Zotac recently announced their consumer SSD storage using PCIe NVMe, joining a small club of companies offering these blazing fast storage. In the Sonix, Zotac had opted with the add-in card form factor, rather than M.2. This might exclude them from the high-end laptop market, but will be readily usable on any desktop from the last few years. It also means performance and thermal dissipation should be quite good.
With Zotac’s chosen NAND and controller, the read/write performance and indurance is actually closer to those of Samsung 950 PRO. The pricing is also close to 950 PRO of similar storage.
| Intel 750 Series 400 GB | Intel 750 Series 1.2 TB | Zotac Sonix 480 GB | Samsung 950 PRO 512 GB | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Max Sequential Read | 2,200 MB/s | 2,500 MB/s | 2,600 MB/s | 2,500 MB/s |
| Max Sequential Write | 900 MB/s | 1,200 MB/s | 1,300 MB/s | 1,500 MB/s |
| Max Random Read | 430,000 IOPS | 460,000 IOPS | 350,000 IOPS | 300,000 IOPS |
| Max Random Write | 230,000 IOPS | 290,000 IOPS | 250,000 IOPS | 110,000 IOPS |
| Interface | NVMe 1.0 PCIe 3.0 x4 | NVMe 1.0 PCIe 3.0 x4 | NVMe 1.2 PCIe 3.0 x4 | NVMe 1.1 PCIe 3.0 x4 |
| Form factor | PCIe add-in card | PCIe add-in card | PCIe add-in card | m.2 2280 |
| Flash Memory | Intel 20nm MLC NAND | Intel 20nm MLC NAND | Toshiba 15nm MLC NAND | Samsung V-NAND |
| Flash Controller | Intel 3rd Gen | Intel 3rd Gen | Phison PS5007-E7 | Samsung UBX |
| DRAM | 2 GB | 4 GB | 512 MB DDR3 | 512 MB LPDDR3 |
| MTBF | 1.2 million hours | 1.2 million hours | 2 million hours | 1.5 million hours |
| Release Date | Apr-15 | Apr-15 | Feb-16 | Sep-15 |
| Price | $ 399 | $ 1, 119 | $ 369 | $ 349 |
| Product Info Link | link | link | link | link |