INTRODUCTION

   Judging by all the SSDs I’ve used and reviewed during the past 5 years or so it's really safe to say that currently in the market we have three types of models, the majority that focus mostly on performance, some that focus in reliability and finally a few ones that try to combine the best of both worlds and offer the best performance/reliability ratio possible. This of course is directly tied to the type of controller used and as many of you know the most popular controllers used by most manufacturers are manufactured by LSI SandForce and Marvell with Indillinx and Samsung ones currently used only in OCZ and Samsung SSD models. Controllers manufactured by these companies are probably used in 99% of all the SSD models out in the market however that doesn't mean that there aren't any other capable controller manufacturers and so today we will be taking a closer look at an SSD model based on a controller by one of the less-known manufacturers the Silicon Power Velox V55 240GB SATA III SSD.

    Silicon Power Computer & Communications Inc., founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic specialists in International Business, Global Marketing, and Technical Engineering of flash data storage industry. Well dedicated in brand image and product quality, Silicon Power has been recognized and well accepted by millions of end-users in more than 100 countries, becomes the world's leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, card readers, DRAM modules, solid state disks, and portable hard drives in less than a decade. Headquartered in Taipei, we continuously established various branches throughout the world including Netherlands, Japan, Russia, Mainland China and other emerging market to reach the worldwide market. Silicon Power's overall performance has gradually drawn great attention worldwide. In 2006, we received Taiwan Rising Star Award for our foreign business achievement. In 2008, we won 17th National Outstanding Small & Medium Enterprise Award for our outstanding progress. Moreover, with superior quality and innovative design, our products stood out in several competitions and awarded Taiwan Excellence and COMPUTEX Design & Innovation Award in 2009, 2010 and 2011. Winning trust of global consumers, Silicon Power holds a record of successive double-digit revenue growth for last seven years. According to the Common Wealth Magazine's 2010 Survey of Taiwan Top 1000 Manufacturers, our 2009 revenue growth rate was ranked No.11 among Taiwan's top 1000 manufacturers, and even ranked No.1 in semiconductor industry. Positioned as Passionate, Creative and Hungry for Success, Silicon Power introduces products for users who are seeking individualized, unique and personal digital storage devices. With the mission of creating unprecedented experience for users, Silicon Power will endeavor to deliver a full range of high quality products that have innovative designs, distinctly unique features and comprehensive after sales services to create and fulfill your personal memory.

   The Velox V55 240GB SATA III SSD is based on a controller made by PHISON electronics (this is actually our first encounter with one of their controllers) and more specifically their latest PS3108-S8-I SATA-to-Flash micro-controller featuring SATA III support, NCQ (Native Command Queuing), ECC (Error Checking and Correction) technology, S.M.A.R.T. health monitoring, RAID and TRIM-based garbage collection. PHISON seems to focus mostly on reliability rather than raw performance and so according to the specifications sheet of the PS3108-S8-I controller we see that it can achieve R/W speeds of up to 500/300 MB/s numbers which as many of you know are far from the highest ones available. Fortunately as you will see later on in all our tests the Velox V55 managed to surpass these numbers with ease (perhaps due to firmware optimizations) but was that good enough for it to match and/or move ahead from the immediate competition?

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

PACKAGING AND CONTENTS

The Velox V55 240GB gets shipped inside a small box with a product image at the front along with Silicon Power logo, the capacity of the drive and its R/W speeds.

At the rear of the box we see two charts showcasing the read/write speeds of the drive and its main features printed in 11 languages.

Silicon Power offers the standard bundle so aside the Velox V55 SSD you are also getting an installation guide, 8 mounting screws and a 3.5" to 2.5" adapter.

THE VELOX V55 240GB

The Velox V55 240GB SATA III SSD features an 2.5" 9mm thick aluminum housing.

At the rear we see the usual SATA connector and four pins used for firmware flashing.

There are sixteen (not factory branded) NAND packages (16GB per die) used in the V55, eight on each side of the PCB (256GB total, almost 7% overprovisioning).

Here we see the PHISON PS3108-S8-I controller and right above that a single 512MB DDR3 DRAM cache buffer chip.

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After roughly 5 years of testing sold state drives i have concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts.

   Many people made inquiries about the charts ever since the last comparison so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 7 Ultimate x64 installation with every update installed up to July 5th 2013.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TUNE PRO / HD TACH RW

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

CONCLUSION

   The PHISON controller Silicon Power chose to use with their Velox V55 SSD line may not be exactly on par in terms of performance with the latest models by SandForce, Marvell, Indillinx and Samsung but the gap is not really that large and in most cases i doubt anyone would ever be able to notice even if the V55 was placed right next to one of the top SATA III SSD models carrying one of the mentioned controllers (not to mention that in quite a few tests it manages to beat most of the competition). Of course even though PHISON seems to be targeting on reliability rather than raw performance the only way for us to know that for certain is to come back after many years of use and comment on the current state of the Velox V55 240GB something which we actually intend to do and that's why we will be using it with one of our systems on a daily basis (however there are many variables on whether or not we will come back to edit this review after years and years of testing).

   If i could correct/adjust a single aspect of the Velox V55 240GB SATA III SSD by Silicon Power that would be without doubt its price tag since it's currently set a bit high and more specifically at around USD220 inside the USA and 203Euros inside the EU (Amazon.de). This means that it costs a tad more than the M5 Pro 256GB SSD by Plextor which may not be that much better really (both drives score the same wins in our tests) but i see almost no reason at all to spend more in order to get something that doesn't actually perform better. Certainly this can be fixed by Silicon Power (especially since they are using unbranded NAND modules for that exact reason) and we hope this will be the case after our recommendation, meanwhile however because of this drawback the Velox V55 240GB SSD only manages to get our Golden Award.

PROS

- Build Quality
- Very Good Performance
- 3 Years Warranty  

CONS

- Price (For Some)