Inland Professional 480gb SSD - Here's what's inside

Dreamerbydesign

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I recently came across this house brand SSD at Microcenter. For reference only, I paid $74.99after it was on sale, and I had a $5 off $30 or more coupon. This sale is still current as of this post.

This model is different than the 120/240gb variant in that it uses TLC ram. But because the SSD market is currently flooded with cheap no name SSD brands, I decided to take this one apart and show people what's inside.

I am no expert in SSD's , but I can say it has the phison ps3110-s10x controller. And it does have some DRAM cache onboard.

I will post some benchmarks once it is installed. Hope this helps anyone on the fence.

Numerous Reddit posts rumoured this was made from the same assembly line as the WD blue SSD's although I don't know for sure if that was true. I asked a MC worker, he said WD did provide some training about this line of SSD's. I also saw this posted on a Reddit post. So maybe it's true?

It has a 3 year warranty. And I'm only using it as a game drive. Without further ado, the pics. 20180519_181558.jpg

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I'm thinking these no brand companies are the result of China moving into making flash memory themselves.

I order the same SSD and hoping it was a good decision. Hopefully your review will be positive.
 
I'm thinking these no brand companies are the result of China moving into making flash memory themselves.

I order the same SSD and hoping it was a good decision. Hopefully your review will be positive.
The reviews I've seen scattered across the net we're all positive for the most part.

It's actually cheaper than some SSD's that don't have dram cache. And it has a three year warranty.
 
I don't know if it's been confirmed, but word has it that the 120gb and 240gb are newer/?/ faster? / different than the 480gb.

They are all on sale for ridiculous prices at the moment. And a $5 printable coupon to boot.

I might pickup 4 of the small drives to upgrade some win7 laptops and HTPC./clients

Edit: didn't realize i posted the same info as the original post.
 
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I don't know if it's been confirmed, but word has it that the 120gb and 240gb are newer / faster / different than the 480gb.

They are all on sale for ridiculous prices at the moment. And a $5 printable coupon to boot.

I might pickup 4 of the small drives to upgrade some win7 laptops and HTPC./clients

The 120/240 are mlc. They were released at least 6 months before the 480. In fact, most reviews I found never mentioned a 480, because it was recently released.

In the end idk what all of that means market wise, but value wise for a games drive, and only $75, with a three year warranty, I bit.
 
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I saw someone claim it was as fast or faster than a 850 Evo.

That benchmark linked above had this to say
"These results catapult the Centon 480GB SSD to the very top of our ATTO disk benchmark score chart, narrowly edging out the previous champion, the Samsung 850 EVO."

Read more at https://benchmarkreviews.com/31339/centon-c-380-480gb-ssd-review/5/#kKs13ejOSELC6ZyB.99

Color me impressed for $75
You have to be careful with taking a single benchmark as a complete picture. In ATTO, it matched the older, evo 850. In IOMeter Random 4k IOPS, it scored less than 30% of the 850, AS-SSD writes were 1/2 the speed of the 850, CrystalDiskMark writes were about 50%, AIDA writes were about 40%. Online this drive is $129 for a 480GB drive, and you can get a samsung 500gb evo 860 for the same price. I would get the Samsung!
 
You have to be careful with taking a single benchmark as a complete picture. In ATTO, it matched the older, evo 850. In IOMeter Random 4k IOPS, it scored less than 30% of the 850, AS-SSD writes were 1/2 the speed of the 850, CrystalDiskMark writes were about 50%, AIDA writes were about 40%. Online this drive is $129 for a 480GB drive, and you can get a samsung 500gb evo 860 for the same price. I would get the Samsung!

The fact that it competed at all surprised me.

I was glad to buy it at $75, I wouldn't spend anymore on it. In fact it shares space with Samsung SSD's and Intel SSD's. I've always paid for quality and peace of mind. So this is a gamble. I wouldn't put any important data on it personally.
 
For a budget PC build for a friend who just wants a responsive computer, I say this one is a no brainer. A great value, but the best performance will always cost.
 
I just picked up a Inland-512 Gb M.2 NVMe From Microcenter today ($109).....going to use for my Boot drive.
Not the fastest but for the Price I am going to give it a shot.
 
For $75-$80, it's not a bad deal given the size. I avoided the 480 GB because of the Tender Loving Care (TLC) NAND.

I bought both the 120 GB and 240 GB.

Thanks OP for sharing the pics.
 
