SanDisk Announces Z410 Client SSD
by Billy Tallis on April 27, 2016 5:05 PM EST
SanDisk has introduced a new low-end drive to their line of client SSDs targeted at business and OEM customers. The Z410 is positioned closely to Z400s but is not a direct replacement. Instead, the Z410 focuses on offering just the most popular capacities for mainstream PC usage while the Z400s continues to serve other markets with mSATA and M.2 versions and capacities as small as 32GB.
First announced almost a year ago as the first 15nm TLC SSD, the Z400s sought to cut costs in order to break into new parts of the embedded and client PC markets. The Silicon Motion SM2246XT controller it uses is a DRAM-less two or four channel design that limits potential performance and capacity. The SM2246XT also lacks encryption support and LDPC error correction.
The SanDisk Z410 abandons the mSATA and M.2 form factors to focus specifically on 2.5" with capacities from 120GB to 480GB. The only significant performance difference from the Z400s is a substantial increase in sequential write speed, while sequential read speeds are rated slightly lower and random read and write specifications are similar. The Z410 does benefit from a controller upgrade that allows for LDPC error correction and SLC caching, but it seems the latter's impact on write amplification has kept the write endurance ratings from increasing substantially. The three year warranty period on the Z410 is also shorter than the five years offered for the Z400s.
| SanDisk OEM Client SSD Comparison | |||
| Drive | X400 | Z410 | Z400s |
| Capacities | 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB | 120GB, 240GB, 480GB | 32GB, 64GB, 128GB, 256GB |
| Controller | Marvell 88SS1074 | ? | Silicon Motion SM2246XT |
| Sequential Read | 545 MB/s | 535 MB/s | 546 MB/s |
| Sequential Write | 520 MB/s | 445 MB/s | 342 MB/s |
| Random Read IOPS | 95k | 37k | 37k |
| Random Write IOPS | 75k | 68k | 69k |
| Form Factors | 2.5", M.2 2280 | 2.5" | 2.5", mSATA, M.2 2242, M.2 2280 |
| Encryption | TCG Opal (optional) | None | None |
| Endurance | 72-320 TBW | 40-120TBW | 20-72 TBW |
| Warranty | 5 years | 3 years | 5 years |
The introduction of the Z410 puts SanDisk in the unusual position of having three tiers of TLC NAND-based SATA SSDs. While their consumer-oriented product line still includes the MLC-based Extreme Pro, SanDisk's business/OEM line tops out with the TLC-based X400. The X400 distinguishes itself with clearly higher performance and endurance and the availability of a 1TB capacity, but the Z400s and Z410 are close enough to cause some confusion. The Z410 will probably end up displacing the 128GB and 256GB 2.5" Z400s while the rest of the Z400s line sticks around for the less competitive niches.
Source: SanDisk
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
35 Comments
View All Comments
bug77 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Interesting to read such opinions even on Anandtech. It means marketing is doing its job.PCIe offers nothing to SSD, but higher sequential speeds (it's not the interface's fault, but a limitation of the memory itself and of the controllers used today). Random read/write is the same as for SATA drives. You'd benefit from a PCIe SSD if you are into video editing or something similar, but you couldn't tell it apart from a SATA SSD under typical home usage.
Oh and PCIe has higher idle power draw than SATA.
close - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
The problem with SATA is actually AHCI. It was designed for spinning disks and as such it's not optimal for SSDs. And the real benefit of PCIe SSDs is not really the PCIe interface, it's NVMe.bug77 - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
How can there be a problem with AHCI, when both AHCI and NVMe give you the same performance?Sure AHCI is older and sure you can think of a scenario where AHCI would become a bottleneck. But that's not the case today. Today the bottleneck is the flash memory and the controllers.
Samus - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
An 8 channel controller can easily saturate PCIe 1x let alone SATA 3. Most NAND is good for 200MB/sec, performance NAND is good for double that.Even 4 channel controllers are held back by the SATA interface and AHCI command set. I agree that the bottleneck isn't entirely noticeable from SATA to an NVMe PCIe drive, but it is when doing sequential transfers, in the order of 3x in some cases.
The problem isn't the NAND or controllers, it's the interface and command set. The NAND itself has been restricted by SATA 3 for years and we've had mainstream PCIe controllers since 2014. Basically "peak" performance on SATA was hit in 2012 with many Sandforce SF2200 drives. Every drive since has had to focus on queue depth performance and consistency.
This is what people mean by "boring" because a 4 year old SSD isn't much different from today's SATA SSD in real world performance.
close - Friday, April 29, 2016 - link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NVM_Express#Comparis...Just a rough overview of the differences. If AHCI were good enough for SSDs nobody would have bothered to develop "Non-Volatile Memory" Express (or NVMHCI).
Peak throughput doesn't really say much unless you're in the business of moving huge chunks of data between two SSDs or benchmarking. It's only when you throw some real life scenarios at them that you really start to appreciate NVMe.
Magichands8 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
There is precisely zero chance that I would buy any SSD still hobbled by SATA at this point. There is also precisely zero chance that I would buy an SSD with such low capacity at such a high price.aznronin - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
SATA SSDs are perfect for the media industry though, SATA 3 is more than fast enough for 4K and high fps 1080p at 4:2:2. Not sure about 4:4:4 though. What's the price on this thing? I didn't see it in the article or the sandisk site.Magichands8 - Wednesday, April 27, 2016 - link
Neither did I. And yet, I already knew that it would be too high for me. I'm not going to be interested much until I start seeing around 10 cents per GB.close - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
And yet even a $50 SATA SSD can breath new life into an old computer. Most people would not rather endure the "shitty" performance a mechanical HDD has to offer when a simple SSD upgrade can fix it.Michael Bay - Thursday, April 28, 2016 - link
Hear hear. I`m writing this from five-year old Thinkpad with a deadbeat i3-380UM(even Atoms are twice as fast now). Cheap Kingston SSD made it live again.