Phison E16 Boot Drive for new Threadripper 3?

[Zarathustra[H]]

Hey all,

Would appreciate your input on this.

With a new system supporting Gen 4 PCIe it seemed silly to not take advantage of that and get a new Gen 4 NVME boot drive, but then I started reading.

In most tests I can find, outside of peak sequential transfers, the Phison E16 is barely any faster than the previous E12 Gen 3 model, and is actually slower in some benchmarks than existing Gen3 drives from other manufacturers.

What are people with Gen 4 capable systems booting from these days? Is it worth going with these E16 devices, or is one of the existing Gen3 devices a better idea?

 

[Nenu]

It depends what advantage you expect to see.
As an OS drive it will give you nothing over an E12 drive.
Copying to/from a PCI-e 3.0 drive you will not see a difference.
Game load times are a little better going from SATA to NVME on PCIe-3.0
I cant imagine there is any advantage for games moving to 4.0.

For most people it has no value.
We need advances with 4K size transfers not higher maximum bandwidth.

 

[sphinx99]

I got a Corsair MP600 for my 3960x system’s boot drive. My rationale was that it was actually a bit cheaper than the Evo 970 Plus and more or less the same speed in everything except file copying where there’s some nominal advantage. Since there is no price disadvantage (that I can tell) to choosing one of the early PCIe 4.0 drives over the best-in-class Gen3 devices, I figured I might as well. Granted there will be devices that take full advantage of the bus next year, and granted even those may not be faster in most practical workloads.

 

[Maxx]

I've posted extensively on these drives over on Reddit if you want plenty of reading material, but I can break it down quickly for you here.

The E16 is basically an E12 with two changes: new LDPC (4.0 vs. 3.0) and a PCIe 4.0 PHY (physical interface). LDPC is a type of error correction but this change has little difference other than slightly higher TBW for the drive. TBW is warrantied writes - do not mistake it with actual flash endurance. The interface change allows for higher sequential performance, that's it. The controller is still NVMe 1.3 so does not have the benefits coming with 1.4 which will be on all native PCIe 4.0 drives next year.

Now, let's look at drive differences. While the E12 can use 800 MT/s flash it generally uses 667 MT/s since that's sufficient for PCIe 3.0 speeds. So the E16 drives have 800 MT/s flash instead (which the E12 can use as well, technically) which allows for higher sequentials. However, the controller is a limitation on speed; native 4.0 controllers will use 1200 MT/s which will be 50% faster. The E12 drives also had 64-layer flash while E16 is 96-layer, however the newer E12 revisions now use 96L flash as well. This had some ramifications with higher capacities because the use of 512Gb/die flash is easier with 96L, but I digress. 96L is a bit faster all-around but it's still the same basic design with the same limitations, this may change in the future due to 4-plane/die designs and such but again I digress.

Finally there's a difference in SLC cache design. The E12 drives tend to have 24-30GB of dynamic SLC cache while the E16 drives use the entire drive in SLC mode (1/3 the capacity). This is a massive difference. SLC cache is not actually SLC, it's TLC acting in single-bit mode, so eventually you have to empty and convert the SLC. This is problematic for heavier workloads and when the drive is fuller especially. Enterprise drives for example usually omit the cache, and even drives like WD's SN750 have only a static cache to maintain performance and endurance. Endurance is a factor because SLC converted to/from TLC ("dynamic") gets worn faster with sufficiently sustained writes. So you may ask yourself: what does this mean? It means the E16 drives were designed for one purpose: bursty sequential performance. Makes sense since it's old tech leveraging PCIe 4.0. But in real world terms it does practically nothing.

My advice is to stick with a fast 3.0 drive and/or wait for native 4.0 drives next year (Q3 probably for the fast ones). NVMe 1.4 and 128L flash will make these worthwhile. The exception would be a system with multiple NVMe (which is applicable to some Threadripper builds) where you are transferring files around a lot and 4.4 GB/s is worthwhile versus 3.2 GB/s.

