsolete by 2020 and begin to disappear from motherboards to make more room for more NVMe SSD connections. I just hope SATA doesn't turn into the next VGA and linger for 10 years. No point clinging to old obsolete, outdated and super slow technology that is capped at super slow speeds with an ACHI interface that will never ever get beyond 600MB/s. SATA has been a huge bottleneck keeping HD's and storage super slow for years.

    You're going to have a hard time convincing anyone to reduce the number of SATA ports on a motherboard for a couple of reasons.
    ■ It's still a viable standard and will be for some time. HDDs, while on the way to obsolescence, aren't gone yet and it makes no sense to put an HDD on anything more than SAS/SATA 3.0. Until the day that a 1-2TB HDD and SSD cost the same, people will still buy HDDs.
    ■ For the foreseeable future, SATA SSDs will be cheaper than NVMe SSDs and there is definitely a budget market. The monitor analogy fails in this respect because a 720p monitor will cost roughly the same regardless of whether it uses HDMI or VGA.
    ■ SATA SSDs perform fast enough for most users. We have reached a point in tech development that the general user is more than happy with a Core i3, a few gigs of RAM, and a SATA SSD. You don't need much more for the average workload. If/when the average workload changes, we might see a stronger push towards faster/better components. However, atm it is purely the gaming/workstation type customers that are fueling the push for more power. I, and I'm assuming you, fall into this category.
    ■ It's a number on a box that could be easily beaten by another manufacturer; marketing depts won't be happy about it.While I agree that SATA should be heading the way of IDE, it's unlikely that anyone will accept a planned obsolescence by 2020.
    Reply
  • It would be nice if more products like USB flash drives and SSDs would ship in cardboard boxes like GPUs and such do. I understand it's smaller but just use a small box since SSDs are thankfully still made of metal and not plastic (yet...). Plastic doesn't degrade well, and hurts marine life so we're left with mutated fish to eat over time. Let's stop packaging things in so much plastic and use something like paper or cardboard.

    On another note, let's stop making flash drives out of plastic. I know that currently the PCB uses plastic, but there are alternatives that have not been tried yet because they sound absolutely ridiculous: chicken feathers and soybean oil. It was attempted over a decade ago and I guess that didn't take off. There are alternatives that we have yet to discover to make PCBs.

    The enclosure of the USB drives can be rubber like the Patriot Memory RAGE or BOOST XT line. There are now wood enclosed flash drives as well. SSDs are still metal, so let's have recyclable packaging since it's a one time use thing.
    Reply
  • HERETIC-1
    The 8K+Random read at QD1 was a pleasant surprise for TLC.
    If they could increase buffer size,it wouldn't be a bad drive.
    I'm sure using quality SD flash it wouldn't effect endurance too much.
    Reply
  • Xajel
    18809537 said:
    Samsung has changed the release dates of Samsung 960 (once again) on their site and set specific dates.

    The release date of Samsung 960 PRO 512GB/1TB is November 18. The release date of Samsung 960 EVO (all versions) and Samsung 960 PRO 2 TB is December 19.

    Are you sure of this ? I saw the Pro release date update but I didn't saw anything regarding Evo which I'm planning on have...
    Reply
  • Xajel
    18809517 said:
    LOL, why on earth with anybody waste their time making new SSD's with the soon to be obsolete SATA interface when we now have NVMe? Seems like a losing strategy making SSD's that are outdated and nearly obsolete the day they are released.

    I totally agree with wasting money on SATA but...

    For now, there's two to three reasons
    1- There's still no concrete way to add NVME SSD's like a regular 2.5/3.5 HDD's there's SATA Express yes but honestly that bulky cable is just a workaround, it's not even good enough to replace any SATA cable... basically it's a pathetic way to add a NVME SSD. and look around, how many SSD actually uses that thing ? hell almost nothing.. most solutions depends on M.2 or direct PCIe card.

    2- Officially only x90 series chipset support NVME ( to boot from ), while technically any chipset x60 series and above can support it with simple UFEI bios update but most companies didn't do this update ( as they want you to upgrade )... I my self has Z77 motherboard and ASUS did not release any update ( and will never do ), there's a manual way to mod the bios in order to add support.. but honestly how many will actually bother them selfs with such route ?

    3- SATA SSD's are still the cheapest way to go for SSD... NVME just started to be cheaper but still more expensive than SATA SSD's... and looking at how most peoples will do ( complications, costs & current system supports like most notebooks does not have NVME M.2 ) then most will go for a SATA solution because it will just work and a cheap way to upgrade their hardware with the least hustle and cost possible...


    Personally, my next upgrade will be a 512GB SATA M.2 for my laptop ( SATA M.2 on a 2.5" adapter )... and a 512GB NVME M.2 on a PCIe card for my desktop which I'll need to mod the BIOS in order to be able to boot from...

    later, I can take out that M.2 SATA SSD and use it as external fast flash on a smaller SATA M.2 -> USB housing... and I could directly put the NVME M.2 on a future motherboard ( with no PCIe adapter needed )
    Reply
  • logainofhades
    I still need sata. When they can make 4tb+ SSD affordable, maybe then I will care to make the switch.
    Reply
  • Nintendork
    Thing is that unless you work with huge chunks of data (like editing videos), there's little use of the 2GB+ sequential speeds of a NVME pci 4x drive.

    Random 4k reads and latency are nearly the same between a good sata and a good pcie based SSD.
    Reply