HP S700 Pro 1 TB SSD review

Memory (DDR4/DDR5) and Storage (SSD/NVMe) 367 Page 20 of 20 Published by

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Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

This was the second HD SSD review in a relatively short time, not much is different other then a bit of a perf increase and pricing, well that aside from the nice 1 TB volume size of course. The SSD S700 Pro series is starting to grown on me alright. This SSD can be rated roughly 650 TBW, thus guaranteed at 650 Terabyte written I mean ... if you write say 20 GB a day / 365 days a year that would be 7.3 TB per year then you are looking at 89 years of lifespan, easily even as these units often write way beyond what is rated. Typically we often see TLC NAND issues with linear and sustained writes, e.g. after writing a couple of GB the performance drops. It is not documented but we think that next to the DRAM buffer that HP makes use of an SLC written NAND cache. During our tests it'll write fast up-to roughly 50GB continuously written at ~500MB/s, after that number the perf likely will start to drop to say 280 MB/s. That SLC cache does the trick as it is by far big enough to avoid any write issues. 


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Performance

This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a fast enough fashion. IOPS is not something you as a consumer should worry about too much unless you are doing a lot of database related work or create similar workloads on your PC, but this SSD certainly ranks high within this aspect. Trace testing - we think by far the best test in our entire benchmark suite is PCMark Vantage 64-bit. This is a trace test and can emulate what you guys do on your PC but then multiply it by a factor of 100, this test puts more focus on read performance opposed to writing though. The outcome of the results with the HP S700 PRO; sustained read / write performance, again fine. Zoom in at both IOPS and trace performance and you'll notice that the SSD can manage serious workloads without breaking so much as a drop of sweat. So whether you write lots of small files, copy big MKV movies or do it all together, the unit remains a solid performer on all fronts.

Overall

Right, an SSD is enjoyable. Very much so. If you put a drive like this into your SATA 3 compatible laptop or SATA 3 compatible PC, you'll have no idea what is about to hit you. We very much enjoy the grand sustained performance of this SSD series. Make no mistake, replacing an HDD with an SSD in your desktop PC or laptop eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That, combined with the performance SATA 3 offers these days, is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2017.

Controller

Some overall recommendations then. Should you be in the market for a SATA 3 SSD then we have a couple of hints. First and foremost if you have a SATA 2 controller only on your motherboard, then you'll be limited at roughly 270 MB/sec read and writes. SATA 3 (6Gbps) will free you up from that allowing the SSD to perform in the 500 MB/sec range. It is, however, important that you connect your SSD to the proper controller. Internal chipset based integrated SATA 6G controllers are the best, thus say the Z270 / X299 Intel SATA3 interface or the AMD X370 / X399 internal chipset interface. If you run the SSD from a 3rd party controller like, say, a Marvell / ASMedia 6G controller, you will often see lower performance. The new AMD chipsets offer fantastic performance btw. The more recent Asmedia controllers we spotted lately on motherboards also offer good performance, albeit still 20% ~ 25% slower than Intel's controllers. Also make sure you run your drive in AHCI mode, it does make such a difference in performance, a big difference.

 
 

Concluding

For our second HP SSD review we can once again say that the S700 Pro does its job really well. In my previous review I mentioned that I had hope for bigger volume sizes in the future, and merely two months or so later this 1 TB unit was delivered. Good stuff. Currently the unit as tested today is hard to find, but can be spotted for 369 USD on etailers like Newegg. Remember, your SATA3 port is the bottleneck, not the NAND memory or its controller. The overall performance the S700 Pro series is more than enough for your normal PC user and PC gamer, and then some. For the money you are receiving a nice SSD storage and performance with this 512 GB SSD, it is a proper amount in capacity. Also on the endurance side (yes even with TLC) we cannot complain as the unit is rated at a very comfortable 620 TB written (and typically they will last even much longer but at least twice that number).  Concluding, the S700 Pro 1TB GB model has a really proper ly nice volume size. HP will also give this SSD a three year warranty, for the Pro models it would be nice to see that raised to 5 Years though. At 36 cents (USD) per GB we still would like to see a little more value pricing wise, but the SSD offers very good performance and as such comes recommended by Guru3D.com

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