Renice K3VLAR-E (EWS720) ZIF SSD User Review

Note the subtle name difference for two completely different Renice ZIF SSD products: K3VLAR-E (EWS720 native PATA) and the K3VLAR (Indilinx+Marvell sata-to-pata).

Introduction

The Renice K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD uses a native PATA EastWho EWS720 SSD controller providing hardware garbage collection (GC), low power consumption, high levels of compatibility and fast 15MB/s 4kb random reads all at a budget price. A feature set which makes it one of the best storage upgrades for ZIF PATA ultraportable notebooks. It is available now for purchase from MyDigitalDiscount-US, MemoryC-US, Future Storage-UK, -CN or from Renice-CN. Below is my user review of this product.

K3VLAR-E kit unboxing	60GB K3VLAR-E ZIF internals, top and bottom EWS720 plus Intel 34nm MLC NAND Flash	60GB K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD installed in a HP 2510P	120GB K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD installed in a HP 2510P

Renice K3VLAR-E 1.8” ZIF PATA SSD Specifications summary

Interface: 1.8” ZIF ATA7 Standard Retail Price: 30GB-US$110 60GB-US$140 120GB-US$280 240GB-US$600 Random 4kb reads: 16MB/s (measured 15MB/s @UDMA5)

Sequential read/write: 120/90 MB/s for 120/240GB size 120/60 MB/s for 30/60GB size (measured 91/52 Mb/s @UDMA5 for 60GB model) Average access time: 0.1ms Power consumption idle/active: 0.5/1.3W

Installation

Installation was easy. Flicking the stiffener into an upright position as shown here allowed very easy insertion of the ZIF cable. I placed the ZIF HDD into the supplied USB enclosure and used Linux dd to clone the disk. Windows users could use Acronis TrueImage 15-day trial demo instead.

Once installed, the K3VLAR-E worked flawless together with the PATA slave optical drive work as shown or with my newmodeus sata-to-pata caddy with 2.5" sata HDD jumpered as slave, as shown. Many other ultraportables are factory delivered with the simpler single ZIF HDD or SSD setup, configured as the master PATA device.

Performance Comparison: Renice K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD versus Toshiba ZIF HDD

Drive​	Standby/Idle/Active Power (W)​	Benchmark​
		CrystalDisk| PerformanceTest| atto​
Toshiba MK8009GAH 80GB 1.8" ZIF HDD 4200rpm	0.12/0.3/1.0​
Renice K3VLAR-E (EWS720) 60GB 1.8" ZIF PATA SSD	-/0.5/1.3​
Renice K3VLAR-E (EWS720) 120GB 1.8" ZIF PATA SSD	-/0.5/1.3​
Renice K3VLAR (Indilinx) 128GB 1.8" ZIF PATA SSD	-/0.5/2.0​

Test platform: XP.SP3 HP 2510P U7600-1.2 2GB ICH8M UDMA5. WEI from Win7/64.

The Renice K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD is a very noticable improvement in performance over the HP supplied 1.8" ZIF HDD. Boot times decreased to a third, Firefox doesn't have momentary seek delays when scrolling windows or reading/writing cache, applications just popup instantly and there are no longer any HDD seek noises. Experiencing this sort of quiet speed makes it difficult to go back to using a slow, noisy ZIF HDD.

I've included the Indilinx+Marvell sata-to-pata bridged K3VLAR for comparison. The synthetic benchmarks suggest the K3VLAR is faster but in real life use I can't tell the difference them. Boot times look identical. My web surfing and admin work has them both perform equally well, far better than the ZIF HDD they replaced. Even when cloning my partitions from my 2.5" HDD both gave the same ~35MB/s average write performance. Only place I could envisage the K3VLAR really outclassing the K3VLAR-E would be in very heavy drive multitasking or if you could deliver fast streamed network data to your system requiring very fast writes. Both hypotheticals in my case.

Power Consumption and Running Temperature

This is where the K3VLAR-E's native PATA controller shines. I see my idle power consumption as low as 5.6W. When using the ZIF HDD I'd only ever seen it go as low as 5.9W. This means battery life improvements. The SSD chassis always remains cool to luke warm to the touch even after heavy reading and writing.

