PQI S537 240GB SSD review

Today’s item on our review bench is a little-known SSD, the S357 from PQI. This is a 240GB SATA drive that claims to be capable of reaching 550 MB/s reads and 450 MB/s writes. Let’s put it to the test.

 

Specifications

This is a great product image. Thanks PQI!

• Capacity: 120GB, 240GB, 480GB
• Warranty: 3 years
• Interface: SATA III 6Gb/s
• Data Transfer Rate: Up to 550MB/s read, 450MB/s write
• Power Consumption: 5V +/- 5%
• Dimensions: 100 x 69.85 x 7mm
• Weight: 35 grams

 

Design

The PQI S537 comes in a traditional 2.5-inch form factor, with a gold-coloured sticker on one side. The drive lacks any other ornamentation or additional features. The colour scheme is showy, but it may not mesh well with traditional ‘gamer-style’ primary colour schemes.

 

Software

The S537 comes with cloning software, available for download here. I didn’t test the cloning functionality, but the software seems simple enough to use.

 

Testing

In order to test the speed of the drive, we ran four synthetic benchmarks with varying payloads: CrystalDiskMark, AS SSD, ATTO and HD Tune. Combined, these should give us a good idea of the drive’s performance compared to others at a similar price.

To see our test rig’s specifications, check out our component breakdown here!

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark has been one of my favourite benchmarks for evaluating storage speeds for a while now, thanks to its varied incompressible workload and extremely readable results. Here’s the 3.0.3 x64 version of the benchmark; all results are in MB/s.

CDM 3 Read	Seq	512K	4K	4K QD32
PQI S537 SSD	516	340	29	118
Toshiba A100 SSD	490	328	33	350
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	342	229	35	278
Toshiba P300 HDD	150	48	0.6	1.6
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	115	38	0.6	2.5
Toshiba Canvio Premium	118	43	0.5	0.6
Samsung T3	386	351	33	35
Sandisk Z410	508	357	13	146
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	502	447	45	368
Samsung 850 Evo	513	472	38	408
Samsung 840 Evo	515	473	35	397
Corsair Neutron GTX	450	376	27	328

 

CDM 3 Write	Seq	512K	4K	4K QD32
PQI S537 SSD	417	413	103	259
Toshiba A100 SSD	438	406	84	315
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	269	272	88	269
Toshiba P300 HDD	155	69	0.6	1.0
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	114	52	22	24
Toshiba Canvio Premium	117	50	1.3	1.3
Samsung T3	357	352	69	77
Sandisk Z410	407	355	97	250
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	474	394	113	316
Samsung 850 Evo	504	479	68	352
Samsung 840 Evo	500	390	86	313
Corsair Neutron GTX	480	468	69	158

 

The PQI drive shows interesting results initially, with among the fastest sequential read speeds we’ve seen from a SATA drive at 516 MB/s. Its sequential write speeds are a little behind the curve compared to Samsung’s excellent 800-series drives, but still offer good performance for the price.

However, the 4K chunk results at queue depth 32 are among the worst we’ve seen, showing perhaps a weakness in the drive’s queuing capabilities. In layman’s terms, queuing is used by the drive’s controller to speed up the transfer of many smaller files by preparing a tight sequence that minimises drive downtime. This means that activities that require the reading or writing of many smaller files (e.g. loading a game into memory) may be slower on the PQI drive than on other solid state drives we’ve tested.

AS SSD

AS SSD is another benchmarking tool quite similar to CrystalDiskMark, which uses predominantly incompressible data across a range of workloads including sequential tests, random performance and access times. First three numbers are MB/s and access time is in ms.

AS SSD Read	Seq	4K	4K QD64	Acc. Time	Score
PQI S537 SSD	513	27	193	N/A	271
Toshiba A100 SSD	489	37	319	N/A	405
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	325	27	249	N/A	308
Toshiba P300 HDD	155	0.5	1.6	N/A	18
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	73	1.8	15	26.3	15
Toshiba Canvio Premium	113	0.5	0.6	23.021	12
Samsung T3	345	24	32	0.100	91
Sandisk Z410	501	11	145	0.045	206
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	493	40	328	0.093	417
Samsung 850 Evo	516	34	382	0.059	467
Samsung 840 Evo	513	32	330	0.059	413
Corsair Neutron GTX	507	25	334	0.068	N/A

 

