Cheap fleebay SSD (i-Flash V300 SY 120 GB)

[Behemot]

Got this thing for 16.34 GBP incl. shipping. Fortunatelly I did not expect much and I do not care as it goes to a Tecra A7 laptop with old southbridge (SATA-150 only), though the specs looked promising.

Specifications:
Mode:V300
Appearance size: 2.5"
Transmission interface: Rev. SATA 3 (6Gb/s) - can be down compatible with Rev. SATA 2
Storage capacity : 120GB/60GB
Sequential read 2:
Rev. SATA 3 up to: 450MB/s
Sequential write 2:
Rev. SATA 3 up to: 450MB/s
Power consumption: 0.640W idle / 1.423 W read / 2.052 W write
Storage temperature: -40 ~ 85 degrees C
Operating temperature: 0 ~ 70 degrees C
Size:100mm x 7mm x 70mm
Weight: 38g
Operating time of the largest seismic intensity: 2.17G (7-800Hz)
20G (10-2000Hz) is the largest seismic strength of the non operating
Life expectancy of the average time of failure can be up to 1 million hours

So I went ahead and tested it with my ASRock 890FX Deluxe5 (SB800). In HD Tune read maximum was about 350 MB/s, CrystalDiskMark and AsSSD both peaked at over 450 MB/s. Even random/small file test were promissing. But write speeds are poor and never went over 155 MB/s.

It is sealed but there is no warranty so I might also look under the hood later on.

[Behemot]

More information. I cracked it open, it has the Silicon Motion SM2246XT controller which itself limits write performance to only up to 300 MB/s according to the datasheet (see attachment). The main reason is it is cacheless, no DRAM cache and the internal SRAM cache is most likely very small to be cheap (the size is not specified). The chips are 20nm MLC Intel 29F16B08LCMFS, eight 16GB pcs and come in TSOP. Manufactured june 2016.

The board is short, measures only 7 cm. The conclusion is, if you want the cheapest SSD available, go for it. Especially if you only have SATA-150 controller. It can also be good to use with old laptops with UATA interface over a UATA/SATA controller adapter, the throughput won't matter at all than (and still be at least 3times faster than any 2.5" UATA HDD). As the PCB is short you may squeeze it just fine in the position even with the adapter. Thanks to using TSOP chips it won't be a problem even in hot laptop environment (I don't trust BGA that much). Or cut the metal package shorter. If you want reasonable write performance, get something else with DRAM cache or better controller. Also higher capacity helps, even the cheapest drives have much better write performance as long as the capacity is at least 240 GB.

[LongRunner]

Well, I'm no big fan of cheap crap in general, but hey – I don't suppose you can get worse than those Kingston SSDs that actively cover up their failure.