INTRODUCTION

   SATA and even M.2 solid state drives may still be far away in terms of competing with regular hard disk drives for the highest price/capacity ratio but thanks to recent price drops in the flash memory industry things are looking better than ever before. Of course, the best price/capacity ratio is as always "taken" by the lowest performance SSD models but unlike in the past due to the introduction of new standards and specifications low performance for the latest M.2 NVMe lines translates to well over 2000MB/s in reads and 1500MB/s in writes. One such line is the brand-new Helix-L M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen3 x4 by Mushkin and today we're testing the 1TB variant to see just how it fairs against similar and higher-end models.

   For over 25 years, Mushkin has been dedicated to helping gamers, digital artists, IT managers and professionals alike enhance their computing experience by providing reliable, high-performance products. Mushkin’s products include a complete selection of USB, SSD and memory module upgrades for both the consumer and enterprise industries. Since the company’s founding in 1994, Mushkin has received numerous awards and commendations for quality, reliability, and technical excellence.

   The new Helix-L line of SSDs is available in 250/500/1000GB capacities and is based on the DRAM-less SM2263XT 4-channel high-performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NAND flash controller which Mushkin has paired with 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory by Micron. Now this isn't the first DRAM-less M.2 NVMe SSD to reach our lab but it's probably the first to feature the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture which makes up for the lack of DRAM by using the memory of your PC to cache mapping tables (at the time of this review this feature is only enabled on the 2 last versions of Windows 10). This small "trick" enables the SM2263XT controller to achieve performance numbers of up to 2400MB/s in reads and 1700MB/s in writes thus rivaling controller with their very own DRAM (the Helix-L however is rated for 2110MB/s in reads and 1700MB/s in writes). Of course, the SM2263XT controller comes ready with Silicon Motion's NANDXtend error-correcting code (ECC) with SRAM ECC, end to end data path protection, global wear-leveling and fully supports real time AES 256-bit encryption, SHA 256, TRNG, TCG Opal and IEEE-1667 (Microsoft's eDrive). Finally, in terms of endurance Mushkin reports 150TBW for the 250GB variant, 300TMW for the 500GB variant and 600TBW for the 1TB variant (the entire line is covered with a 3-year limited warranty).