Review: Micron M510DC Reviewed by: Antonis Sapanidis Provided by: Micron Model: M510DC 480GB SSD Firmware version: 0005

It's not very often I get the opportunity
to take a look at a Client/Consumer SSD, and when Micron released the M510DC I
thought that it would worth taking a look before Jeremy gets to review it. I
know that these drives are not meant to be used as consumer drives, but most of
us probably want to see what they're capable of, so let’s take a look at the
Micron M510DC.

From the above picture we can see where the
Micron M510DC is positioned, and we can see that the drive is also a SATA
drive, something that makes a lot of sense. It will give the M510DC the benefit
of an aggressive price, and it's packed with all the features that Micron has
to offer for their enterprise SSDs which should make the M510DC an excellent
choice for small businesses.

 

A quick look at the above picture and we can see
everything that the Micron M510DC has to offer including the full XPERT
features, such as protection of data in the process of being transferred and
also at rest, RAIN, custom firmware, and most importantly for an SATA SSD,
TCG-E encryption. Keep in mind that the M510DC is also available without the
TCG-E for markets that don’t allow encrypted drives or if you don’t want this
feature on your SSD. To find out more about Micron you will only need to click here.

So let’s start this review by taking a
quick look at the Micron M510DC SSD.

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Micron M510DC 480GB SSD

As expected, you won't find any fancy
packaging or any 7mm to 9.5mm adapters, all you get is the drive in an
antistatic bag. So let’s take a close look at the drive.

A closer look at the Micron M510DC 480GB SSD

Top side of the Micron M510DC SSD

Drive underside

Inside the Micron M510DC SSD

A quick look at the top side of the Micron
M510DC SSD, where we can see the Marvel controller, the DDR3 RAM, the NAND, and
13 capacitors that will ensure that all your data will be safe in the event of
a power failure.

On the other side of the Micron M510DC we
see another DDR3 chip and four 16nm NAND chips.

Here
is a closer look at the Micron 16nm MLC NAND.

A
close look at the Marvell 88SS9187 controller.

The
DDR3 memory is also manufactured by Micron.

Specifications

The following specifications are taken from
the official Micron website, to find out more information click here.

As we can see the Micron M510DC is
available as a 2.5-Inch drive and in four capacities, 120GB, 240GB, 480GB, and 960GB.
An 800GB version  should also be available by the time you read this review.

XPERT (eXtended Performance and Enhanced Reliability) 

Here is how Micron describes XPERT.

eXtended Performance and Enhanced
Reliability Technology (XPERT) is a suite of Micron-designed storage
architecture enhancements that greatly improve SSD performance and reliability.
XPERT extends drive life and ensures data integrity. RAIN Redundant Array of
Independent NAND).

With XPERT, Micron aligns storage media
design, SSD firmware development, and hardware integration to create a
comprehensive architecture that enables enterprise class SSDs to meet the
unrelenting demands of 24/7/365 data centres. The XPERT feature set gives us
the flexibility to design SSDs to meet exact application requirements. Only the
XPERT features that are appropriate to a particular application are designed
in, so our SSDs can precisely match data canter usage models. From booting
general purpose servers and storing mission-critical databases, to ensuring
long-term, trouble-free operation of appliances and managing petabytes of cloud
data—XPERT-enabled SSDs meet the stringent usage requirements demanded by the
massive growth of digital data.

XPERT Feature Set – Overview

• Adaptive Read Management/Optimized Read
  (ARM/OR)
• Redundant Array of Independent NAND
  (RAIN)
• DataSAFE
• Reduce Command Access Latency (ReCAL)
• Media Customizations

 

At this point I won’t go into further
details, as you can find an excellent PDF file that you can download directly
from Micron, which will provide a more detailed view of XPERT's features.
The PDF can be downloaded here.

CrystalDiskInfo

In
the above screen shot we see all the available info for the Micron M510DC SSD.

 

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 X99-A (Intel X99 chipset)
• Processor: Intel Core i7 5820K @ 4.4Ghz
• RAM: Crucial Ballistix Sport 4x4GB 2400 @ 2660
• GFX: GTX 670
• Sound: Onboard
• Hard disk OS: Kingston V200 240GB
• PSU: Seasonic M12II 750W
• Display: Futsiju Siemens 22”
• Operating System: Windows 8.1

 

The Micron M510DC 480GB SSD was connected
to the Intel native SATA 6Gbps (port 1) on the X99 motherboard of our review PC
and all tests on the drive were carried out with the drive connected to this port.
All power saving features were disabled during all of my synthetic benchmarks.

