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Review: Netac Reviewed by: Antonis Provided by: Netac Model: Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD Firmware version: SAFM12.2
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SATA SSDs are very common these days, but one
other form factor that is starting to gain popularity is m.2, and this has
mainly to do with NVMe drives. However, there are a lot of SATA m.2 drives that
might not bring a huge speed improvement, but they do offer SATA3 speeds in
very small form factor and they don't need any extra cables.
This time I am taking a look at the Netac
N580N m.2 240GB SSD which was kindly provided by Netac, but before I move
forward with the review you might want to check the Netac website, by clicking here.
So let's start this review by taking a look
at the packaging and contents of the Netac N580N M.2 SSD, before moving on to
some testing.
The Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD
As always I will start by taking a look at
the package and the contents that are included with the Netac N580N m.2 SSD. We'll
start with the package.
The front of the box. And the look is
identical to the Netac N550S
SSD that I tested previously.
The same applies to the back, when it comes
to the design, but in the small white box we are informed about the model
number and the fact that this is a 2280 m.2 SSD. Inside the box we also found a
very small manual and two screws.
The front side of the Netac N580N 240GB m.2
SSD.
And
the rear side of the Netac SSD.
Specifications of the Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD
Looking at the specifications of the N580
m.2 SSD reveals that its available in two sizes, 120GB, and 240GB, also that
that its only available as 2280, and there is a three-year warranty for the
drive. I would have loved to see them update their specifications sheets and
give more info about the read and write speed of the drive.
CrystalDiskInfo
In the above screenshot we can see all the available
info for the Netac N580N 240GB SSD. Looking at the firmware we can see that
under the cover there should be a Phison controller.
Let’s head to the next page where we
take a look at our testing methods and the review PC.
Test machine
For this review I will be using a computer
with the following configuration:
Hardware:
- Motherboard: ASUS H110M-A/M.2 (Intel H100
chipset) - Processor: Intel Celeron G3900
- RAM: Crucial
Ballistix Sport 2x8GB 2400@2133 - GFX: Onboard intel
- Sound: Onboard Realtek HD audio
controller - OS SSD: Netac
N550S 240GB - PSU: Seasonic 750W
- Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
- Operating System: Windows 10
At this point you will be wondering why this review is been conducted
with this system and not the regular X99/i7 5820K test system? Well it all has
to do firstly with the ASUS X99-A motherboard only supporting PCIe devices, and
secondly with the Netac N580N m.2 not having any legacy support like the
Plextor M6e SSD, so for these reasons we will have to work the above system.
Test applications
To test the performance of the Netac N580N
240GB m.2 SSD, I will be using the following test applications in this review.
- HD Tune
Pro - ATTO
- Iometer
- AS SSD
Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark
- Anvil’s
Storage Utilities - PCMark
Test procedures
I will start off our testing procedures
explanation by stating that I did not run many synthetic benchmarks on the Netac
N580N m.2 SSD. You may ask why I have run so few synthetic benchmarks.
SSD technology has moved so fast in the
last couple of years, that basic synthetic benchmarks alone are now of very
limited use, as they don't really tell us much about performance and how the
drive will behave in the real world. I have therefore decided to show some
basic benchmarks for the Netac N580N m.2 SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD performs in the real world.
The reality of SSD performance
While I can easily show you which SSD is
technically the faster, when you use one of these modern SSDs as an operating
system drive it becomes very difficult to tell them apart as far as performance
is concerned.
A typical use of a small capacity SSD at
the moment is to have your operating system and applications installed onto the
SSD. The performance difference compared to a traditional HDD is enormous,
however when you start to compare SSD to SSD the difference becomes almost
impossible to detect.
Let’s look at why this is the case.
Drive A can boot to the desktop in 8.11
seconds, and drive B can boot to the desktop in 8.12 seconds, the difference in
time is milliseconds, and can one really tell the difference?
