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A Closer Look
The RD400 packaging still dons the familiar OCZ color and theme, but Toshiba added its name since the last OCZ product we reviewed. All three of our samples shipped with the add-in card, so we have yet to see the M.2-only package. The card comes with a full-height adapter bracket installed, but OCZ included a half-height bracket in the package for use in small form factor and 2U chassis.
Toshiba listed several product features and details about the RD400 on the package, but it did not specify any performance data. The package notes that Toshiba does not support the Intel RST driver. Without RST support, users cannot assemble a RAID 0, 1 or 5 array on the Intel PCH with Z70 (and future) motherboards.
We reached out to OCZ for to learn more about the issue, and OCZ stated that the RD400 has compatibility issues with the Intel RST driver. Toshiba found several bugs with the interaction between its SSD controller and RST NVMe drivers.
The add-in card is a basic design, but it does include a thermal pad under the flash processor. The pad distributes heat to the copper card and reduces the amount of heat passing to the flash. We tested the 1TB card with and without the adapter, and with an Angelbird Wings PX1 adapter, which features a full-length heatsink. We will discuss this later in the review.
The RD400 128GB, 256GB and 512GB all use a single-sided design with just two NAND flash packages. The 1TB model utilizes four NAND packages, with two on each side. For most users this will not be a problem, but some notebooks may not support double-sided M.2 SSDs, which we noticed in our Lenovo Carbon X1. The system has a surface mount chip directly under the mounted M.2, so some drives will not fit correctly.