AHCI mode was also selected for all drives
in the UEFI of our test PC, and all the tests were carried out in this mode. As
we can also see the formatted size of the Micron M510DC SSD is 447GB.

The SATA 6Gbps drivers used on our review
PC were Intel Rapid Storage Technology (RST) Version 13.1.0.1058.

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Test applications

To test the performance of the Micron M510DC
480GB 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 Micron
M510DC 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 Micron M510DC SSD, and will complement this with
advanced benchmarks using IOMeter and AS SSD benchmark. I will also show how
the Micron M510DC 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.

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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.

 Micron
M510DC 480GB SSD

 Comparison
SDD

 

Now let's head to the next page, where I
look at some basic benchmarks...

Reading Benchmarks

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HD Tune

HD Tune – Sequential reading test

I present the graph below, for comparison
with other recently tested drives.

As an enterprise drive the Micron M510DC was never designed to compete against
enthusiast drives, even so, the numbers are good.

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ATTO disk benchmark

ATTO has become a standard tool for
measuring the data throughput of HDD and SSD. It measures the reading and
writing performance, using different file sizes and block sizes.

The results were very good, the M510DC
drive was able to achieve a very good read and write speed as we can see from
the above graph.

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CrystalDiskMark 3.0

CrystalDiskMark is quite a handy
benchmarking application, as it focuses on the file sizes that can cause a
problem on a system drive.

Micron's M510DC continues to show good
performance when tested as a consumer SSD.

In
the above graph you can compare the read speed of the Micron M510DC SSD with
some consumer drives,

and
here I present the write results for the Micron M510DC.

It’s nice to see that the Micron M510DV was
able to produce some very good results when it came to write speed, but read
speeds were low. Again this is not a fair comparison for the M510DC.

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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 Micron
M510DC SSD in the form of a screenshot. All our other comparison drives’
results are presented in the form of a graph.

This is very interesting. Looking at this
graph, we can see that the Micron M510DC is able to stay above the Crucial BX100
SSD, I confess that this was a pleasant surprise.

Summary:

I admit that it was fun testing the Micron
M510DC as just another SSD but the truth is that it’s not just another SSD and the
tests that I ran were mainly designed for consumer drives, but testing the
M510DC can give a real picture of what it can do.

 

Let's head to the next page and run some
tests using PCMark Vantage and PCMark 8.....

 

PC Mark 8 - HDD Suite

Here at Myce.wiki, we only recently
introduced PCMark Vantage to our SSD testing. PCMark Vantage is a good test,
but is now somewhat outdated in the applications that it tests, even to the
extent of including a test trace on how Windows Vista booted. We could have
course have opted for the newer PCMark 7, but I personally had issues with the
way it ran the HDD tests.

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 of the Micron M510DC SSD result.

Another very nice result for the Micron
M510DC, which again is able to beat the Crucial BX100.

A more detailed look at the performance of
the Micron M510DC SSD, again compared with some consumer drives.

 

Summary:

In some tests the Micron M510DC SSD isn't
much different, but the overall result should have been expected.

 

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 Intel 510 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

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD – 4K random write (Queue depth 1)

Queue depth 4

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

Queue depth 32

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

4K random write queue depth profile

For this
test I used various queue depths from 1 – 32 to give you an idea how this SSD
performs at different queue depths. For a normal desktop user, with lightweight
multitasking, the queue depth will rarely rise above 2. For heavy multitasking,
the queue depth is unlikely to rise above a value of 8.

A detailed view of the performance of the Micron
M510DC SSD with various Queue Depths up to QD32.

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

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (Queue depth 1)

Queue depth 4

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (Queue depth 4)

Queue depth 32

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (Queue depth 32)

4K random read queue depth profile.    

This test
shows how the review drive scales with increasing queue depths.

Here is a more detailed view of the performance
of the Micron M510DC SSD at different Queue Depths.

IOMeter 512KB write test with repeating data.

Sequential writing performance is also very
important; in this test sequential writing performance is measured.

