The rising popularity of Thunderbolt 3, coupled with the emergence of NVMe SSDs in the compact M.2 form-factor, has enabled a new class of portable high-performance flash storage devices. External SSDs with a Thunderbolt interface have been around for a few years now, but, the price to performance ratio had prevented them from getting wide acceptance. Things are changing with the portable Thunderbolt 3 SSDs, and wallet-friendly choices are emerging, thanks to Phison's reference designs that went public at the 2018 CES. We recently reviewed TEKQ's Rapide, a portable Thunderbolt 3 SSD using a Phison controller (but, not the 3D TLC-based low-cost reference design). Patriot Memory looks likely to be the first vendor to bring a version of the reference design to the retail market in the form of the Patriot Evlvr. Patriot is still working on the final packaging of the product for retail availability by the end of Q3 2018, but, they sent us one of their 1TB pre-production units for evaluation.

Introduction

The Patriot Evlvr is a 90mm x 45mm x 12mm silver-colored external SSD with an aluminum chassis. It sports a single Thunderbolt 3 interface for both power and data. The port is enabled by the Intel JHL6340 Thunderbolt 3 Controller - note that this belongs to the Alpine Ridge family, and hence, works only with Thunderbolt 3 Type-C ports. On the other side of the JHL6340 is a PCIe 3.0 x4 connection that leads to a M.2 slot capable of accommodating M.2 2260 or 2280 PCIe SSDs. There are no plastic components in the chassis. The chassis also incorporates thermal pads for the Thunderbolt controller as well as the M.2 SSD.

Despite the main board supporting a PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD, the Patriot Evlvr uses a PCIe 3.0 x2 NVMe SSD. As the photographs in the gallery above show, the SSD uses a Phison PS5008-E8 controller. The stick includes four flash packages (Toshiba BiCS 2 3D TLC flash), along with 512MB of DDR3L DRAM.

The set of Thunderbolt 3 SSDs that we have evaluated is quite small - the only other unit in its capacity class is our DIY configuration with the TEKQ Rapide enclosure and the SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD.

Synthetic Benchmarks

Various synthetic benchmarks are available to quickly evaluate the performance of direct-attached storage devices. Real-world performance testing often has to be a customized test. We present both varieties in this review, starting with the synthetic benchmarks in this section. Prior to covering those, we have a quick look at our testbed setup and testing methodology.

Testbed Setup and Testing Methodology

Evaluation of DAS units on Windows is done with the testbed outlined in the table below. For devices with a Thunderbolt 3 (Type-C interface) connections (such as the Patriot Evlvr TB3 SSD 1TB that we are considering today), we utilize the USB 3.1 Type-C port enabled by the Intel Alpine Ridge controller. It connects to the Z170 PCH via a PCIe 3.0 x4 link..

The full details of the reasoning behind choosing the above build components can be found here. The list of DAS units used for comparison purposes is provided below.

• Patriot Evlvr TB3 SSD 1TB (formatted in NTFS)
• DIY TEKQ Rapide - SanDisk Extreme Pro TB3 SSD 1TB
• LaCie Rugged Thunderbolt 500GB
• TEKQ Rapide TB3 SSD 240GB (NTFS)
• TEKQ Rapide TB3 SSD 240GB (exFAT)
• d2 TB2 - SSD

Synthetic Benchmarks - ATTO and Crystal DiskMark

Patriot claims read and write speeds of 1.5 GBps and 1 GBps respectively, and these are backed up by the ATTO benchmarks provided below. Unfortunately, these access traces are not very common in real-life scenarios.

Drive Power Consumption - CrystalDiskMark Workloads

Patriot Evlvr TB3 SSD 1TBDIY TEKQ Rapide - SanDisk Extreme Pro TB3 SSD 1TB

The peak power consumption remains below 6W, but, the average bus power draw over all workloads is consistently higher than the other units being compared.

Support for TRIM is important to make sure that the performance consistency is maintained even after the SSD has been subject to long-term use. Since the Thunderbolt interface is transparent for all practical purposes, and the host OS sees a PCIe NVMe SSD, it comes down to the internal SSD supporting TRIM. We were able to successfully activate TRIM in the Patriot Evlvr.

The final aspect that needs to be addressed is the pricing - Patriot announced that the 1TB variant of the Evlvr would retail at $490. On a per-GB basis, this translates to the Evlvr being the most affordable Thunderbolt 3 SSD that we have tested. We believe that the target market for Thunderbolt 3 SSDs can be divided into two - one belonging to the professional content creators market where time is money, and the other being the average consumer that just wants a fast portable drive and is only read to pay a small premium over a USB-based flash drive like the Samsung Portable SSD T5 or the SanDisk Extreme Portable SSD. The former requires extreme performance, and is willing to pay the price premium for that - Devices like the Sonnet Fusion, LaCie Bolt3, TEKQ Rapide, and our DIY configuration with a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD (SanDisk Extreme Pro M.2 NVMe 3D SSD with the TEKQ Rapide enclosure) target that market. The Patriot Evlvr is one of the first portable Thunderbolt 3 SSDs to target the latter segment. That said, one of the aspects that make devices such as the Patriot Evlvr (and other low cost Thunderbolt 3 SSDs that will use the Alpine Ridge controller) a tough sell is their incompatibility with the generic USB Type-C ports. These SSDs work only with Thunderbolt 3 ports, and while the former market segment is able to easily understand that, the second segment may increase the customer support workload.

Flash prices are on a downward trend, and it is possible that the 1TB Evlvr could launch at a price lower than the planned $490. Even at that price, devices such as the Patriot Evlvr are sure to please cost-conscious consumers, and that is bound to benefit the Thunderbolt 3 ecosystem.