AS SSD Write	Seq	4K	4K QD64	Acc. Time	Score
PQI S537 SSD	415	84	234	0.069	360
Toshiba A100 SSD	430	74	288	0.209	405
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	258	76	247	0.046	349
Toshiba P300 HDD	114	0.5	0.6	16.7	13
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	46	19	5	18.2	39
Toshiba Canvio Premium	111	0.5	0.5	17.6	12
Samsung T3	367	56	71	0.055	163
Sandisk Z410	407	78	215	0.237	333
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	475	95	251	0.075	393
Samsung 850 Evo	497	66	299	0.051	415
Samsung 840 Evo	497	69	207	0.054	326
Corsair Neutron GTX	473	62	295	0.062	N/A

 

Again, the PQI S537 shows strong sequential and 4K performance, but worse results at higher queue depths, good for a score of 775 overall.

Note that there seems to be a ‘read access times’ bug in AS SSD under the current version of Windows 10; there is always an error message for that portion of the test and no result is rendered.

Atto Benchmark

Atto is always an interesting test because it shows the relationship between data set size and read and write speeds in considerable detail.

Atto Read	1KB	4KB	64KB	256KB	1MB	8MB
PQI S537 SSD	76	251	549	561	562	562
Toshiba A100 SSD	76	286	552	548	561	561
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	71	232	348	347	348	348
Toshiba P300 HDD	27	85	129	123	135	190
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	9	20	26	26	26	26
Toshiba Canvio Premium	9	33	117	117	117	118
Samsung T3	18	67	329	371	377	404
Sandisk Z410	78	247	518	531	536	533
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	83	286	537	553	552	553
Samsung 850 Evo	80	269	538	551	558	558
Samsung 840 Evo	94	280	535	551	555	555
Corsair Neutron GTX	15	61	336	452	530	540

 

Atto Write	1KB	4KB	64KB	256KB	1MB	8MB
PQI S537 SSD	72	210	426	413	447	432
Toshiba A100 SSD	53	231	524	533	534	543
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	68	201	270	270	267	271
Toshiba P300 HDD	16	74	120	113	123	128
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	3	25	37	55	53	53
Toshiba Canvio Premium	10	41	115	115	116	116
Samsung T3	20	71	315	365	366	388
Sandisk Z410	69	184	419	423	426	428
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	79	251	510	526	525	525
Samsung 850 Evo	83	255	519	529	534	534
Samsung 840 Evo	81	260	515	527	533	534
Corsair Neutron GTX	15	142	474	470	493	498

 

The S537 does reasonably well in the ATTO test, reaching its maximum speed relatively quickly and maxing out with read speeds above the drive’s rating. There is an unusual regression in write speeds though, with results dipping around the 256 KB chunk size mark. This is unusual, and perhaps again a sign that the controller isn’t working as efficiently as it could be.

HD Tune

We conclude with HD Tune Pro, a benchmark which produces three scores for average read speed, read access time, and burst read rate.

HD Tune Pro 5.50 Read	Average	Access Time	Burst Rate
PQI S537 SSD	332 MB/s	0.0 ms (?)	232 MB/s
Toshiba A100 SSD	330 MB/s	0.042 ms	99 MB/s
Drevo X1 Pro SSD	356 MB/s	0.042 ms	248 MB/s
Toshiba P300 HDD	126 MB/s	14.6 ms	294 MB/s
Toshiba H200 Hybrid	90 MB/s	16.9 ms	87 MB/s
Toshiba Canvio Premium	114 MB/s	17.9 ms	140 MB/s
Samsung T3	269 MB/s	0.090 ms	171 MB/s
Sandisk Z410	358 MB/s	0.035 ms	140 MB/s
Samsung 850 Evo M.2	321 MB/s	0.087 ms	221 MB/s
Samsung 850 Evo	370 MB/s	0.044 ms	250 MB/s
Samsung 840 Evo	358 MB/s	0.041 ms	231 MB/s
Corsair Neutron GTX	340 MB/s	0.059 ms	231 MB/s

 

Here the S537 has relatively variable performance, ending up with a reasonable average of 332 MB/s (and, somewhat remarkably, an access time rating of 0.0). The burst rate is good too, at 232 MB/s. Overall, a strong result that doesn’t highlight any flaws.

 

Wrapping up

The P537 SSD offers reasonable performance with fast flash memory, despite a few concerns regarding its controller. I’d personally go with a better-known brand if both were at the same price, but if you can find it 10-20% cheaper than a comparable Samsung or Toshiba drive then I’d say it’s worth it.