The fact is, all modern SSDs are only
ticking over when they are only running the OS and launching applications, it’s
only when you get to some of the larger capacity SSDs, with enough free space
to be able to hold the actual data that you’re going to be working with, be
that video, audio or pictures, for example, that you actually get a tangible
difference in performance. This is where the SSDs with the better sequential
performance start to pull well ahead of the SSDs which have lower sequential
read/write performance.
Small file random IOPS vs sequential performance
IOPS
This is a fairly complex subject, but I
will do my best to explain things in a manner that is easy to understand.
The term IOPS is the amount of input or
output transactions that can take place in a one second interval, so for
example, if an SSD is quoted as being able to cope with 20,000 4K random write
IOPS, then the SSD should be able to cope with 20,000 input transactions in a
period of one second. If the same SSD is said to be able to produce 20,000 4K
random read IOPS, then the same SSD should be able to produce 20,000 4K random
read output transactions in a one second interval.
Ok, now we have some figures to work with,
the next question is how many IOPS are actually required?
This will depend on your usage pattern. If
you are a typical desktop user who browses the internet, does some word
processing or perhaps some audio or video editing, and perhaps plays a few
games, then in actual fact, you don’t need to have massive 4K random read/write
performance. The actual amount of 4K random performance that is required for a
fast and smooth running system for a desktop user with a usage pattern similar
to the above will be well under 1,000 4K IOPS.
On the other hand, if the SSD is being used
for running a large and complex database server, then 4K random performance is
the absolute measurement of how fast that server will run, as this type of
application does most of its input and output transactions in the 4K domain.
So why would I need an SSD with 80,000 4K
IOPS for a desktop?
In fact you don’t need this type of
performance for a desktop, but an SSD which is capable of coping with 80,000 4K
IOPS will be faster than an SSD which can only cope with 20,000 4K IOPS.
OK, I just said if under 1,000 4K IOPS are
actually required for typical desktop usage, why is an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
faster than an SSD with only 20,000 4K IOPS, confused?
You may ask, if I only require 1,000 4K
IOPS surely the rest is wasted?
While you may never need 80,000 4K IOPS,
IOPS is all about latency. The reason that an SSD can cope with as much as 80,000
4K IOPS is because latency in this domain is very low. With 4K files, even if
you require to process 500 of them at the same time, you are not talking about
a huge amount of data, it has far more to do with how long it takes the SSD to
process a single file, and the amount of time required to process a single 4K
is all about how long it takes for the SSD to access or store that data before
it can move on to the next transaction.
In other words an SSD with 80,000 4K IOPS
performance will handle those 500 files faster than the SSD with 20,000 IOPS.
So how will a desktop user even notice this
faster speed if so little 4K random IOPS and data are actually used?
Multitasking is a good example. The more
tasks you run at the same time, you more you will notice the speed difference.
Sequential performance
I have always maintained that sequential
performance was every bit as important as small random file performance for a
desktop SSD. Some highly regarded people on other sites found this statement
quite funny a couple of years ago when I made it, but my, how times have
changed in the world of SSD reviewing.
To me this was always so obvious for a
desktop user. For example, let’s say you want to launch an application or game.
Both have some fairly large files to load, and also a great many small files,
but the point is, even the smaller files are sequential in nature. Now let’s
say you’re into audio or video editing. Video files tend to be huge, and the
files are written or read sequentially. Isn’t this how many users are using
their PCs these days?
Summary
So how does this shape up in the real
world? Which is better, massive 4K IOPS or massive sequential performance?
In an ideal world you want both, as an SSD
with massive random 4K IOPS and sequential performance will always be faster
than an SSD that has high sequential performance and moderate 4K random IOPS
performance, and the same applies to an SSD that has massive 4K random
performance and moderate sequential performance. The SSD which has high
performance in both patterns will always be the faster SSD.
However, you can still have an SSD that is
very fast for desktop use that has moderate random 4K performance and massive
sequential performance, the same can be said about a drive having massive
random 4K performance and moderate sequential performance, as it is about
getting the balance right if you have to compromise on one or the other.
Drive preparation for running the tests
All the SSDs used in this article were in a
clean and fresh state when the testing period started. From then on, each drive
had to rely on its own NAND cleaning effectiveness for the remainder of the
tests.
