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Gigabyte Aorus Raid 2TB SSD Review

A Closer Look

The enterprise grade RAID Controller ensures server class performance reliability to unleash the full potential of normal consumer PCIe 3.0 SSD. The benefit of switch is low latency due to it does not do any hard work on NAND Flash management. The Marvell Intelligent NVMe Switch has x8 interface and connected up to four NVMe SSD behind switch and can be presented individually to the host system. In addition, user are free to configure RAID array as need, RAID1 for Data redundancy and RAID 0 for performance or both(RAID10). For more detail, please check here for more information.
 
 
The thermal design is exclusively for high end SSDs with its smart active and passive cooling. It prevents SSDs from thermal throttling and ensures stable operation. The working temperature is 30%* lower with the armor, dense heatsink and reactive fan.
 

 

Armor with Conducted Airflow and Active Fan

A multi-cuts heatsink touches the SSD’s hottest area. The blower fan helps to draw heat away more quickly, preventing thermal throttling on the SSD to maintain amazing speeds at all times.

 

Built in with 9 temperature sensors to real time monitor SSD and RAID controller working temperature.
The dedicated AORUS Storage Manager*, it provides three fan operating modes for user to choose base on hardware configuration and workload. In the meantime, minimize fan noise and extend the fan’s longevity. Silent, the quiet one, Balanced and full speed Performance mode.
* Compatibility may vary among different platform, please refer to QVL list.

 

Why is keeping an SSDs at lower temperatures so important?
 
* Higher working temperature may cause data loss. The degradation factor of data loss could be a hundred times higher.
* With advance thermal solution, the AORUS RAID SSD can operate at lower working temperatures to improve data storage reliability.
Furthermore, SSDs can deliver extreme performance for longer periods.

 

AORUS Storage Manager
 
AORUS Storage Manager is a dedicated software to detect and monitor multiple SSD status such as how many SSD is detected, select different fan mode base on different hardware configurations. Refer to the QVL list for compatibility with this storage manager. My z370 isn’t able to show any data through the storage manger, unfortunately.
 

 


 

Performance

Test setup and Testing Methodology

Testing was accomplished on a 17% filled SSD. The drive used in our tests was first securely erased via software provided by their respective manufacturer and then updated to their latest firmware. Our test setup consists of the following hardware:

CPU Intel Core i5-8600K @ 3.6GHz (Coffee Lake)
Cooling Gigabyte Aorus AIO CPU Cooler
Motherboard Asus ROG Maximus X Hero Z370
Ram Zadak Spark RGB DDR4-4133 32GB Kit
HDD
  • Samsung 960 EVO 250GB PCIE M.2 SSD (OS)
  • Gigabyte Aorus Raid 2TB SSD (Test)
PSU Thermaltake Toughpower Grand RGB 850W
OS Windows 10

 

Just as a quick reminder of the advertised specifications from Gigabyte. Sequential read 6300 MB/s and sequential write 6000 MB/s.

 

 

ATTO Disk Benchmark v4.01

The ATTO Disk Benchmark application was designed to measure your storage systems performance with transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and write speeds. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. You can test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives.

ATTO Disk Benchmark Features:

  • Transfer sizes from 512KB to 8MB
  • Transfer lengths from 64KB to 2GB
  • Support for overlapped I/O Supports a variety of queue depths
  • I/O comparisons with various test patterns
  • Timed mode allows continuous testing
  • Non-destructive performance measurement on formatted drives.

Results: Max Sequential read 5670 MB/s and sequential write 5520 MB/s

Very close to advertised speeds.

 

 

Crystal Disk Mark 7.0

CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows to measure sequential and random read/write speeds.

CrystalDiskMark Features:

  • Measure sequential reads/writes speed
  • Measure random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed
  • Select test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill)
  • Theme support
  • Multi-Language support

Results: Max Sequential read 6046 MB/s and sequential write 5902 MB/s

Very close to advertised speeds.

 

 

PCMark 10 Results with real-world relevance

  • PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks produce an overall score as a measure of drive performance. Comparing devices is as simple as comparing scores. The tests also measure and report the bandwidth and average access time performance for the drive.
  • Each test uses traces recorded while performing real-world tasks such as booting Windows 10, starting applications such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, working with applications such as Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint, and copying several large files and many small files.
  • Unlike other synthetic storage tests, this focus on real-world activities enables PCMark 10 to show meaningful differences between the latest, high-performance storage technologies.
  • PCMark 10 Storage Benchmarks help professional users relate manufacturers’ technical specifications to practical real-world performance with tests that are easy to set up and run.
  • You can compare up to four results in the PCMark 10 app, or export your results to Microsoft Excel for more detailed analysis.

The Quick System Drive Benchmark is a shorter test with a smaller set of less demanding real-world traces. You can use this benchmark to test smaller system drives that are unable to run the Full System Drive benchmark.

The Data Drive Benchmark is designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices.

 

There we have it! The Aorus Raid 2TB SSD brought to us by Gigabyte! Let us cover a few final thoughts and conclusion of our review.

 

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