I am often asked if the read and write speed of an SSD has a big impact on the performance of the computer.
In the past, the answer I actually gave was usually not much. Today's SSDs are basically m2 interfaces, using PCIe protocol, the read and write speed is more than 3000MB s casually. Even if it is a SATA interface SSD, it has a speed of more than 500MB s and a random read and write speed much higher than that of a mechanical hard disk, which is higher than the speed of a mobile hard disk and a wired network port.
But recently, I was accidentally stuck in the neck by the speed of the hard drive because of several things.
The first thing that started was the NAS I was tossing and turning recently. Many digital experts who are worth buying now, should have NAS, NAS is indeed a good thing, with it, whether it is my own data storage or file sharing, it is much more convenient. You can also build a film and television library at home, and it is more convenient to watch movies.
However, it is not that you can use it comfortably after spending money to buy a NAS device, broadband bandwidth, intranet bandwidth, signal strength, and router performance all affect the experience. So after configuring the NAS, I upgraded Gigabit broadband, 25G cat stick, soft routing, 25G intranet. It took thousands of dollars to get to the bottom of the network, and finally the intranet speed was close to 300mb s.
Is 300MB s enough? It's enough, but there's no substitute for local storage! Don't listen to it casually, you can use NAS to edit directly** or even play games, that requires your network environment and stability to be very good, otherwise it will still load very slowly or lag, which will seriously affect the experience.
The second thing is because a friend asked me to help upgrade the storage of the PS5 game console. A friend, I wanted to help him upgrade for free and send him a favor. Since it's free,Then put an idle solid state at home on him.,But you can install it only to find out,PS5 requires a solid-state speed must be 5.5GB s or more. I had no choice but to buy him a new one.
Looking at my time-consuming and laborious NAS, there are two PCIe3 that can't be used for PS50 solid-state, I really recommend everyone, upgrade the storage space, give priority to honestly buy PCIe 40 SSD, and don't be stingy with this is not a big difference, one step in place to choose the flagship specifications, the speed of the SSD, is really important!
In order to upgrade PS5 for my friends, I finally bought a cost-effective Acer Shadow Knight N7000 SSD, and took this opportunity to test the level of this SSD to see how much the flagship-level improvement can be with the same SSD?
Acer N7000 is packaged in a more common carton, with a large "Qing" character printed on the front, representing its series identity. Shadow Knight Qing N7000 , belongs to the top high-end products in the Acer SSD line, and there are N5000 and N3500 below, the difference between them is actually very small, but the speed difference is very large, so at the current point in time, I give priority to recommending the N7000 with the best performance.
There are some basic parameters printed on the back of the package, including the maximum sequential read speed and the highest sequential write speed, which are 7200MB s and 6200MB s respectively, which can write the read and write speed directly on the package, which also means that the manufacturer has enough confidence in the quality of the product.
Acer's SSDs are produced by BIWIN Storage, a well-known memory chip manufacturer and listed company in China, and its strength cannot be underestimated. I have also tested BIWIN's solid-state product NV7400 before, and it is also a very good product.
Open the package, in addition to the SSD body, there are also accessories such as screwdrivers, manuals, etc. What's more distinctive is that it also comes with a laser sticker, which looks good on the chassis if it's a desktop.
The Acer N7000 adopts the standard 2280 size, single-sided particle design, small size, and better compatibility. The sticker on the front is very thick, which improves the aesthetics and also has the effect of heat dissipation.
I also tore off the heat dissipation sticker to take a look at the specific main control and particles. Acer N7000 uses Lianru's MAP1602 main controller, which is a very common PCIe40 main control chip, although it is no independent cache design, but the positioning and actual performance are at the high-end level, and the market reputation is good.
The particles are stored in the Yangtze River, and now the particles stored in the Yangtze River are also widely used, and the quality is not worse than that of imported particles. The capacity of my solid state is 1TB, 2 storage particles, and 512GB each. Acer N7000 can choose up to 4TB version, and it is estimated that the 4TB version is 4 particles with a capacity of 1TB.
The installation of the solid state on a notebook is simple, and most support M2. For notebooks with SSD expansion, you can see the solid-state slot by removing the shell, install it and tighten the fixing screws.
I have 2 m. on this laptopThe 2 interfaces are PCIe40 standard, but there is only one PCIe3 as standard0 Intel 670p 512GB solid-state, the standard solid-state is only about 3000MB s of read and write. Most laptops, in fact, the standard SSD is also at the same level, after all, if you are equipped with a flagship SSD as standard, the cost of the same capacity is much higher.
After completing the installation, you can simply create a partition through the hard disk management tool that comes with Windows, and the Acer N7000 shows a capacity of 931GB in Explorer, which is normal.
After that, I used multiple hard drive test score software to test the test, and the results are as follows.
