Patriot Pyro SATA III Solid State Drive Review

Name: Patriot Pyro SATA III Solid State Drive
Brand: Patriot

by Marco Chiappetta — Wednesday, August 03, 2011, 08:00 PM EDT

Performance Summary: The Patriot Pyro 120GB SSD we tested performed as expected, considering the drive’s similar configuration to a couple of others we evaluated in a recent round-up. With highly-compressible data and in most transfer tests, the Patriot Pyro performs extremely well and keeps pace with every other SandForce-based drive we’ve seen. With incompressible data, however, the asynchronous NAND flash memory and SandForce controller combo used on the Pyro falter a bit, as shown in the AS-SSD and CrystalDiskMark tests, but this is expected behavior with a drive of this type, and performance is still very good overall.

The Patriot Pyro will initially be available in 60GB, 120GB, and 240GB varieties, with various price points. The 120GB model we’ve featured here will be sold for about $209.99.

At that price, the 120GB Patriot Pyro comes in at approximately $1.87 per gigabyte, which put it on par with Corsair’s Force Series 3 drive and makes it one of the more competitively priced SandForce SF-2200 based drives out there. Looking back at its performance and knowing that the drive is backed by a 3 year warranty, we can’t help but recommend the Patriot Pyro. If you’re looking for a fast, relatively affordable solid state drive the Patriot Pyro should be on your short list of considerations.

Competitive Pricing
Strong Performance
3 Year Warranty

Slows Down With Incompressible Data
Asynchronous NAND

Tags: SSD, Storage, MLC, drive, Patriot, disk, SATA III, Pyro

Marco Chiappetta

Marco's interest in computing and technology dates all the way back to his early childhood. Even before being exposed to the Commodore P.E.T. and later the Commodore 64 in the early ‘80s, he was interested in electricity and electronics, and he still has the modded AFX cars and shop-worn soldering irons to prove it. Once he got his hands on his own Commodore 64, however, computing became Marco's passion. Throughout his academic and professional lives, Marco has worked with virtually every major platform from the TRS-80 and Amiga, to today's high end, multi-core servers. Over the years, he has worked in many fields related to technology and computing, including system design, assembly and sales, professional quality assurance testing, and technical writing. In addition to being the Managing Editor here at HotHardware for close to 15 years, Marco is also a freelance writer whose work has been published in a number of PC and technology related print publications and he is a regular fixture on HotHardware’s own Two and a Half Geeks webcast. - Contact: marco(at)hothardware(dot)com