Renice X3 (SF1222) mSATA SSD User Review

Introduction

Reviewed below is a Renice X3 mSATA SSD which uses a SF1222 controller delivering a affordable, high performance storage upgrade for recent mSATA-equipped systems like Lenovo E220/E420, Y460/Y470/Y560/Y570, X220/T420/T520 and Dell Precision M4500/M6400/M6500. The X3 is available now for purchase from MyDigitalDiscount-US, FutureStorage-UK, b2\cit-CN or from Renice-CN.

X3 + basic 2.5" adapter as delivered	X3 internals front: note the conformal coating	X3 internals rear: using 34nm MLC flash	X3: in mSATA-to-SATA adapter

Renice X3 mSATA (aka K3M) specifications summary

Interface: mSATA Retail price: 30GB-US$120 60GB-US$190 120GB-US$300 Random 4kb reads : 120MB/s (measured 151MB/s)

Seq read/write: 260/200 MB/s (measured 219/106 MB/s) Average access time: 0.1ms Power consumption idle/active: 0.5/0.9W

Installation

Installation was straight forward. I placed the Renice X3 in the 2.5" adapter, placed it in my optical drive and did a block-for-block copy using Linux from my existing Renice X3 60GB SSD then used Easeus Partition Manager to expand the Win7 partition. It took a very quick 394s to clone, transferring at 152MB/s!! Windows users could use the Acronis TrueImage 15-day trial demo instead.

Performance Comparison: 120GB Renice X3 mSATA versus 60GB Renice X3 1.8" uSATA

Drive​	Standby/Idle/Active Power (W)​	Benchmark​
		CrystalDisk| PerformanceTest| atto​
Renice X3 (SF1222) 120GB mSATA SDD	0.5/0.9​
Renice X3 (SF1222) 60GB 1.8" uSATA SDD	0.5/2.0​

Test platform: HP 2530P ICH9M SATA-II using mSATA-to-SATA adapter placed in SATA optical bay caddy

The Renice X3 SSD is a very noticable improvement in performance over any HDD. Boot times decrease anywhere from 1/2 to 1/3, Firefox has no momentary seek delays when scrolling or reading/writing cache, applications just popup instantly and there are HDD seek noises. This makes for quieter and more productive user experience.

The tested SSD does have the preferred 34nm MLC flash. This was triple-checked and confirmed by Renice.

Power Consumption and Running Temperature

The specifications list the X3 as using 0.5/0.9W idle/active power so it sips very low levels of power, improving system battery life if compared to a HDD or other 2.5" SSDs. The X3 always remains luke warm to the touch even after heavy read/write benchmarking.

Garbage Collection

The SF1222 firmware has onboard GC as well as provides TRIM support. This ensures write performance is maintained at a peak.

One thing I did notice however was that write performance degraded after some usage seeing sequential writes reduced from 105MB/s to 65MB/s. OCZ tell us that consecutive benchmarks doing non-compressible writes cause write throttling indicated by reduced write benchmark performance. My solution to restore write performance was a secure-erase using hdparm, which erased the whole SSD.

Differences between mSATA and netbook-type mPCIe SATA SSDs

Renice has a different mPCIE SATA and mSATA product for netbooks and notebooks respectively. Delving deeper into their pinouts are very similar apart from the TXP/TXN and 3.3V pins marked in yellow. It means that with a small patch lead AND some cellophane taping either SSD could be interchanged. I've suggested Renice consider creating a unified product with small slider switch to allow the user to select netbook-mPCIe or notebook-mSATA functionality. Such a slider would improve the versatility of their product.

Using a mSATA SSD in your notebook

It has been asked many times on NBR: can I swap my wifi card for a mSATA SSD instead? The answer is no you cannot. The reason being the wifi slot uses pci-e or usb pins whereas the mSATA SSD requires SATA pins.

It would however be possible to mod in a mSATA SSD if you have an e-sata port and have space to accomodate the SSD. The e-sata port would need to be tapped internally with 4 shielded tx/rx lines leading to the mSATA SSD plus an additional 3.3V and GND to power it.

A request has been made to Renice to make a Legacy mPCIe SSD which adds a pcie-to-sata bridge so that wifi cards could be swapped out for such a SSD. The bios would not support boot from that device so could only be used for data storage.

Using a mSATA SSD in a 2.5" SATA bay

Renice offers a US$15 mSATA-to-2.5" SATA enclosure option like this with screw holes to exactly mimic a 2.5" SSD/HDD. Far more sophisticated than the basic mSATA-to-SATA adapter I used during this test.

Pros

• fast 4KB AHCI read performance
• low 0.9W active power consumption
• Win7 trim garbage collection maintains write performance
• internal automated garbage collection maintains write performance on XP installations

Cons

• 30/60GB is pricier-per-GB than Intel 310 mSATA <yet delivers marginal performance improvements
• new product with no product history

Conclusion

The Renice X3 is one of the highest performance MLC mSATA SSDs at an affordable price making it a very attractive upgrade.

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Related links

• Storagereview's Renice X3 mSATA SSD review
• mSATA & 1.8" SATA SSDs available - competing products currently available.
• Understanding SF1200 drives, TRIM, OP area use and Life write throttle: explains benchmark write throttling.
• mSATA FAQ: A Basic Primer
• Lenovo X220i installation- with significantly better 120GB Renice X3 mSATA CDM results.
• Renice support forum - direct interface to Renice engineers.
• Renice X3 firmware update - update to the newest if have any issues.