 

[Maxx]

I should add that initial information I'm hearing from Phison is that their E18 reference design prototype has an entire-drive dynamic SLC cache just like the E16. So it too will be a bursty, sequential drive by nature. It's also using the same basic design as their older controllers like the E12/E16, that is ARM Cortex-R5 with co-processors for offloading I/O. However while the E12/E16 are dual-core/dual-CPU, the E18 will be tri-core/tri-CPU, which is how it'll hit over 1M IOPS. This is relevant because some drives with large SLC caches - like the SM2262EN designs (SX8200 Pro, EX950) - suffer a lot with heavier workloads when fuller. This is partially due to the large cache but also because they use a basic dual-core design.

So to some extent you're offloading a lot of labor to the controller. This is nothing new; TLC has taken off largely thanks to LDPC ECC for example, which was not used previously due to processing requirements. But especially with NVMe 1.4 spec - depending on what optional techniques Phison or manufacturers decide to use - we might see drives able to use full-drive dynamic SLC without suffering nearly as much. Obviously power usage and heat becomes an issue for the controller (the NAND, not so much), but that's why the next generation controllers will be 12nm compared to 28nm for current gen. So you can see why I suggest waiting for native 4.0 controllers. That's without even talking about the upcoming flash, four-plane/die 128L BiCS5 for example. Quite simply with current tech you can get everything you want with 3.0 in my opinion.

I thought I'd add this information on the E18 as I recently was able to confirm some of these details finally. Bear in mind I'm not yet discussing SMI's upcoming designs, the fact WD has invested in RISC-V for some SSD controllers, etc., I'm just focusing specifically on the E16 as it fits in-between the E12 and E18.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

So, I went ahead and bought a Sabrent Rocket 2TB E16 drive.

I figure that once better controllers come out I can buy a new one for booting and move this to secondary/game duty.

I'm trying to find the block size in the specs but can't locate it. Am I incorrect for vaguely remembering that Phison drives have 4k block sizes like large hard drives as opposed to the more common 512b block sizes on most SSD's?

I'm trying to remember what the consequences for this are when copying partitions from my old drive. Can I just blindly bit for bit copy them, or are there some bad consequences of not aligning things right on a 4k drive?

I just can't rememeber.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Another question.

Seeing that these drives are double-sided, does anyone know if these drives benefit much from having some sort of wraparound heatsink on the bottom?

The reason I ask is that the Sabrent drive came with a special design that can cool both the top and bottom of the drive.

I started working on installing it, but I am fairly certain that any spot I put it in, (except the slot with lanes coming off the chipset, which I presume is the highest latency and thus the slowest, and I'd use last) will interfere with PCIe cards I want to install.

The Gigabyte board has some basic too side only heatsinks. Will I lose much if I just use those?

 

[Nenu]

So, I went ahead and bought a Sabrent Rocket 2TB E16 drive.

I figure that once better controllers come out I can buy a new one for booting and move this to secondary/game duty.

I'm trying to find the block size in the specs but can't locate it. Am I incorrect for vaguely remembering that Phison drives have 4k block sizes like large hard drives as opposed to the more common 512b block sizes on most SSD's?

I'm trying to remember what the consequences for this are when copying partitions from my old drive. Can I just blindly bit for bit copy them, or are there some bad consequences of not aligning things right on a 4k drive?

I just can't rememeber.

I believe newer drives are all set to 512 by default, you can change it with this tool.
https://www.sabrent.com/download/sb-rocket-256/
My recent 1TB came as 512 which allows it to work great with older 4K unaware software.

 

[Maxx]

Yes, as Nenu correctly states they come as 512e now but Sabrent has a tool available for conversion/formatting. Sabrent's 3.0 Rocket previously came as 4Kn though. I don't believe this was a Phison thing specifically. You should look up the differences between 512e and 4Kn, but yes there were cloning issues from 512e to 4Kn - although software from many cloning vendors has adjusted to work for it.

Cooling anything but the controller is generally unnecessary. Go for aesthetics or what's easiest.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yes, as Nenu correctly states they come as 512e now but Sabrent has a tool available for conversion/formatting. Sabrent's 3.0 Rocket previously came as 4Kn though. I don't believe this was a Phison thing specifically. You should look up the differences between 512e and 4Kn, but yes there were cloning issues from 512e to 4Kn - although software from many cloning vendors has adjusted to work for it.

Cooling anything but the controller is generally unnecessary. Go for aesthetics or what's easiest.

Is 512e accurate?

