The SK Hynix Gold S31 SATA SSD Review: Hynix 3D NAND Finally Shows Up
by Billy Tallis on November 13, 2019 12:00 PM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
As with The Destroyer, the SK Hynix Gold S31 drives have somewhat lower performance on the Heavy test than most other mainstream SATA models, but they do an excellent job of retaining that performance even when the drive is full.
The average latencies from the S31s are reasonable and minimally affected by running the test on a full drive. For the 99th percentile latencies, the scores are actually slightly better when the drives are full, but the 500GB model in particular is a bit behind the usual for its capacity class.
The average read latencies from the S31s during the Heavy test are competitive. For writes, the 500GB model's latency is a little bit high compared to the competition. The 250GB model's average write latency is almost double that level, but still lower than that of the DRAMless Toshiba TR200.
The 99th percentile read and write latencies are both fine for the larger S31 models. The 250GB model's 99th percentile read latency gets shown up by the DRAMless Toshiba TR200 when the test is run on an empty drive. However, even the smallest S31 doesn't come close to the 99th percentile write latency problems that affect the DRAMless drives.
All three capacities of the SK Hynix Gold S31 turn in great power efficiency scores on the Heavy test, using substantially less energy than the competing mainstream models with DRAM caches.
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MenhirMike - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
We're not going to get under 10c/GB anytime soon, will we? SATA SSDs seem to be stagnant - performance is OK, power consumtion is OK, price is $100 for 1TB, endurance is the usual 0.3 WPD - and yet there are constantly new products with different components and basically the same performance/power/price.Is there a limitation that currently causes stagnation? (I know that SATA is inherently limited in performance, but price shouldn't be stagnant if the main need in that sector is more capacity for less money, with performance/power/endurance being the same)
FunBunny2 - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
"price shouldn't be stagnant if the main need in that sector is more capacity for less money"all of these companies face the Tyranny of Fixed Cost, i.e. the BoM is almost all amortization of the plant and equipment to make the various bits and pieces. sand, some chemicals, and a watchman or two to hover over the machines amount to the variable cost. in such a situation, the only way to lower *average cost* (and shut up the bean counters) is to ship more product and thus spread the fixed cost a tad thinner. lots more product. but that, in turn, is strictly limited by user demand. they're caught between a rock and a hard place. they end up viewing the situation as zero-sum game; one can win only if the other(s) lose when there's little to no global (in every sense of the word) growth. welcome to Earthly Stagnation.
dromoxen - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
Having Dr ManHattan looking after your machines is a very expensive business , Rorschach is very unreliable too.eek2121 - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
Except prices have been falling. You just don't realize it because it happens over time.These drives are as cheap as Samsung's QLC drives, without the disadvantages.
Slash3 - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
SSD prices have been basically flat since October/November 2018. Check the price tracking for a 500GB/1TB MX500 or 860 Evo and there have been a few variations but nothing substantial or permanent.I'd love to pick up more large capacity solid state to replace some of my HDDs, but I bought two 2TB SSDs over a year ago and they're actually a few dollars *more* expensive now.
At this point, it may actually be cheaper to build a large NAS using MicroSD cards...
eek2121 - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
I paid the same amount for my 2 TB 970 evo as I did my 1 TB 960 evo 2.5-3 years ago. Also, don't track specific drivers, look at charts. NAND is coming down. It just takes time.Slash3 - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
/s implied with respect to the MicroSD card NAS, if it weren't obvious.Although that would be fun to build.
nandnandnand - Wednesday, November 13, 2019 - link
Sale prices are hitting 8c/GB. Don't pay 10c/GB if you live in America. As the average drive capacity goes up, the prices will continue to go down.Thankfully, 100 GB and larger games are a thing, so that should create some demand.
deil - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
we might PLC coming soon, so we might see some 1 TB/1.5 TB/2TB/3TB sata's soon and as they are 20% bigger after amortization wears off, almost 20% cheaper it will become.main focus will go to PCIE4.0 now though. so I would say next December expect 2 or 3 products with same nand. 120GB/240 will not go lower than its is now.
deil - Thursday, November 14, 2019 - link
in there on the article. We already did on 1 TB ones. and PLC will go even lower.ADATA SU800 $34.99
(14¢/GB) $57.99
(11¢/GB) $91.99
(9¢/GB) $209.99
(10¢/GB)