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Today, we are reviewing one SSD that serves as an excellent upgrade from a slow and sluggish PC to a quick gaming rig – the PNY CS2211 2.5″ SATA III SSD. This is PNY’s latest storage product to enter their gaming and enthusiast line, XLR8.
While some may still be digging their way out of a snow storm, others may be reaping in that of abnormally warm weather for the end of January, maybe even prompting an early (very early) start to their spring cleaning. With your PC, one way to give it a quick clean is to swap out that old, sluggish, HDD with a new and flashy SSD, no pun intended. Take a read on to learn more!
PNY CS2211 SSD SPECIFICATIONS & PRICING
The CS221 is a SATA 3 6 GB/s SSD in the 2.5″ form factor, ranging in capacities from 240 GB, to 480 and 960GB. Each capacity is listed with a MSRP of $89.99, $159.99 and $309.99 accordingly. When we jump on over to Amazon, we see identical pricing. That puts the cost per GB around $0.30, not too shabby, but whats the speeds you ask?
PNY lists the 240GB to reach read speeds of up to 560 MB/s and write speeds of up to 470 MB/s. The 480 and 960GB capacity can reach read speeds up to 565 MB/s and write speeds up to 540 MB/s.
Of course we know that SSD’s are great fuel (i.e., cost savers) when it comes to energy consumption. PNY lists this drive to consume 2.5W while active and 0.4W while idle.
The drive also features four years of limited warranty and comes with Acronis True Image for quick and easy data migration (a $49.99 value).
SSD COMPONENTS
Let’s start with a quick overview of the packaging. The front of the packaging for the CS2211 is straight forward, with a quick view of the drive and some brief specifications. We lend a word of caution to PNY, at the top of the packaging it lists the 2.5″ SATA | 6GB/s, which we presume is a type and is actually meant to be 6 Gb/s, otherwise PNY has something crazy up their sleeve.
The back of the packaging is strictly specifications and components, much of which we have already discussed.
The front of the PNY CS2211 features an aggressive red and rough look, sporting the XLR8 logo, giving it that kind of feel a sports car would have.
The back of the SSD gives you the details of the drive, including the firmware version, part number, and serial number.
When we expose the PCB, we find a blue PCB sporting a Phison controller, Toshiba NAND and NANYA DRAM.
Across both sides of the PCB you will find 16 of the Toshiba NAND modules, putting each capacity at 32GB in capacity. You can expect to see this drive with 7% over provisioning and once formatted you will find 447GB respectively.
Controlling this sporty SSD is the Phison PS3110-S10-X 32-bit quad-core eight channel SATA III 6Gb/s controller. Positioned directly beside it is a NANYA DDR3L DRAM package of 512MB memory operating at 800MHz.
