AMD Radeon R7 Series 240GB SSD review - Product Showcase

Product showcase

The following images were taken at high-resolution and then cropped and scaled down. The camera used was a Canon DSLR shooting 12 MegaPixel photos. Right then, below is the packaging. The sample comes as a 240 GB package. Performance is listed at a maximum of 550 MB/s read and 530 MB/s writes with 90,000 IOPS at 4k random write aligned disk access with our tested model.
 

This is the 2.5" SATA III 120 GB version all packaged up in the bundle. You should easily be able to place it somewhere in your chassis. Small and light-weight. The SSD supports TRIM making sure your SSD will regain its speed once in idle. Obviously you do need to connect it to a proper SATA 3 (6G) controller though, the best ones can be found on the Intel series 6 and 7, 8 and 9 chipset based products. We also find the latest AMD FM2 based chipsets to perform well. Included in the bundle is a manual, some screws and one shiny SSD. AMD is including a 3.5" mounting bracket and the Acronis backup disk clone software compatible with Windows 8.1, which brings in very good value

The SSD actually feels a little heavy due to the housing. When we look at the connectors, we spot the standard power and Serial ATA connectors. This drive is SATA3 (6G). Obviously the drives are backwards compatible towards SATA2 as well, but the bandwidth limitation there would be capped to roughly 270 MB/sec (which still is silly fast compared to HDDs).

A proper SATA 6G cable is recommended and should be delivered with your motherboard. We however never ever had issues with a standard older SATA2 cable either. It seems that SATA3 cables are a little thicker, that's all. The casing of the SSD is made out of metal, great for shielding. It does make the SSD a hint heavier though. But let's rip her open and watch inside shall we ?