The SSD market has grown in leaps and bounds over the past few years. It has given new names a chance to make a name for themselves. Strangely enough, the biggest names in the storage industry Western Digital and Seagate have been slow to the market, letting the technology mature before jumping in. With the purchase of SiliconSystems, Western Digital finally jumped in. Today we are looking at their SiliconEdge Blue, their first entry in the personal SSD market. To celebrate we will showcase this milestone in a custom case from Cooler Master and Smooth Creations.
Product Name: Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue 128gb
Review Sample Provided by: Western Digital
Review by: Wes
Pictures by: Wes
Specifications
Physical Specifications |
|
Capacity |
128 GB |
Interface |
SATA 3 Gb/s |
Form Factor |
2.5-inch Drive |
RoHS Compliant |
6/6 |
Performance Specifications |
|
Target Performance |
|
Interface Burst Speed |
3 Gb/s |
Sustained Read Speed |
Up to 250 MB/s |
Sustained Write Speed |
Up to 170 MB/s |
MTBF |
1,400,000 hours |
Error Rate (non-recoverable) |
< 1 in 1015 bits read |
Operational Lifespan |
|
Read |
Unlimited |
Write |
35 GB/Day |
Physical Specifications |
|
User Sectors Per Drive |
250,069,680 |
Physical Dimensions |
|
Height |
0.40 Inches |
Length |
3.9 Inches |
Width |
2.75 Inches |
Power Management |
|
DC Input Voltage |
5V |
Read (Peak Watts) |
2.00 Watts |
Write (Peak Watts) |
3.5 Watts |
Sleep (Idle Watts) |
0.60 Watts |
Environmental Specifications |
|
Shock |
|
Operating Shock |
1000 G, Half-sine, 0.5ms Duration, 50g Pk, MIL-STD-810F, Method 516.5, Procedure I |
Temperature (Metric) |
|
Standard Temperature (c) |
0° C to 70° C |
Non-operating |
-55°C to 125°C |
Humidity |
|
Operating |
8% to 95% Non-condensing |
Altitude (English) |
|
Operating |
80,000ft, MIL-STD-810F, Method 500.4, Procedure II |
Vibration |
|
Operating |
16.3gRMS, MIL-STD-810F, Method 514.5, Procedure I, Category 24 |
Performance
We know Western Digital can make a fast hard drive, but with the SSD market being new it’s really hard to say how the numbers will pan out. To get our numbers I used CrystalDiskMark, HD Tune, and PCMark. Our price per Gb graph is using the most up to date prices from Newegg/Amazon to get the best idea of who gives the best value. Here are our results!
With a reading of 206.5 using HDTach the SiliconEdge wasn’t far behind Crucial’s offering. Of course HDTach has been known to read a little low so we complement its results with a run through CrystalDiskMark, with a Max read speed of 243 this drive is impressive. Its Write speed of 138.1 is a nice improvement over and hard disc, but is still a little lacking when compared to Intel’s offering. Random access has become a non-issue with SSD’s, the SiliconEdge received a .1 ms random access result just like the other SSD’s tested. Our last set of tests are a whole listing of tests that PCMark Vantage runs, with PCMark testing being new to our reviews you will have more to compare to in the future. But you can see that in most tests the test results are lower than our other tests, but still considerably higher than a standard disk drive performance numbers.
Overall
Western Digital’s first consumer SSD performed well in our testing. Not only did it perform well but I also found the silver drive casing to be the best looking that we have currently tested. When putting together the Cost Pre GB chart I was surprised to find out that this is the best value out of all of the SSD’s tested. I think when put up against tougher competition the SiliconEdge Blue will come out a little short, but surprisingly it’s a better value per gig when compared to OCZ’s entry level drive. I can’t want to see what Western Digital will bring out in the future.