P200 Solid state drive — Patriot Viper releases its P200 Series of Solid State Drives

Patriot releases a great new series of internal hard drives with theP200, a drive that may allow you to finally put the last nail into your old spindle drives!

Solid-state hard drives have made many advances in the past few years but the most significant of those has been affordability. Patriot is offering some great options for enthusiasts and gamers who want to break into the SSD market.

So after upgrading my GeForce video card and improving my ram to 16GB, my next choice was to upgrade my old 7200RPM hard drive.

Testing The Patriot P200

I ran some test before and after to see exactly what I got and, to put it mildly, it was a significant improvement.

My 7200RPM drive clocked in at 145.9ms read speed vs the Patriot’s 551.9 ms, so in terms of milliseconds, the Patriot is several times faster.

When it comes to writing information, it was 146ms on my 7200 rpm drive to 552ms on the Patriot, so installing or changing information on a document is much faster. You will spend considerably less time looking at a pinwheel and waiting with the Patriot P200.

Game Testing the Patriot P200

On copying game data, I used The Witcher 3 for benchmarks. It took only 310ms seconds on the Patriot to load files vs 548ms seconds on the 7200RPM drive. This is important for loading levels and maximizing the frames per second that you need to maintain a smooth Picture.

I don’t think you need much more to see that you get close to double the performance using Patriot’s SSD’s versus a fast 7200 RPM drive. If you are still using a 5200RPM drive, the difference is that much more significant. Essentially you have to ask yourself whether you value performance over space.

Does your data want a nicer home or a bigger one? If I were to choose, I would definitely go for an SSD for my operating system and my more important applications. To save money, I may add either an internal or external spindle drive to back up all my bulk files.

You may also want to consider cloud storage for backing up your personal pictures, videos, and files.

Specifications of the P200

SMI 2258XT Series Controller
Global wear leveling algorithm maximizes SSD lifespan
Automatic sleep and wake-up mechanism power saving
Built-in power-on reset and voltage regulators.
Built-in temperature sensor.
Trim Support
Longer lifetime cycle (TBW)
MTBF: >2,000,000 hours SPECIFICATIONS:
4K Aligned Random Read: up to 90K IOPs
4K Aligned Random Write: up to 80K IOPs
Sequential Read (ATTO): up to 530MB/s
Sequential Write (ATTO): up to 460MB/S
Terrabytes Written (TBW): 640TB
Interface: SATA III 6Gb/s • Form Factor: 2.5″
Operating Voltage: 5v
Operating Temperature: 0 ~ 70°C

Pros and Cons of the P200

The Patriot P200 has some really good things going for it such as

Intel 3D NAND 64-Layer TLC (2019 Edition)
Great price to capacity ratio
Overall affordability with the 500gb coming in at around 65$
SMI 2258XT Performance
TBW 320 Performs well for home use

Recommendation

When it comes to speed and value, it is almost impossible to overlook the Patriot P200 series.

As I am writing this my plans are to purchase two or three more of the 500GB models to upgrade some of my older PCs at home to extend their lives a bit further. I had purchased a few former business computers that were i5 machines and I think they will make great home theatre/ light gaming computers with the addition of the Patriot P200.

At just $64 for 500GB and $113 for 1TB, it is hard to pass up. I might even stick a 256GB into an external case to use on my RetroPie home arcade cabinet. Even if you choose to go big with the 2TB model, it is only $239.99 which may not seem cheap until you look at other drives at that capacity.

Affordability + Speed + Dependability = a value you may not want to pass up!