- Both our spinning HDD drives were
defragged before the start of each test.
- All SSD and HDD used in this article had
their partitions aligned to the Windows 7 x64 defaults.
Where I use graphs in this article to
display results, I will use the following colours to make it easier, for our
readers to see which drive we are reviewing.
Netac N580N 2400GB m.2 SSD
Comparison SDD
Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...
Reading Benchmarks
HD Tune
HD
Tune Test – Sequential reading test.
ATTO disk benchmark
ATTO has become a standard tool for measuring
the data throughput of HDDs and SSDs. It measures the reading and writing
performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.
This is the application that all
manufacturers use to benchmark their drives, and as we can see the Netac N580N
is able to reach read speeds of 560MB/Sec and write speeds close to 520MB/Sec.
CrystalDiskMark 3.0
CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause problems
for a system drive.
The overall result is again very impressive
for the Netac N580N m.2 SSD.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD benchmark is a benchmarking tool
specifically designed to test SSDs. The application tests sequential reading
and writing performance, 4K random reading and writing performance.
AS SSD benchmark also tests 4K threaded
performance. This is very exciting, as this test is the first available test
that I am aware of, that simulates how a PC operating system actually works. A
modern PC and OS, such as Windows Vista/7 does not just run a single thread at
a time, it runs many threads. The AS SSD benchmark "4K 64Thrd" tests
run 64 threads simultaneously throughout the test. If this result is good, then
you can be pretty sure the drive will perform extremely well as a system drive.
After the tests complete, AS SSD benchmark
derives a total score for the drive being tested. This is based on all aspects
of the test results, and gives an indication of how the drive is performing
overall.
Now let’s look at the results for the Netac
N580N 240GB m.2 SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison
drives’ results are presented in the form of a graph.
This is an excellent result for the Netac
N580N SSD. Notice that for some reason AS SSD reports 519.32MB/Sec on the
4K-64Thrd, this number looks a little high for an SATA SSD.
You can compare this drive with some
previous that I have tested, but keep in mind that the other results are based
on an entirely different system. You can find them here.
Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark 8.....
PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite
We have built quite a close relationship
with FutureMark software, the authors of the PCMark PC benchmarking software
that we use in our tests. I decided I would use PCMark Vantage as stopgap
measure until the more up-to-date PCMark 8 benchmarking suite became available.
I'm pleased to say that PCMark 8 is now available, and it gives me great
pleasure to introduce you all to the results obtained by this new 'real world'
benchmarking suite.
I will describe the basic way that each
test is carried out, above the graph for each test.
PC Mark 8 HDD suite results
Here is a
screenshot displaying the results for the Netac N580N 240GB m2 SSD, and this
result is good but if you compare it to other drives it’s a little slower. You
can view some previous results simply by clicking here,
keep in mind that these are based on an entirely different system though and
are here as a reference.
Let's head to the next page for our
IOMeter test results.....
I/O Performance
There is little point of having an SSD
drive that has blazing sustained reading and writing speeds, if the drive can't
handle reading and writing of small random files. If you intend to use your new
SSD drive to store and run your operating system, then the drive must be able
to cope with the many small random files that Windows will write to the drive
continually. So I feel it is very important to test how many of these random
files that a drive can handle in one second. I believe that anything over 1,000
I/O’s per second would be enough for most users running a consumer grade
mainstream PC, and should provide a smooth running system. But obviously, the
more I/O's that a drive can handle, the faster the drive will feel and leave
more headroom for those huge multitasking sessions that users sometimes engage
in.
The things that I will look at are the
total I/O per second and total MB/s.
Partition alignment and sector boundaries
Windows 7 and Vista will automatically
align a partition to 4k boundaries during partition creation, Windows XP won’t.
It is imperative that an SSDs partition is aligned. Windows XP is also
restricted to sector boundaries, while Windows 7 will use 4k boundaries if it
can. The Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD is 4k boundary aware, and will use these
boundaries if possible. Of course it will also remap LBAs for compatibility
with the sector boundaries so that the drive can be used with Windows XP.
