PNY CS1311 240GB 2.5" SATA III Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) SSD7CS1311-240-RB

Pros: Price - The 23 cents per GB I paid for this drive is a pretty good value. Packaging - PNY's SSD packaging is the best of any SSD I've purchased. The drive comes in a silver static bag packed in soft foam in an easily opened cardboard box. A stick-on plastic spacer is included along with a code for some cloning software. Performance - This drive performs decently for a cached TLC drive. The sustained writes are lower than I would like to see but overall I found the performance acceptable.

Cons: Performance - The overall performance is not as good as PNY's predecessor model the CS1211, but that drive was MLC-based.

Overall Review: Using HDTune I received 375MB/s sustained read speeds and 165MB/s sustained write speeds. I calculated that this drive uses an approximately 4.8GB cache. The AS SSD benchmarks below were run using a 1GB and a 10GB test file size. The benchmarks were run on an Ivy Bridge i5 with a Z75 chipset. 1GB: AS SSD Benchmark 1.8.5636.37293 ------------------------------ Name: ATA PNY CS1311 480GB SCSI Disk Device Firmware: 1122 Controller: iaStorA Offset: 1024 K - OK Size: 447.13 GB Date: 5/4/2016 9:43:21 AM ------------------------------ Sequential:16MB ------------------------------ Read: 526.54 MB/s 32.91 iops Write: 486.91 MB/s 30.43 iops ------------------------------ 4K:4K ------------------------------ Read: 39.53 MB/s 10121 iops Write: 71.56 MB/s 18320 iops ------------------------------ 4K-64Threads:4K-64Threads ------------------------------ Read: 399.11 MB/s 102172 iops Write: 320.14 MB/s 81955 iops ------------------------------ Access Times:512B ------------------------------ Read: 0.050 ms 19839 iops Write: 0.050 ms 19826 iops ------------------------------ 10GB: ------------------------------ Sequential:16MB ------------------------------ Read: 528.21 MB/s 33.01 iops Write: 332.19 MB/s 20.76 iops ------------------------------ 4K:4K ------------------------------ Read: 22.92 MB/s 5866 iops Write: 77.11 MB/s 19739 iops ------------------------------ 4K-64Threads:4K-64Threads ------------------------------ Read: 273.98 MB/s 70140 iops Write: 155.65 MB/s 39847 iops ------------------------------ Access Times:512B ------------------------------ Read: 0.052 ms 19397 iops Write: 0.560 ms 1786 iops ------------------------------

Pros: Fast, price for performance is great for the time I purchased.

Cons: None so far

Overall Review: I have only had this drive installed and been using it for 3 days, but the benchmarks on it are great. Playing games has been a great experience. Load times are fast. Only time will tell if there if this drive has the longevity that my previous SSD had. Otherwise for a drive with no reviews, I took a chance and so far, great!

Pros: Very very cheap price wise, a great deal for an SSD. Even though its not a higher end SSD it is still pretty fast. Set up was straight forward and easy. shipping was in 2 days, newegg great as always

Cons: PNY logo and texture look is a sticker and comes off as a cheaper device, mine is in a drive bay and not visible so im not docking a star.

Overall Review: I use this SSD mainly for OS and a few games and have alternate HDD for storage. I would recommend this to other people with the same needs.

Pros: Excellent product so far. Brought new life to my machine. Fast....

Cons: None yet

Overall Review: It does come with an Acronis key, but, it's a 16-digit short key, which means that you have to register with them, input this short key, then they email you the full key. OK.... 5 minutes of my time, and another 5 after clicking "clone"... No biggie... Everything worked flawlessly.

Pros: Ridiculously simple to set up. Fast as hell, as you can expect from a SSD. I went with PNY because they are American made and was not disappointed. Within 30-45 minutes, I had Windows 10 Pro installed, and then moved Fallout 4 and World of Warcraft from my hard drive to my SSD and was gaming. Seriously, I had to pinch myself. Most hardware doesn't install itself or function this well right out of the gate!

Cons: The software it is giving me a key for is a tad confusing. I wouldn't really call it a con, though.

Overall Review: I'm going to be buying PNY more in the future. I respect that they are American-made, and top-notch quality as well. I look forward to buying one of their graphics cards.

Pros: Great product from a US company. Excellent speeds, reliability, good support.

Cons: none

Overall Review: When once comparing the specs on this drive's package to a drive from an even bigger name with newer technology, this PNY drive seemed to have better speeds, longer life expectancy, and it's sold at a more economical price point. Like most SSD's the available SMART statistics are fewer in number compared to a regular hard disk drive, but PNY does have some software on their website for updating firmware and such.

Pros: At work, we use Samsung SSDs but those are much pricier than the PNY ones. These drives are pretty solid (no puns intended).

Cons: None

Overall Review: It comes with an Acronis license and I cloned my HDD without any issues.

Pros: - Performance inside the cache is pretty good. 530MB/s read 420MB/s write and 8300 4K Read IOPS. When run with a 5GB test size the reads stay high but the writes drop to 130MB/s and the 4K Read IOPS drop to 5800. Still respectable performance for a TLC drive. - Packaging for PNY's SSDs is very good. Easy to open foam-lined box with the drive inside a silver static bag. - Warranty is a standard 3 years.

Cons: - Warranty could be longer but hey, 3 years is what most drives offer these days.

Overall Review: Benchmarks were run on an Ivy Bridge i5 with a Z75 chipset. Benchmark was run twice, once with a 1GB test file and once with a 5GB test file. 1GB Test File Size AS SSD Benchmark 1.8.5636.37293 ------------------------------ Name: ATA PNY CS1311 120GB SCSI Disk Device Firmware: 1122 Controller: iaStorA Offset: 1024 K - OK Size: 111.79 GB Date: 3/23/2016 12:59:14 PM ------------------------------ Sequential:16MB ------------------------------ Read: 528.85 MB/s 33.05 iops Write: 419.60 MB/s 26.22 iops ------------------------------ 4K:4K ------------------------------ Read: 32.64 MB/s 8356 iops Write: 59.53 MB/s 15240 iops ------------------------------ 4K-64Threads:4K-64Threads ------------------------------ Read: 330.12 MB/s 84509 iops Write: 79.14 MB/s 20261 iops ------------------------------ Access Times:512B ------------------------------ Read: 0.065 ms 15353 iops Write: 0.062 ms 16145 iops ------------------------------ 5GB Test File Size ------------------------------ Sequential:16MB ------------------------------ Read: 525.63 MB/s 32.85 iops Write: 133.93 MB/s 8.37 iops ------------------------------ 4K:4K ------------------------------ Read: 22.90 MB/s 5863 iops Write: 71.84 MB/s 18392 iops ------------------------------ 4K-64Threads:4K-64Threads ------------------------------ Read: 241.75 MB/s 61889 iops Write: 75.60 MB/s 19353 iops ------------------------------ Access Times:512B ------------------------------ Read: 0.052 ms 19251 iops Write: 0.344 ms 2910 iops ------------------------------