I've only heard this term used for 512 byte emulation on native 4k hard drives, in order to make them work on older systems.

If it is emulation that usually has a performance penalty associated with it.

 

[Snowdog]

So, I went ahead and bought a Sabrent Rocket 2TB E16 drive.

What is the software like with Sabrent? Their drives seem to be really decent bang/buck, but my concern with lesser known providers would be mostly on the software side. Both my Intel and WD SSDs have nice software that indicates drive health, and properly reports their interpretation of SMART values.

Does Sabrent have SW to do this, or are you stuck just reading generic SMART values?

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

What is the software like with Sabrent? Their drives seem to be really decent bang/buck, but my concern with lesser known providers would be mostly on the software side. Both my Intel and WD SSDs have nice software that indicates drive health, and properly reports their interpretation of SMART values.

Does Sabrent have SW to do this, or are you stuck just reading generic SMART values?

I have not gotten up and running yet, so I couldn't tell you, but to be honest, I never use any of the bloatware that comes with any of my hardware.

SSD's are fully supported with native drivers, and if I want drive health data I just get it via SMART. I have both Intel and Samsung drives installed and the only time I ever used any of them was when I was curious and tested Samsung Wizard on my first Samsung drive. I quickly determined it was useless bloat and removed it.

I'm not installing any of the bloatware that comes with my Gigabyte TRX40 Aorus Master or any of that Ryzen Master stuff either.

Maybe I am just a minimalist?

 

[Maxx]

Is 512e accurate?

I've only heard this term used for 512 byte emulation on native 4k hard drives, in order to make them work on older systems.

If it is emulation that usually has a performance penalty associated with it.

Yes, the Sabrent utility lets you format in either 512-byte or 4096-byte but with the former it'll be run in advanced format (512e) as the physical sector size is still 4KB (SSDs have to be 4K-aligned). Actually SSDs write at the page level which nowadays is larger than 4KB (although WD's newest flash is reportedly going back to a 4KB page size) but they're basically 4K devices. If you're asking if 4Kn will perform better - technically, it can. 512e simply has better compatibility. 512e vs 4Kn only refers to the logical/reported sector size. 512e is the default only because most people clone over from HDDs. SSDs work differently than HDDs anyway due to the FTL but I digress, since SSDs write at the smallest 4KB (page size) it doesn't matter.

 

[Zarathustra[H]]

Yes, the Sabrent utility lets you format in either 512-byte or 4096-byte but with the former it'll be run in advanced format (512e) as the physical sector size is still 4KB (SSDs have to be 4K-aligned). Actually SSDs write at the page level which nowadays is larger than 4KB (although WD's newest flash is reportedly going back to a 4KB page size) but they're basically 4K devices. If you're asking if 4Kn will perform better - technically, it can. 512e simply has better compatibility. 512e vs 4Kn only refers to the logical/reported sector size. 512e is the default only because most people clone over from HDDs. SSDs work differently than HDDs anyway due to the FTL but I digress, since SSDs write at the smallest 4KB (page size) it doesn't matter.

Well, most HDD"s these days since the 2TB era hvae been 4k sector. Early models had 512e as an option, and while it allowed them to work, there was a serious performance hit. These days I don't think there are any new 512 byte hard drives, either native or emulated on the market. SSD's were still hanging on to the 512byte sector size, presumably because they were still comparably small,but now as drives reaching 2TB is becoming more common, I guess that's no longer the case either.

 

[Maxx]

Well, most HDD"s these days since the 2TB era hvae been 4k sector. Early models had 512e as an option, and while it allowed them to work, there was a serious performance hit. These days I don't think there are any new 512 byte hard drives, either native or emulated on the market. SSD's were still hanging on to the 512byte sector size, presumably because they were still comparably small,but now as drives reaching 2TB is becoming more common, I guess that's no longer the case either.

The whole Rocket issue was from not being able to clone 512e to 4Kn so even though HDDs are 4K physical for compatibility Windows usually goes 512e. But yeah it's legacy and you should go 4Kn whenever and wherever possible but because of this SSDs are usually 512e and although some of my SATA SSDs report 512 physical (my WD Blue 3D and Intel 545s, my SK SL308 is 4K) it's kind of irrelevant due to page sizes.