OCZ RevoDrive 350 480GB PCIe SSD Review

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

For the RevoDrive 350 480GB (1GB byte = 1,000,000,000 bytes) drive, the end user winds up with 447GiB (1GiB = 1,073,741,824 bytes) of addressable space which includes the roughly 7% chunk set aside as spare area.

For the most part, if you want to exceed the roughly 550MB/s ceiling of the SATA III interface you either need to run a RAID 0 setup with a pair of speedy SSDs or grab a PCIe drive like this RevoDrive 350. Technically, the RevoDrive is a RAID setup combined on one card with the four SF-2282 controllers on board and gobs of Toshiba 19nm NAND. The performance is insane with reads of 1800MB/s and writes of 1700MB/s (per the specifications) yet we saw higher numbers on the ATTO benchmark. Incompressible data slows things a bit which is something we’ve always seen with SandForce controllers. Still, in real world performance, the drive feels snappy and with up to 960GB in capacity, few will want for more storage. The PCIe x8 interface really opens things up assuming you have an available slot.

Performance comes at a price however with the smallest RevoDrive 350 weighing in a $529.99 although we can’t say it’s out of line given the components on board. SSD controllers aren’t cheap. Pairing up a couple of 240GB drives in RAID 0 can be done for under $300 with some decent drives although that would still only net you about half the performance of the RevoDrive 350. The 480GB drive we tested is selling for $829.99 which comes out to about $1.86 per usable GB. The main consumer of these are going to be hardcore enthusiasts and prosumers that can leverage every bit of performance that the drive kicks out. Those that web surf and play the occasional game will find it a bit like buying a Ferrari to drive around the corner to work – it’s fun but what’s the point?

Though the price tag that will be out of reach for many, we have zero complaints about the RevoDrive 350. It takes performance to crazy levels and is a clean way to implement a RAID array without a mess of wires. There are a few other companies that have PCIe drives out but those that are, are generally intended for workstations and many of their prices make the RevoDrive 350 look inexpensive. Though we haven’t tested many of these, OCZ probably has the best implementation and certainly has enough PCIe drive experience to be considered veterans in this space and consumers can feel confident that the product will deliver for many years.

**EDITORIAL UPDATE: Expect to see general retail availability for all capacities around June 19th & 20th.

Legit Bottom Line: If you want the absolute best in consumer SSD performance with minimal hassle, you really can’t do better than the OCZ RevoDrive 350!