Storage Performance
To test the storage performance in our motherboard reviews, I use Anvil’s Storage Utilities. It has a wide variety of tests per run and allows me to define the data to be used.
We run the benchmark tests on the SATA III, PCIe and USB 3.0 and other available storage options. For SATA III and USB testing, I’ll use a Toshiba OCZ VX500 512GB SSD. The PCIe capabilities will be tested with one of Intel’s awesome 900p Optane SSD drives with 280GB. It should be noted that the PCIe drive also is the OS drive.
SATA Performance
SATA is the somewhat traditional interface used by most drives. The Toshiba OCZ VX500 is a nice mid-range drive which will suit the interface well.
NVMe PCIe Performance
NVMe is used by the next generation of drives, and they eliminate the bottlenecks created by the by now old SATA standard. These drives are the future, and I’ll be testing those capabilities with the Intel 900p SSD with 280GB capacity.
NVMe M.2 Performance
M.2 has become the most common next-generation standard which means we’ll test that too, whenever it is available. For these tests, I’ll be using one of Toshiba OCZ’s RD400 drives with 512GB capacity.
