The test system used in this review was an HP 8200 Elite. The computer came equipped with an Intel Core i5-2400 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 1333MHz memory, Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 ST3250312AS 250GB SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, NVIDIA Quadro FX580 512MB PCIe graphics card and an Intel 82579-LM gigabit network card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 Enterprise.
To test the performance of PNY's CS1311 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3, HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0, ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro 5.00, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Kingston BX100, Samsung 850 EVO M.2, Samsung 850 EVO mSATA, AMD Radeon R7, Silicon Power Slim S80, Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Kingston MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro, Samsung SSD 850 PRO, Plextor PX-256M6S and Toshiba Q Series Pro.
As I mentioned earlier, the CS1311 is based on Phison's PS3110-S10 controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.3:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 PNY CS1311 480GB |
 OCZ Trion 150 480GB |
According to PNY, the 480GB CS1311 is capable of reading at 565 MB/s and writing at 520 MB/s when connected to a SATA 6 Gb/s port. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.
 PNY CS1311 480GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
 OCZ Trion 150 480GB - All 0x00, 0Fill |
The CS1311 performed equally well when using highly compressible 0x00 (0 Fill) data. This time around, the drive was able to read at 566 MB/s and write at 535 MB/s.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the CS1311's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the CS1311 had average read and write speeds of 364.6 MB/s and 184.9 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 210.6 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that, like most other TLC-based SSDs, the CS1311 uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 345 MB/s and then drops to about 190 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the CS1311's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 PNY CS1311 480GB |
 OCZ Trion 150 480GB |
When tested with ATTO, the CS1311's read speeds topped out at about 567 MB/s and its write speeds at 536 MB/s.