IOMeter allows us to set the sector
boundaries for conducting the tests, and I have therefore set the sector
boundaries at 4K, which means the IOMeter tests are valid for Windows 7 and
Windows Vista users. XP users will not be able to obtain such results.
I will provide a screenshot of the tests on
the review drive for those of you who like to see the actual test result. All
the comparison drive results are represented in the form of graphs.
If any of you would like to see a
screenshot from any IOMeter test on a particular drive, please feel free to
request one, and I’ll post the screenshot in the forum thread.
All the IOMeter tests create a 10GB data
set on the target drive, and each test is run for a duration of 3 minutes.
IOMeter 4K random write test with repeating data.
The first test involves creating continual
4KB random files on the target drive with IOMeter. I use a 4KB file size, as it
is believed that Windows will create and modify many of this size of file
constantly in the background during a typical Windows session. It is said that
most 4K random writes take place at a queue depth of only one.
Queue depth 1
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 32)
The overall write performance of the Netac
N580N m.2 SSD is just acceptable, especially as QD increases, but at low queue
depths the drive gives a good result.
IOMeter 4K random read test.
If there are many 4k files created, then
that must also mean that many 4k files need to be read. This test measures 4k
reading performance.
Queue depth 1
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 1)
Queue depth 4
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 4)
Queue depth 32
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (Queue depth 32)
The read results are good for the Netac
N580n m.2 SSD.
IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.
Sequential writing performance is also very
important, and in this test I will be measuring the sequential writing
performance of the drive.
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD - 512K Sequential write with repeating data
The write speeds in this test are very
limited, this a result that I didn’t expect.
IOMeter 512KB read test.
This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD – 512K sequential reading test
This result is a very good result.
IOMeter Workstation simulation (outstanding I/Os = 64).
When running applications you will find
that there is a mixture of small random files and larger sequential files,
being created and read. Not only that, it isn’t just one file at a time. In
this test I measure a simulated workstation pattern, with a queue depth of 64
(threaded).
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD – Workstation simulation
This is yet another good result.
You can compare this drive with some
previous drives that I have tested with IOMeter, keep in mind that the other
results are based on an entirely different system, but you can find them here.
Summary
The main complaint about this drive that I
have is the write performance, both sequential and random writes weren’t that
fast, but thankfully the drive will spend most of its time reading and it does
a good job of that.
Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Netac N580N m.2 SSD performs using Anvil's Storage
utilities....
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As well as performing SSD endurance tests.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities has a very nice SSD benchmarking application. The SSD
benchmark tests many different aspects of SSD performance, including 4K random
at different queue depths, and also sequential performance, but more importantly
than this, all using real test data.
Another very nice feature of Anvil’s SSD
benchmark is the fact that you can change the compression levels of the test
data. The compression levels of the data sets used for the tests can be varied
from 0% compression right up to 100% compressed data, and there are even a few
data profiles already included, such as database (8%) compression, and also an
application profile (46%) compression, which is designed to simulate real
application data being read and written to the SSD.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities is still in beta
at the moment, but the application is currently solid enough to use in this
article, and I have already verified the results obtained using an SATA
analyser.
I will include a screenshot of the review
drive, and all comparison results will be presented in the form of graphs. If
you would like to see screenshots of the test results obtained on the other
SSDs in this article, you can do so by following the link here.
I will also be testing three different
compression profiles, which are as follows.
- 0 fill (100% compressible data)
- Application simulation profile (46%
compressed) - 100% (non compressible data)
So let’s begin the tests.
0 fill
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (0 fill)
The result is very good for the Netac
drieve.
Application profile
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (application profile)
Moving on the Netac N580 SSD continues to give
good results.
100% incompressible
Netac N580N 240GB m.2 SSD (100% incompressible)
Even in the 100% Incompressible data test
the Netac SSD delivers a good result.
You can compare this drive with some
previous SSDs that I have tested, but keep in mind that the other results are
based on an entirely different system and should be looked on only as
reference, you can find the results here.
