G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review

[snowhiker]

G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review on Anandtech.

Interesting. It's bootable on older systems. From the review, "The Phoenix Blade is bootable in any system. Upon boot, the drive loads legacy drivers before the BIOS and hence it can be selected as a boot device just like any other drive."

tl;dr
PCIe SSD. Bootable. Fast writes & sequential reads. Random Reads Meh.

 

[LunarMist]

G.Skill Phoenix Blade (480GB) PCIe SSD Review on Anandtech.

Interesting. It's bootable on older systems. From the review, "The Phoenix Blade is bootable in any system. Upon boot, the drive loads legacy drivers before the BIOS and hence it can be selected as a boot device just like any other drive."

tl;dr
PCIe SSD. Bootable. Fast writes & sequential reads. Random Reads Meh.

That seems like an OCZ PCIe drive from several years ago. How well does it perform when dirty?

 

[CougTek]

How well does it perform when dirty?

Uncleanly.

 

[ddrueding]

Didn't buy one of these, but I did order a Samsung XP941 after reading the review. It will go with my own X99 build (finally getting one).

 

[Chewy509]

It will go with my own X99 build (finally getting one).

FYI. ASRock just released a X99 motherboard with 2x 10GB LAN onboard and includes support 4x SLI... http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99 WS-E10G/index.us.asp

 

[ddrueding]

FYI. ASRock just released a X99 motherboard with 2x 10GB LAN onboard and includes support 4x SLI... http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99 WS-E10G/index.us.asp

Looks sweet, but the fan on the chipset is a deal-breaker at the moment. Not worth the hassle of replacing the chipset cooling right out of the box.

 

[Handruin]

Didn't buy one of these, but I did order a Samsung XP941 after reading the review. It will go with my own X99 build (finally getting one).

Which motherboard did you decide on to go with that Samsung M.2 interface? I've been waiting for rev 2.0 on some of these MBs because I haven't liked the reviews and feedback I've seen. I'll be curious to read how yours turns out.

 

[Handruin]

FYI. ASRock just released a X99 motherboard with 2x 10GB LAN onboard and includes support 4x SLI... http://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/X99 WS-E10G/index.us.asp

I'm probably alone in this but I'm happy to see 10Gb NICs on a MB. I'd like for 10Gb to break more into the mass market a little more. Having two of those Intel X540s is a decent offering if nothing short of sheer overkill even if slightly limited in twisted pair offering.

 

[ddrueding]

I ended up going with the ASUS X99-Deluxe. I had good enough luck with their X99A on my first build. This board supports two M.2s, but I only ordered one for now.

I would be thrilled if everything came with 10GB, but I don't have any other infrastructure that would support it at this point.

 

[Mercutio]

Likewise on the lack of 10Gbit hardware, though I've been watching prices for entry level equipment fall. Hopefully we'll be able to get eight ports for $100 sometime next year.
I'm disappointed that I can't get a 1TB M.2 drive yet. I'm not going to whine that I can "only" get 500GB of high speed solid state storage just now, but more is always better, right?

 

[ddrueding]

The board I got has two M.2 ports onboard, and I had two of the XP941 500GB drives in the cart for a while before I came to my senses. Trusting ASUS with a RAID-0 for no good reason (benchmarks!) just didn't pass the smell test. And there is the small matter of another $$$.