Toshiba recently introduced the RC500, a non-consumer-only NVMe SSD, which is now available in stores. The M.2-2280 form factor makes it suitable for most of the more up-to-date motherboards and the street price of around 80 euros from is quite interesting for some upgraders who don't want or can swing the big ball right away. Toshiba uses its own controller and flash memory from its own factory for the RC500. But is such a part and if so suitable for whom? I tested the newly released SSD at once.
The flash memory called BiCS4 X3 consists of a total of 96 layers and stores three bits per cell (TLC). The whole thing runs via a four-channel, own controller. However, only PCIe Gen3 x2 is supported. The harvest rate is up to 1.7 GB and the write rate is up to 1.6 GByte/s. The IOPS is estimated to be up to 355,000 reading and up to 410,000 writing.
The RC500 also uses an SLC buffer, so the data is written into a special cache of 1 bit instead of 3 bits – after which the speed drops dramatically. But I don't want to prejudge my test.
The board also reveals via the so-called UL number that Toshiba Memory has been operating as Kioxia for some time and this was officially communicated in October. For the curious, I have also attached the data sheet again, the benchmarks and the test of the SLC cache are available on page two.
RC500.pdf
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