Summary
Overall the Netac N580N m.2 SSD gave some
very good results in all three tests.
Now let's head to the next page for some
real world tests....
It has become clear that simply conducting
endless benchmarks on SSD drives is pointless. Real users may run a few
benchmarks when they first fit their SSD drive, but most users just want a
drive that performs well in the real world. They want their drive to work
"out of the box" and work fast and smoothly.
Most of the latest SSD drives can deliver
very fast sustained reading and writing speeds, but these alone tell you very
little about how the drive will perform in the real world.
If you intend to use your SSD as your
primary system drive, with an operating system and applications installed and
running from the drive, real world performance becomes much more important than
just fast sequential read and write speeds, in this case I felt that it was
time to move into a different method of testing.
From now on I will only use the log files
from the Event Viewer to measure the start-up and shutdown of the system, and
also use filecopy to measure all my copy tests from a RAM disk to the selected
storage drive that I will be testing. For these tests I will also enable all
power savings features that are available, since I believe that this is the way
that the majority of the users will have them set on their PC.
Real
world copy tests
I will now conduct some real world copy
tests so that you can have a much better view of how the drive will perform. In
these simple tests I try to simulate what a real user does with their drives. I
will be copying some mp3 files, various picture and MKV files, and finishing by
installing MS Office 2007.
As I said earlier from now on all my test
files will be stored in a RAM disk and copied/pasted to the destination drive
using filecopy. The filecopy utility will be used from now on for all my tests,
and I’ll be using it this way to measure the time that it takes to copy the
files.
Before I move on to the test, I want to
give you an idea on how fast your RAM is. Below you can find the results.
As
we can clearly see speed isn’t going to be an issue in these tests.
Read write tests – 259 MP3 song files (1.36GB total)
I will start this set of tests by copying
259 MP3 files from the RAM disk to the destination SSD and also from the SSD to
the RAM disk.
Copying
MP3s from RAM to SSD
Copying
MP3s from SSD to RAM
The result is good, not the fastest one
that I have seen but less than 5 seconds for 1.3GB of MP3s is always welcomed.
Read write tests – 3,377 JPEG picture files (2.56GB total)
Continuing my set of tests, but this time I
will be copying 2.54GB of pictures that are stored in the RAM disk to the
currently testing SSD and vice versa.
Copying
pictures from RAM to SSD
Copying
pictures from SSD to RAM
Both results are acceptable, but if I
compare it with most new drives the Netac N580N m2 SSD falls behind.
Read write tests – 1 MKV and 1 SRT file (3.46GB)
Copying a movie is very common task for all
of us, and in this test there are two files that will be copied from the RAM
disk to the SSD and again from the SSD to the RAM disk.
Copying
an MKV and an SRT file from RAM to SSD.
Copying
an MKV and an SRT file from SSD to RAM.
Both results are very good in this test.
Read write tests – ISO (7927MB)
For this test, I copied ISO of the 'Iron
Man' movie from the RAMDisk to the SSD and vice versa.
Copying
an ISO file from RAM to SSD.
Copying
an ISO file from SSD to RAM.
The read result is very good, but when it
comes to writing the Netac N580N m.2 SSD is not that fast.
Windows start-up based on the Boot Racer 5.00
Start-up time
On the next screen shot you can compare the
current tested SSD and compare it to other drives that I have tested. Below I
present the results.
The Netac N580N m.2 SSD gave again a good
result of 28.046 seconds to boot into Windows 10.
Installing applications
Installing applications is possibly
something you don't do that often. But should you replace your system disk,
then you will most likely have to re-install your applications. Most of the SSD
drives I have tested up until now are quite slow at installing applications,
most likely because their I/O performance was quite limited.
For these tests, we picked some popular
applications and copied the entire contents of the CD or DVD media to the RAM disk.
We did this to make sure that the reading speed of our CD/DVD reader would not
hamper the performance of the target drive.
We then installed these applications onto
our comparison HDD drives, which were all running mirror image installations of
our Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit installation, and timed the amount of time
taken to install the application with a stopwatch on each of the drives.