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD 512K Sequential write with repeating data

A good result for the Micron M510DC SSD,
413.11 MB/Sec, especially for a drive that is mainly focused on read workloads.

IOMeter 512KB read test.

This test measures 512k sequential reading
performance.

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD – 512K sequential reading test

It’s clear that most drives are easily
ahead of the Micron M510DC but then again I am comparing two different kinds of
SSD that should have very different workloads in very different environments.

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).

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD – Workstation simulation

A very good result, and the Micron M510DC
is able to stay ahead of the Crucial BX100.

Summary

By now it's crystal clear that even if in
some cases the Micron M510DC is able to stay ahead of certain drives, you can
expect the M510DC to be ahead of the more enthusiast focused SSDs.

 

Consistency tests

Many of our regular readers will remember
that back in 2013 we ran a test showing how much difference there was between
an enterprise drive and a consumer drive, we also ran some tests with Over
Provisioning, and at that time we were able to show you how much the difference
in performance was. The Micron M510DC is an SATA 6Gb/s drive and it’s not aimed
at consumers so in this set of tests I will be using the full capacity of the
drive and we can see the overall consistency of the tested drive as well as
giving you a first impression of how the M510DC can perform.

The drive is tested for one hour, which is
enough time to give a first quick view on how it performs. You can read the “What
difference Over Provisioning does” article here,
and you can also wait for Jeremy to publish his review of this drive that will
provide you with a more in-depth look at the Micron M510DC.

4K random read test.

Let's start this test with 4K full random
read at 32QD

IOPS

Average
latency, measured in ms.

Now let's test the Micron M510DC again,
this time with random read at 4QD

IOPS

Average
latency, measured in ms.

For me personally, this is an excellent
read result for the Micron M510DC SSD.

4K write read test.

First let’s start this test at 32QD.

IOPS

Average
latency, measured in ms.

We'll close this set of tests by testing
the drive at 4QD.

IOPS

Average
latency, measured in ms.

It doesn’t take too long for the Micron
M510DC to show that it wasn’t designed with write performance in mind, and as
we can see just a little before 500 ms there is a drop in the IOPS and at the
same time an increase in the average latency.

 

Now let’s head to the next page where we
will look at how the Micron M510DC 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

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (0 fill)

Results
are ranked by highest total score.

The Micron M510DC is able to make it very
close to the middle of the chart, overall a good result.

Application profile

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (46% Applications)

Results are ranked by highest total score.

Again the Micron M510DC is able to place
itself in the middle of the chart.

100% incompressible

Micron M510DC 480GB SSD (100% incompressible)

Results are based on the total highest score.

Again the M510DC occupies the middle of the
graph.

Summary

The Micron M510DC was able to stay ahead of
some drives, like the Crucial BX100, and this was something that I didn’t
expect. A pleasant surprise to see.

 

Now let's head to the next page for the
conclusion....

 

Conclusion:

Let us summarise the most important
positive and negative points for the Micron M510DC.

To sum up, this is what I would say:

What can I say is that I was pleasantly
surprised with the Micron M510DC, the build quality of the drive, the features
that it has, and the fact that it almost entirely built by Micron makes it even
more impressive. An SATA drive that has serious power loss protection for data being
moved and also at rest, and TVG-e is something that is a welcomed addition to
the M510DC, of course the drive is also available without TCG-E for specific
parts of the world, or if you don’t want it or need it. One other thing is the
warranty, 2DWPD for all the drives except the 960GB that only has 1DWPD (or a
five year warranty, whichever comes first, for the Micron M510DC), also keep in
mind that most consumer drives don’t need and probably don’t have 2DWPD
endurance.

As I said, I am not an expert on enterprise
SSDs and I did try to see what the Micron M510DC could do as an SSD compared to
enthusiast drives, and the result that the Micron M510DC gave me were very
positive, and even though I did compare it with regular enthusiast drives, a
comparison that it’s not fair for the M510DC, its overall performance was very
good.

The parting sentence is:

“The Micron M510DC is an excellent
choice for those that look for value and performance without having to move to
a SAS drive to get all the extra features that can be found on more expensive
drives.”

I am going to be very conservative on my
rating, and give the 'Very good' rating to the Micron M510DC 480GB SSD.

 

Thanks to:

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You may comment on this review below, you
can also post your benchmarks in our forum.