Test Setup

The motherboard in our SSD test system is the Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha. As well as a slew of full speed SATA 6Gbps ports, this motherboard supports U.2 SSDs, full-length (22110) PCIe x4 and SATA M.2 SSDs, as well as, of course, drives that connect directly to PCIe expansion slots. This means we can test all manner of PCIe storage devices without bandwidth restrictions.

The CPU is overclocked to 4.5GHz (45 x 100MHz) with a vcore of 1.28V, and it's paired with 16GB (4 x 4GB) of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 clocked at 3,000MHz. All CPU power saving features are disabled, and the system is ran in the High Performance power mode, ensuring that storage devices are always operating at peak performance.

Test System

•     CPU Intel Core i7-6700K at 4.5GHz (45 x 100MHz)
•     Motherboard Asus Maximus VIII Hero Alpha
•     Memory 4 x 4GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 2,800MHz DDR4 at 3,000MHz
•     PSU Corsair AX1500i
•     SSD OCZ Arc 100 240GB
•     Case Corsair Graphite Series 760T
•     CPU cooler Corsair Hydro Series H100i GTX
•     Operating system Windows 10 64-bit