- 2.5"
- 120GB
- SATA III
Underwhelming
11/01/2016
This review is from: Mushkin Enhanced ECO2 2.5" 120GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) MKNSSDEC120GB
Pros:
The price is very reasonable for a 120 GB solid state drive.
Unfortunately due to my personal experience with this drive, that is the only Pro I am able to come up with at this time.
Cons:
Originally, I was persuaded to purchase this drive due to the price, which was very reasonable for an SSD, and a review stating that this drive had excellent performance. Well I can't argue the price, but for me, the drive performed far less than what I had hoped for.
SYSTEM SPECS:
Core 2 Quad Q8300 3.0 GHz
Nforce 780i
4 GB DDR2 Dominator 1066 MHz
GTX 580 3 GB
TX750 PSU
Blu Ray, HDD, SSD
Win Vista 32 bit
The PC I installed this drive in is primarily an HTPC. So speed isn't a major concern, but still, I want it to be fast. It must be said that my system only has support for SATA 3 Gb/sec, so I can't utilize this drives full potential. But, that being the case, benchmarks with other SSDs provided bandwidth double of that I received with this drive. Using several HDD and SSD benchmarking software, including AS SSD, Crystal Disk Mark and AIDA 64, I received a MAX of 125 MB/sec sequential read speeds and 110 MB/sec sequential write speeds. Those speeds were reliable and I rarely saw bandwidth dip below that. But still, I expected upwards of 200 MB/sec at least. Even the first gen SSDs could achieve those speeds. I tried various SATA ports and I also tried several different SATA cables. The bandwidth stayed the same regardless of which port it was connected to and different cables, even brand new ones meant for use with SSDs didn't affect the speed in one way or the other.
I configured this drive brand new out of the box with a clean install of Windows. Given, Vista is not the ideal OS for use with SSDs. But even so, a new SSD should have been wicked fast. The only thing Vista lacks is TRIM. For me, even though I don't have access to TRIM support, it's not really a major concern as I'm using this drive as a primary OS drive. I won't be writing to it very often, so read speeds are the only thing I'm really concerned with. TRIM doesn't really affect read speeds as it does writes. I assume the drives onboard garbage collection process should help negate that disadvantage.
Mushkin doesn't offer any type of software for their SSDs. Many manufacturers offer software to optimize and clean up their SSDs for operating systems like Vista that don't support TRIM or other important features.
There are no firmware updates available for this drive. I hadn't anticipated needing one, but when I searched all I could find was firmware updates for the Chronos series of Mushkin drives. You would think that there would be firmware updates for more than just a single series of SSDs.
Overall Review:
The drive worked for me out of the box just fine. But my system eventually started freezing. I swapped out the SATA cable and haven't had any trouble since then. But I am very nervous that it might not stay stable.
As I cannot confirm without any reasonable doubt that this drive is entirely to blame for the pathetic performance I recorded during my benchmarks, I can't give it an overall score that reflects that. So I am giving this drive 3 Eggs. The price is reasonable for a newer series of SSDs. But, if your mother board doesn't support SATA 6 Gb/sec or especially if you're using an Nforce 780i, then I do not recommend this drive.
For anyone else thinking of purchasing this drive, I would not take the top favorable review posted on Newegg without a bit of skepticism. Either that person is running RAID and failed to mention that, their system is the absolute ideal configuration for this particular drive or it was a review posted by someone who was intent on creating a very favorable review, regardless of the real world performance. I seriously doubt most people can hope to achieve over 500 MB/sec sequential read and writes. It is possible I may be wrong. I wish I had a different system to test it on. Although my personal experience with this drive has been less than stellar, my mother board may be the culprit here, not originally being designed for use with SSDs. Take more time than I did and read more reviews than just one that makes this drive sound too good to be true.
EDIT:
A few months ago I ended up installing this SSD into my new HTPC build:
Specs:
AMD FX 9590
990FX G1 Gaming MoBo
8 GB Rip Jaws DDR3 2133
GTX 580 3GB
ZX1250w PSU
2TB Data Drive
Windows 10 Home Premium 64 bit
The benchmarks I provided before are identical on this system. This system supports SATA 6 Gb/s and TRIM. Neither of those features helped with this drives very underwhelming speed. So now that I've had a chance to really test this drive in multiple systems across a couple operating systems, I can say that I DO NOT recommend this drive. Even though it's not very expensive, you can get a 1 TB hard drive for the same price that will perform roughly at the same speed as this SSD. Don't get this SSD, get something that actually performs like a proper SSD.
Manufacturer Response:
Hello, David!
We apologize for the issue that you’re having with our Mushkin SSD. Please see our website for the Firmware upgrade that should alleviate all of your issues (FW 6.0.9 update):
http://www.poweredbymushkin.com/index.php/support/ssd-firmware-updates.html
Thank you for choosing Mushkin Enhanced.
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- David K.
-
Verified Owner
-
Owned For:
1 month to 1 year
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