According to the usual practice, it must be to take a look at the basic parameters of Acer N7000 first, and here is a good look for you, which is of little significance to the hard disk that already knows the parameters, but it will not be repeated.
CrystalDiskMark's results are more reflective of the true strength of a hard drive, and will be closer to the official nominal parameters.
I used CrystalDiskMark to do 5 rounds of 1GB read and write tests, and the results are as follows, the read speed of Acer N7000 is 715596mb s, write speed 620004mb s, it can be seen that the sequential read and write results have basically met the official declared speed. The 128k and 4k reading and writing tests also showed a very good level.
The AS SSD Benchmark can accurately test the real read and write level of the hard drive, which will be similar to the actual use situation, and the score will be lower.
The Acer N7000 has a running score of 5760 points and a sequential read speed of 525308mb s with a sequential write speed of 393093MB S, although not as good as the nominal speed, but because the AS SSD benchmark is characterized by a low score, it is also at the normal level.
What surprised me was that the read and write speeds of the 4K-64THRD can also reach more than 1700MB s, which shows that the N7000 has strong random read and write capabilities.
I also tested the speed of Intel 670p, which can only be said to be miserable in comparison, the gap is very obvious, and the difference between the SSDs with different positioning is really not a little bit worse, but a difference of one or two times.
The content that HD Tune can test is actually very comprehensive, but unfortunately the accuracy of many of HD Tune's scores is not too high, sometimes the difference is quite big when tested twice, so now everyone tests the hard disk results, and does not mainly use HD Tune as a reference. However, the advantage of HD Tune is that it can easily test the sequential read and write speed of large files to confirm whether the SSD will be slowed down.
I did a sequential read/write test of 900GB directly with HD Tune, which is equivalent to filling up the solid state directly, but the N7000 performed very well, and the speed curve was basically a straight line with no noticeable speed drops.
Finally, a round of disk benchmarking was conducted using ATTO, which was able to visually test the read and write speed of the solid state at different file sizes. When the file size of the N7000 exceeds 128KB, the performance is very stable, and the read and write speeds exceed 5GB S, so you don't have to worry about reading small files at all, and the ideal speed is not reached.
Although for most people's computers, the SSD is no longer the bottleneck of performance, but in fact, the increase in the speed of the hard disk is still obvious to the actual experience.
I usually edit some ** occasionally, but now I shoot casually, it's 4K specification**, and high-bitrate** editing is a big challenge for graphics cards, processors and hard disks.
First of all, let's take a look at the import speed of 4K footage using NAS direct editing. I dragged in a total of 444GB size 4K footage, observe how long it will take to load (subject to the completion of the audio track).
In the end, I waited more than 9 minutes for the load to be completed, which would have been too much of a delay if I had been in a hurry.
Next, I tried to load the file in Intel 670p, and this time the loading speed was significantly improved, and it was loaded in 1 minute and 27 seconds.
In the end, I copied the material to the Acer N7000 for testing, and it was faster, only 1 minute and 15 seconds, and in the loading process, the disk occupation was actually only about 10%, and there was a lot of redundancy, at this time, even if you opened a *** or played a game at the same time, you won't feel the lag.
PS5 has clear requirements for the installation of hard disks, among which the two more important points are that the continuous read speed needs to reach 5500MB S, and the interface needs to support PCIe 40 m2。This requirement will block most low-end SSDs, but not for the Acer N7000.
The installation of the SSD is also very easy, with a screwdriver. Remove the side cover before opening the case.
The slot comes with a set screw, so there's no need to use the small screws that come with the SSD.
Once installed, simply replace the protective cover and side panels.
After restarting PS5, you will be prompted to format the hard disk, confirm according to the prompts, and after the formatting is completed, the read speed of the hard disk will be displayed. The Acer N7000 measured a read speed of 6486MB s, which is not as good as the 7156MB s measured on the computer, but it is completely adequate.
I moved the Witcher 3 Wild Hunt to an additional Acer N7000 and tested the game launch speed against each other.
The end result is that the Acer N7000 is a bit faster than the PS5's own hard drive, but the difference is not very obvious, and the Acer N7000 will be 3 seconds faster than the built-in hard drive.
I also tested FF16, Duo and other games, and the final results were all the same, and there was almost no difference between the Acer N7000 and the PS5's built-in hard drive.
Well, this is the end of the test of the Acer N7000, and it will be safe to use in PS5 after that. In general, the Acer N7000 is indeed very cost-effective, and with a mid-range SSD, you can buy a performance that does not lose flagship, which is very cost-effective.
It is also recommended that if you want to choose an SSD in the future, you should also choose Acer N7000 or similar flagship performance products, compared to PCIe3, which has a lower speed0 solid, much better.