In contrast, the K3VLAR has higher power consumption which reduced my battery life compared to the ZIF HDD it replaced. It runs warm-hot which I could feel on the 2510P underside as a hotspot when used on my lap. This was something I noticed on another Indilinx bridged SSD, the Runcore ProIV, so quite likely affects all Indilinx ZIF SSDs.

Garbage Collection

There is no Win7 TRIM support so the user is dependant on the hardware garbage collection to maintain 'as new' write performance levels. The AS-Cleaner component of a Tony Trim can be scheduled or manually started to quicken the process. In my case, I'll just run AS-Cleaner during a extended coffee break if I see reduced write performance.

Pros

• lowest power consumption in class ensures low operating temperature and great battery life
• native PATA controller ensures a high level of compatibility (no UDMA2 or sleep/resume issues)
• respectable 4kb random and sequential I/O performance
• hardware garbage collection maintains write performance on XP installations

Cons

• require pricier 120GB product to see the fastest write performance levels
• no Win7 TRIM support so users rely on GC to maintain write performance
• <strike>new product with no product history</strike>

Conclusion

The Renice K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD offers a well balanced performance and power consumption profile at a surprisingly affordable price. I highly recommended it to anyone who has a ZIF-equipped ultraportable. It is easily my favorite ZIF SSD for value and features from all the ones tested so far in my HP 2510P.

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Related links

• 1.8" ZIF SSDs available - competing products currently available.
• 128GB Photofast G-Monster V4 ZIF SSD review - uses the same EWS720 controller. Identical circuitboard.
• Renice K3vlar K3E (native PATA) SSD review in Macbook Air RevA
• Renice support forum - direct interface to Renice engineers.

 

Excellent job on one more review...

 

Sorry to bug you again nando4. So I bought the Renice SSD. Definitely improvement in a variety of areas, but still doesn't seem to resemble the real power of Renice SSD. Previous SSD was able to do 70mb/read, this one um.... not even half atm >.>



I did some reading, saw your thread on write speed capping, doesn't seem to apply to me. (I gave it a try anyway). I also did some tweet, just can't get the read higher.

Any ideas/suggestion?

 

Congratulations on the purchase. You are seeing speed capping due to UDMA2 transfer mode and 33Mhz IDE timings. Full diagnosis of the problem and fix has been kindly provided in the http://forum.notebookreview.com/sony/534634-vaio-tz-guide-ssd-install-upgrade.html#post6901410 post.

As you are running the Renice K3VLAR (Indilinx) product, please post any further queries/comments in the http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...indilinx-zif-ssd-user-review.html#post6799294 thread.

 

Reviewed below is the 60GB product whose write speed is 66% that of the 120GB or 240GB product. Note the subtle name difference for two completely different Renice ZIF SSD products: K3VLAR-E (EWS720 native PATA) and the K3VLAR (Indilinx+Marvell sata-to-pata).

 

Sorry :x for wrong section :x

 

I wish I had gotten this drive instead. You were definitely right about power consumption. I'd easily give up write speed for more battery.

 

Hello,

A question: has this item been tested with an actual Macbook Air Rev A as it is listed as compatible? I just want to be sure that there are no sleep issues associated with the drive. I purchased the KEVLAR PATA ZIF SSD just a month before this cooler and lower voltage drive was announced and wished I could have ordered this one instead ... But at least I know the previous SSD is tested with no sleep issues with macbook air.

So I am planning to purchase this new one with a native PATA controller, but I need to be sure it has no sleep nor any compatibility issues 1st.

Thanks!

Yeewei

 

Well I guess I will be the one to answer my own question. Yes the drive does work nicely in my macbook air. Just installed it yesterday and it does appear to run cooler than the previous drive which I had.

No problems so far, but will report if there are any.

Cheers!

 

Bought a 60 gb K3E and installed it in a Macbook Air Rev A. So far, I've been extremely satisfied - great performance, no sleep issue.

