INTRODUCTION

   When the first M.2 based solid state drives made their appearance a few years back we all knew that due to their impressive read and write performance they'd be able to surpass regular SATA models in sales quite fast. However even the arrival of M.2 NVMe drives wasn't enough to make that possible and quite frankly it will be a while before this happens (if it does) since as we've stated many times in the past since the SATA standard is present in mainboards and laptops dating as far back as 2004 people on a tight budget who just want to update their systems will obviously turn towards such solutions. Still it's crystal clear that most demanding consumers and gamers will choose M.2 NVMe SSDs since not only are they much faster (up to 4-6 times) but they also take less space compared to SATA models. Patriot Memory recently released their Hellfire PCIe 3.0 x 4 NVMe 1.2 M.2 2280 drive and with us we have the 480GB variant.

   Patriot is a leading manufacturer of high performance, enthusiast memory modules, SSDs, flash storage, gaming peripherals and mobile accessories. Founded in 1985 and headquartered in Fremont, CA, USA, Patriot is committed to technology innovation, customer satisfaction and providing the best price for performance on the market. Patriot products have become world renown for their extreme performance, reliability and innovation. Patriot sells its products through original equipment manufacturers, retailers, e-tailers and distributors throughout the world with operations in North America, South America, Asia and Europe.

   Much like several other M.2 NVMe solutions in the market right now the Patriot Hellfire line is based on the PS5007-E7 NVMe controller by Phison (firmware version 2.1 is used) paired with 15nm MLC NAND flash modules by Toshiba and an LPDDR3 cache (256MB for the 240GB model and 512MB for the 480GB model). The Phison E7 is an eight-channel quad-core NVMe controller that features PCIe 3.0 x4 host interface and fully supports TRIM, advanced garbage collection, static and dynamic wear-leveling, bad block management, SmartECC, SmartFlush, GuaranteedFlush, end to end data path protection and AES 256-bit encryption (TCG opal). In terms of reliability the 480GB variant of the Hellfire line which we will be testing today is covered by a 3 year warranty, has an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 2 million hours and is given an endurance of 230 TBW (terabytes written).