11-Drive DRAMless SSD Round Up

OCZ TL100

Our first retail product comes from Toshiba. The OCZ TL100 is the first DRAMless SSD from OCZ, but it comes from a long line of similar Toshiba products that omit the high-speed cache. The company can make controllers and NAND flash, but it does not have the DRAM manufacturing to provide the last piece of the complete vertical integration puzzle--unless it just removes the DRAM component altogether.

Unlike the entry-level products we're testing today, Toshiba is one of the few companies that have released DRAMless SSDs into mainstream performance categories. Sadly, many of these parts sell for premium prices and aren't the best value for informed shoppers.

The TL100 features a Toshiba TC58NC1010 flash controller paired with Toshiba 15nm TLC flash. Of the retail products in this review, the TL100 sports the highest performance specifications for the DRAMless 128GB and 256GB capacity classes. Toshiba spec’s sequential performance at 550 MB/s read and 530 MB/s write. At the time of writing, the OCZ TL100 only ships in two capacities of 120GB and 240GB.

We found the TL100 for as low as $49.99 for the 120GB and $69.99 for the 240GB. Both carry a limited 3-year warranty, but the endurance rating of 30 and 60 terabytes may distress some of our power-user readers. The new TL100 series works with OCZ's SSD software, but you need to download it from Toshiba's OCZ microsite.

OCZ TL100 (120GB)

Reasons to buy

+
OCZ SSD Utility support
+
Low cost
+
Faster than a Hard Disk Drive

Reasons to avoid

-
Inconsistent / Poor performance
-
OEM parts in a retail product

OCZ TL100 (120GB)

OCZ TL100 (240GB)

Reasons to buy

+
OCZ SSD Utility support
+
Low cost
+
Faster than a Hard Disk Drive
+
A better value compared to the TL100 120GB

Reasons to avoid

-
Inconsistent / Poor performance
-
OEM parts in a retail product

OCZ TL100 (240GB)


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Chris Ramseyer
Chris Ramseyer is a Contributing Editor for Tom's Hardware US. He tests and reviews consumer storage.
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    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.
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  • 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.
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  • bit_user
    Thanks for the tests, Chris (and the correction, Jon).

    Some of these SSD definitely need to come with a warning label!
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    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.
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  • 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.
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    Stop complaining and just block them.

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    The host file i would say is the most important.

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