 

I replaced slow 120GB 1.8 zif HD in my HP 2510P with K3VLAR-E 120GB SSD. Now it boots at least 2 times faster and the same is with browsing. Till now any problem. I was only afraid to not break tiny stiffeners... I hope that I do not change my positive experience half year later...

 

After a lot of doubts and thoroughful reading of this forum, I bought 120Gb version of K3VLAR-E and installed it into my HP 2710p last weekend... I WAS BLOWN AWAY by results!!!
WOW. I expected some improvement, but I did not expect it could be THAT good.
Now my Vista makes a complete reboot cycle in less than 3 minutes, before that with "native" 80gb HDD it took 15 min. I intentionally sacrtificed boot time to get better system response, so during the boot it was copying to RAMdisk and remapping most oftenly used files, search indexes, ReadyBoot cache, antivir databases, etc - but now it is doing the same in a couple of minutes!!! Any app that took at least a minute to start, like Firefox or Outlook, now opens in 5 seconds, it feels like my system became 5x faster!
WOW. Thank you Nando and others who run this forum.
Next step will be unlocking the 2nd core of CPU and switch to Win7.
Great work you doing here! Respect, forever

 

Bought Renice 60GB K3VLAR E (K3 E) from Mydigitaldiscount but there was no ZIF cable inside, hence I could not replace HDD by Renice part on my Sony Vaio TZ3 RXN B. Could anyone suggest what kind of ZIF cable I need to plug SSD into USB enclosure? What connectors should be on each of the sides of ZIF cable?
Thank you in advance.

 

Easy...Open up you TZ..take the HDD out and connect the Renice...it's a ZIF connector..

 

Hi there!

Could you please tell me which of the two options will give me greater speed/performance?

Option 1: Newmodeus sata-to-pata caddy with Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 2.5" 64GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) (Sustained Sequential Read: Up to 415 MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s); Sustained Sequential Write: Up to 95 MB/s (SATA 6Gb/s).

Option 2: The 60G Renice K3VLAR-E ZIF SSD.

Thank you!

 

The caddy + Crucial M4 will be faster but at the expense of your battery life. The caddy will add 0.7W overhead even before the M4's higher-than average power consumption. This will give noticably worse battery life than your current ZIF HDD.

If going this route then I'd recommend a ebay caddy instead of the newmodeus one for it's better functionality. The newmodeus one has a 30s startup hang in the 2510P (unless jumper it into slower slave mode) and doesn't support TRIM. Those issues do not occur with the ebay caddy.

The Renice K3VLAR-E will give respectable performance and very low power consumption, better than the existing ZIF HDD. Unless you are doing heavy multithreaded disk I/O there will be no visible difference in performance between it and the M4. You'd also get to keep your optical drive.

A ZIF SSD+5mm HDD implementation in a 8mm cavity?

I'm wondering also if owner of ZIF systems with a 8mm cavity but is using a thinner 5mm ZIF HDD would want to see if a deshelled ZIF SSD can be daisy chained with a ZIF cable above it in a master/slave configuration. There would be room to accomodate it given the original ZIF HDD was 8mm tall. The ZIF HDD would need to be jumpered as slave. The daisy chaining would involve placing a second ZIF cable in the ZIF HDD's socket and connecting it to the ZIF SSD. This is exactly how IDE cable works.

2510P owner's can't do this since the optical drive is connected as a slave device already. Dell D420/D430 or HP 2730P owners could try it.

 

Thank you, nando4! I guess I will go with newmodeus caddy as I cant find ebay caddy on ebay. Another things is that my 2510p is 3 years old and I dont think that my next notebook will be with 1.8 PATA drive, so, there is a good chance to save the 2.5 in drive for the next machine. Also, I don't remember when I used my dvd drive last time, and crucial would be the brand I personally trust more than Renice.

So, what I want to do is to buy the caddy, drive and 1.8 in enclosure for my dvd drive. install the 2.5 in drive as a slave, connect the dvd via USB and install the new windows xp on the 2.5 in drive. I would like to use the machine without 1.8 in HDD as I am worried about extra heat to be generated by caddy and 2.5 in drive. Another thing is that since I am using windows XP, I probably shouldn't worry about TRIM feature. If you see any discrepancy in what I mentioned about, I would appreciate if you let me know.