MS Office 2007 Enterprise (full install)
Now let’s see
how the Netac N580N m.2 SSD performs with the installation of MS Office 2007
Enterprise Edition. The drive needed 129 Seconds to complete the installation
of Office 2007.
Speed degradation after heavy testing
On this page I will measure how the SSD
performs after heavy testing and usage.
I will run an AS SSD benchmark test when
the OS is freshly installed so that we can get a good view of how the drive
performs with the OS. After that I will fill the drive up to 50% of its
capacity, use the drive for a few days, and then re-run the AS SSD benchmark.
The same procedure will be followed once again, but this time the drive will be
filled close to 90% or higher of its capacity. To finish this test, I will
simply delete all the extra data and leave the PC idle for a few hours so that
the controller has the time to perform any necessary cleaning, then see how the
drive performs.
In this picture you can see the test files
that I will be copying to fill the drive with data, as you can see files vary
from 8GB ISOs to very small text files.
In the picture below you will find all the
applications that were installed for this test using Ninite, and I have also installed Microsoft
Office 2007.
Now let’s start our tests.
Starting with the fresh install of Windows 10,
and running AS SSD to get an idea of how the Netac N580N m.2 SSD performs, we
can see that the score is a little lower than what I have seen in my synthetic
tests, but is still good.
Again when the drive is pushed close to its
limits there is a slowdown, so I would opt to leave the drive with more than
10-20GB of free space for better performance.
If you look at the numbers you will notice
that the 4K-64Thrd read score is awesome, however this number does not
represent the true performance of the Netac N580N and shows that AS SSD might
have some bugs that need sorting. I ran this test five times and each time the
result was slightly different but the 4K-64Trd was very high. Overall the
result looks good though.
With all extra files deleted the numbers
are very close to the ones that I saw when I first ran the AS SSD test.
You can compare this drive with some
previous SSDs that I have tested, but keep in mind that the other results are
based on an entirely different system and should be looked on only as a reference.
You can find these results here.
Testing the Netac N580N on a Z170 system
Wanting to remove the bottleneck that the
H110 chipset and the Celeron CPU introduced I took the drive out and put it in
a system that should be able to exclude the possibility of a any kind of bottle
neck. The following results are from this system.
Motherboard:
ASUS Z170-A
CPU: Intel i5 6600K @ 4.4GHz
RAM: HyperX 2x8GB @ 2400MHz
PSU: Corsair CX650W
VGA: MSI Gaming GTX 970
Case: Be quite Silent 800
CPU Coller: Corsair H60
Cound card: Onboard Realtek® ALC892
So let’s start by showing the result that
the Netac N580N m.2 SSD was able to achieve with AS SSD.
And then moving forward to ATTO
The next test is CrystalDiskMark.
The final test will be Anvil's Benchmark
using the 100% incompressible test.
As we can see in the Z170 chipset alongside
the Intel overclocked to 6600K is able to achieve slightly better results,
especially in the 4K tests.
This concludes our review. To read the final
thoughts and conclusion, click the link below....
To sum up, this is what I would say:
The Netac N580N m.2 SSD is a good drive, that
offers good read speeds, and in daily use it feels very snappy, however its
write speeds aren’t that impressive. So as long as you don’t do a lot of writes
though you will not notice any drops in performance.
The N580N m.2 comes with a three year
warranty, something that is very good, also the m.2 form factor is another welcome
plus. My only complaint would be that the drive is only available in two sizes,
120GB and 240GB, and a larger drive would be welcomed. Installation is very
easy, and you won't have to deal with any cables.
The final sentence for the Netac N580N m.2
SSD would be that “This SSD is a good option for those looking for a
small drive to improve their system speed and move away from any mechanical
drives.”
Therefore, I give the 'Good' award to the Netac
N580N m.2 SSD SSD.
Thanks to:
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EFD |
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Alex Schepeljanski for |
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FutureMark |
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Quarch |
You may comment on this review here, you
can also post your benchmarks in our forum.