Funny that the internal label says 512GB but it's sold as 480GB.
It's just 'standard practice over-provisioning', nothing shady or anything to be concerned about. The PCB does genuinely have 512GB. They all do it on the consumer-grade drives though, even Samsung with the EVO models. :p Why do you think theirs are 120/240/480/960GB for the EVO instead of 128/256/512/1024GB like the PRO? They simply section off a portion of the total capacity to keep in reserve, in case any cells go bad ('bad sectors'), where they swap the location to this reserve area. The PRO models, if memory serves, actually come with one addition NAND chip that acts as this reserve, so you not only will have more reserve due to being a total chip, but you'll have more storage capacity as well. That's, in part, why the PRO costs more. The other part being you're paying for a higher performance firmware (and possibly more cache, faster controller) that's capable of increased IOPS.
 
NVMe drive: a generic Phison PS5008-E8 drive? Toshiba BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC? Kingston has an A1000 but the capacity is on the 120, 240, 480 system. MyDigitalSSD SBX is another Phison PS5008-E8 but they offer a 5 yr warranty.

Price of $120 seems good for 512GB, though further decreases would be nice.
 
Would it be safe/reliable if I used this as my main drive for my computer?
 
NVMe drive: a generic Phison PS5008-E8 drive? Toshiba BiCS3 64-layer 3D TLC? Kingston has an A1000 but the capacity is on the 120, 240, 480 system. MyDigitalSSD SBX is another Phison PS5008-E8 but they offer a 5 yr warranty.

Price of $120 seems good for 512GB, though further decreases would be nice.
Samsung 500GB 850 EVO are $126 on Amazon. The Inland is currently on sale at Micro Center for $80. As a cheap scratch drive it is a good deal, but I would still buy the Samsung as a primary OS drive.
 
Did you want to quote zzang's post or mine?

Prices are dropping, like the Crucial MX500 1TB 2.5" for $205 at Micro Center. 500GB was under $100 at Staples, even if only for a short time. Mushkin is $100 at Amazon, probably worth trusting for the OS. The HP EX920 512GB NVMe is $180 on Amazon and it's damn fast, that is $60 more than the Inland but it's just better by far. At Micro Center the 970 EVO 500GB is $180 in cart and there are some bundle discounts.

Inland prices can at least signal where things are headed.
 
Samsung 500GB 850 EVO are $126 on Amazon. The Inland is currently on sale at Micro Center for $80. As a cheap scratch drive it is a good deal, but I would still buy the Samsung as a primary OS drive.

Alright. I'll stick with having more of a name brand for the main drive and the Inland Professional for games and programs. Thank you.
 
I am using the M2. 512 NVMe as an OS in a new 8700K build works great and is a lot faster then 6Gb Sata SSd's.....
 
I've gotten TWO 500GB open box 860 EVOS (m.2) from MC for $80. Better deal. I actually think people are getting the 860 EVO m.2 and deciding why not get the 970 EVO? Both had about 500-600GB written and the full 5 year warranty. I haven't seen any 2.5 in open box deals.
 
The reviews I've seen scattered across the net we're all positive for the most part.

It's actually cheaper than some SSD's that don't have dram cache. And it has a three year warranty.
Had a 3-year warramty, right? :D
 
Been looking for some cheap SSDs and found the Inland. Ordered two of them and then saw the Team L5 Lite for even cheaper! So its a 480GB shootout.I discovered Inland has updated their 480GB with a plastic shell and only 2 NAND chips! Probably switched to 3D nand flash. The controller is also slightly updated to a Phison PS3111. But no RAM cache!

DId some initial benches and will do real world comparo on two identical laptops after. So far the newer Phison seems slightly worst that the old, though still a decent showing with only 2 chips. LMK what other tests you want me to run!
 

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I discovered Inland has updated their 480GB with a plastic shell and only 2 NAND chips! Probably switched to 3D nand flash. The controller is also slightly updated to a Phison PS3111. But no RAM cache!

That's interesting - see this review: https://www.tweaktown.com/articles/8676/inland-professional-sata-iii-ssd-75-480gb-madness/index.html

Their pictures of the 480GB drive show the same DRAM-less design using the Phison PS3111-S11 - but their version has 8 NAND chips.

So they've gone from 16 -> 8 -> 2 NAND chips, in what - 3 months?

Could you do a UserBenchmark Run? I know it's a pretty terrible benchmark, but it's still a data point and it appears to use some generic name so searching is impossible.
 
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Thats the thing, these cheap makers can switch out internals on a whim without updating the model number, but thats one of the things that lets them keep the prices competitive, which is why I'm okay with it. What surprises me here is that the Team Group SSD has DRAM cache and what looks like a high quality PCB, and they don't even advertise the DRAM cache, which I guess is because they may remove it in the future.

The difference in performance between the new and old (more likely they are just different batches) Inland drives can almost entirely be attributed to lack of DRAM cache, and has very little to do with number of NAND chips.
 
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