Would 2.5 7200 HDD generate too much heat in the caddy?

Thank you!

 

Replied to in the more appropriate http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...e-using-optical-bay-caddy-47.html#post7912442 thread.

 

Just finished installing a Renice K3VLAR E 120GB on my Sony Vaio TZ298N/XC(fresh install W7 PRO).Bought it from MDD however took 1 month to get it(guess they don't keep it in stock).For what I use the lappy for the results are excellent.

 

Hi,

I juste have bought K3E 120go for my dell latitude XT.

After a fresh install, when i'm testing read/write speed, i can see very slow write : i'll post screenshoot as soon as possible but it's 15-24 MB/s in write with 70-80 in read.

Udma mode is 5 (it seems to be not possible to put in 6) and i have readed your thread for write caping ( http://forum.notebookreview.com/hp-...87-hp-2510p-owners-lounge-28.html#post5519419) but it doesn't apply for me because controler of dell is amd ipx 600/700/800.

Do you think that i can do a think for improve it ? when i'm installing softwares, my ssd is slower than older hd sometimes :s

 

There used to be a very extensive thread about this problem here which I was involved with, where users manually tried to switch the SB800 chipset into UDMA6 mode . Unfortunately the thread is gone.

The conclusion was the chipset itself was limiting writes to ~30MB/s something that Dell+AMD should investigate. The same problem was occurring regardless of what SSD was being used (Runcore ProIV, Mtron Mobi, Renice K3VLAR/K3E).

 

Ok, I see. Thanks for your fast reply. If i had known this information, i havn't bought renice (expansive, 340$ CAD) with this capping..



After all windows 7 update, performances are a little quicker than before.

 

If you truly want the best performance within your write capped framework then I'd suggest getting a Runcore ProIV.

The ProIV has a Indilinx BF + sata-to-pata bridge chip. MDD informing me those units are now using the more compatible Marvell bridge chip so it would be performing pretty much the same as a http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...indilinx-zif-ssd-user-review.html#post6799294 . 4kb writes would be greatly accelerated. Downside to that unit is the higher cost, operating temperature and power consumption; and some bios don't want to play nice with the bridge chip (eg: bootup in UDMA-2 mode).

 

Ok, i keep this ssd in case of dell would have a solution. But if not i'll order a runcore with trim support, I think that will be better for me.

I'm hoping that help some latitude xt's users for their futures choices. Unless this issue, after all reinstallation done, all is very well on this laptop, battery and reactyvity are increased so not so bad. (when i'm doing test in 100MB instead of 1000MB on crystaldisk, read is a little slower but write is a little quick 32-33 in Seq and 17-19 in 512k)

Thanks for your responses.

 

@ nando

sorry to post here in this old topic, I have a Mac book Air, I would like to know if you can recommend Renice K3VLAR-E or Runcore Pro IV 1.8'' ZIF PATA SSD
If you have any other suggest i will consider it ( Photofast - SuperTalent)

Thanks

 

I list my recommendations in http://forum.notebookreview.com/sol...-1-8-zif-pata-ssds-available.html#post6861746 . There are three standouts which I'll summarized with pros/cons below. The Mtron is too small and expensive so it comes down to the ProIV and EWS720 units both of which are excellent. Go the ProIV if want speed and TRIM support, or the EWS720 units for low power consumption. They are in the same price category. When I had a 2510P my bias was battery life so I preferred the EWS720 units over the Runcore ProIV for it.

Mtron Mobi (max 32MB)
+ fast
+ SLC, so don't need trim
- high power consumption
- high cost per GB

Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD
+ fastest MLC ZIF SSD atm
+ TRIM support for Win7
- high power consumption due to sata-to-pata bridged architecture
- runs hot

EWS720-based SSDs
+ low power device, extends battery life. Runs cool.
- slower than the above two
- no TRIM support