 

Excellent review...+1

 

Price on the 30GB and 60GB models seems a little high compared to the Intel 310 40GB/80GB models.

Good review. I'm really curious as to whether any of this will prompt Lenovo to whitelist mSATA drives in the future and require they be purchased with the unit. Also hoping the Sandforce controller meshes well with Intel's newest chipsets (though in both cases, I do see that Renice lists their drives as being fully compatible with the newest Lenovo products).

 

Renice lists the following Lenovo compatible model on their website:

E220s, E420s , Y460, Y560, K26, K47A, K47G, T420s, T420, T520, L420, L520, W520

I'm considering this Renice drive for my w520. I ordered an Intel but then canceled it after seeing the Renice and MyDigitalSSD specs. Waiting for more info on them.

 

Hi, in Renice's website i found this:
"Question: Why can I use fresh OS installation to a SSD, but not able to clone OS into it?

Answer: If you are able to install OS into your SSD, it indicates your SSD without any quality problem, then maybe your clone method is not correct. When you clone OS into your SSD, please do note you need to firstly delete the participation of your SSD, and also your cloning must be in FAT32 format.
Copyright (c) Renice Technology "

Can you please explain this better to me? That means i can't mirror in NTFS?

Tnx

 

Cloning to an ssd does not guarantee alignment. You should fresh install. but as far as cloning, you should be able to do it in any format. Perhaps make sure you don't have some kind of protection, such as read only.

30/60GB is significantly pricier-per-GB than Intel 310 mSATA yet delivers marginal performance improvements.

One thing I did notice however was that write performance degraded after some usage seeing sequential writes reduced from 105MB/s to 65MB/s. Forums suggest that running consecutive benchmarks doing non-compressible writes cause this. My solution to restore write performance was a secure-erase using hdparm, which erased the whole SSD.

So what would be the reason to buy???

 

The biggest downside of Renice compared to Intel is unknown reliability.

 

Yep. Intel has the lowest defect rate of any SSD manufacturer. They also have a year longer warranty (MyDigitalDiscount lists a 2-year on the Renice drives).

Does anyone know what flash chips are being used on the Renice SSDs? I'm guessing Micron from the pictures.

 

Random 4kb reads : 120MB/s (measured 151MB/s)

I am seeing 23 and 45 for 4k... where are these numbers coming from???

 

The more I see, the less impressed. Just saying.

 

Personally I think you guys are jumping to a lot of conclusions regarding this product.

#1 The SF-1200 controller is a tried and true solution for use SSD users and certainly blows the older out of date Intel solution out of the water.

#2 Re-guarding warranty do you really think that this SSD is going to be worth a pot to .... in in 2 or 3 years? With the way things are evolving we will see Terabyte SSD's at these prices by that time and these will be worth like $10.

#3 If you read the MyDigitalDiscout description carefully of the k3vlar edition you will see they added conformal coating which makes the SSD invulnerable to environmental conditions and insulates the drive from cooling and heating to fast or slow under use. It also comes with a mSATA to 2.5" SATA adapter so we can use the current SSD's that we have as a boot drive in our desktops.

Final thoughts don't knock it till you try it.

Also noticed they have another solution with the new Phison controller in it at a much better price to GB ratio than Intels and up to 128GB with performance to boot.

mSATA Solid State Drives | My Digital Discount

 

Nando. after the SE and using it for a while now, how is the degredation? Is it holding up better than after running all those benchies? I like the size, but worried about it after your post about writes dropping almost in half. Would be good to hear an update.

 

I've been using a 60GB Renice X3 uSATA in my 2530P since it slots perfectly in the primary 1.8" drive bay but is architecturally the same as the mSATA unit. You can see that write performance did decrease as I noted in the initial review.



Left: straight after a secure erase - full write speed
Right: after three months usage - throttled writes

The reason for the write throttling is explained in Understanding SF1200 drives, TRIM, OP area use and Life write throttle, main points quoted below:

And yes.. this would have been 2-3 runs of CDM with the resultant throttling as noted in the OCZ article. I'll just use it as it is for the time being and start my next Win7 rebuild with another secure erase. Then ensure no further CDM runs on the drive.

The Renice X3 uSATA has otherwise not skipped a beat. It's plenty fast, reliable and has extended my battery life. I'm seeing an impressive 7hrs of real battery life as measured by BatteryBar from my 6-call, currently at 52Whr. A 93Whr 9-cell would get me in the 13hr+ range.

Renice have indicated they are (or will be) bundling mSATA-to-SATA adapter with their product. Such a Renice X3 package then offers a versatile, reliable, low power, high performance (+optional: larger 120GB capacity) alternative to the Intel products.

 

I see your sequentials dropped, but your 4k's became better. For many of us in everyday use, that is the more important number. And normally a larger drive gives better speeds. If anyone on here with a 120gb could tell us their speeds. These are much better numbers. Thanks Nando.

 

120GB Renice X3 mSATA SSD - Lenovo X220i installation

In my initial review I wasn't seeing significant performance gains over a Intel 310 when benched on my HP 2530P. However, another user has benched this SSD on a Lenovo X220i Renice here whose CDM numbers, copied below, are significantly better.