Patriot Memory Burst Elite PBE960GS25SSDR 960 GB

Cheap and cheerful

Patriot Memory Burst Elite is one of the cheapest 2.5” SSDs on the market and supports SATA 3 connections. The manufacturer positions it as an affordable and reliable system drive in a PC or laptop that does not need to be overwritten daily 300 - 500 GB of data. Naturally, the cost of the device leaves its mark on the characteristics, so the buyer will have to put up with some nuances in the work.

Using different types of memory

For example, drives use a single memory chip, although in most devices of this size, manufacturers prefer to use two flash memory chips. It is also not entirely clear what type of memory we are talking about. On the official website, the manufacturer does not provide direct information about this, in the reviews you can find information about both TLC and simpler QLC memory, which can be confusing.

Serious amount of SLC cache

The controller is a popular 4-channel Silicon Motion SM2259XT chip in the low-cost sector, which supports SLC caching technology, can work with both types of memory (TLC and QLC), but does not support DRAM buffering. Instead, the manufacturer allocated almost a quarter (!) of the total drive capacity for dynamic SLC cache. This is a very decent meal. This is due to the fact that after the cache is filled, the operational speed of the device drops by almost 10 times, equaling with conventional HDDs.