Review: Toshiba OCZ RD400 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
Toshiba OCZ Delivers a Winner
Before NVMe and PCIe SSDs became as well known as they are today, SSD manufacturers had to find creative ways to bypass the limitations of the SATA bus for customers looking for more performance than was possible on SATA. Among the companies spearheading the PCIe SSD market was OCZ with their RevoDrive PCIe line of SSDs. While they were able to provide performance far exceeding what’s possible via the SATA interface, the first RevoDrive SSDs which were Frankensteined creations built with multiple SandForce controllers and custom OCZ virtualization chips that made everything extremely expensive and very cumbersome.
Since then, we’ve come quite a ways away thanks to industrywide adoption of PCIe and NVMe, finally paving the way for mass market adoption of PCIe SSDs. Although during the course of the journey OCZ has gone through a bankruptcy and a subsequent acquisition by Toshiba, they’re still continuing to innovate in the PCIe arena – albeit now with a new name and tons more resources, recently introducing the Toshiba OCZ RD400 PCIe SSD, which they hope will help restore the OCZ name to its former glory.
Toshiba OCZ RD400 NVMe Specifications
| Manufacturer | Toshiba OCZ | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | RD400 | |||
| Controller | Toshiba TC58NCP070GSB | |||
| NAND | Toshiba 128Gb 15nm MLC | |||
| DRAM Cache | Samsung LPDDR3 | |||
| Model Number | RVD400-M22280-128G | RVD400-M22280-256G | RVD400-M22280-512G | RVD400-M22280-1T |
| Capacity | 128GB | 256GB | 512GB | 1TB |
| Sequential Reads | 2,200MB/s | 2,600MB/s | ||
| Sequential Writes | 620MB/s | 1,150MB/s | 1,600MB/s | 1,550MB/s |
| 4K Random Read | 170,000 | 210,000 | 190,000 | 210,000 |
| 4K Random Write | 110,000 | 140,000 | 120,000 | 130,000 |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | |||
| Interface | PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.1 | |||
| Warranty | 5 Year (74TBW) Limited | 5 Year (148TBW) Limited | 5 Year (296TBW) Limited | 5 Year (592TBW) Limited |
The new Toshiba OCZ RD400 is a PCIe SSD supporting NVMe 1.1 over PCIe Gen 3 x4. Toshiba OCZ offers the RD400 capacities of 128GB, 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB in the usual M.2 2280 form factor. For a premium, Toshiba OCZ also offers all 4 capacities with a PCIe adapter in the event that your system doesn’t have an available M.2 slot. Under the hood, the Toshiba OCZ RD400 utilizes an in-house Toshiba SSD controller paired with Toshiba’s 128Gb 15nm MLC NAND. Toshiba OCZ claims that the RD400 512GB is able to reach performance up to 2,600MB/s sequential reads and 1,600MB/s sequential writes.
Warranty on the Toshiba OCZ RD400 is 5 years with different levels of endurance dependent on drive capacity. The Toshiba OCZ RD400 128GB is rated at just 74TBW while the 1TB is rated at a respectable 592TBW.
Let’s take a closer look!
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