SSTC Tiger Shark Elite 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The SSTC Tiger Shark Elite offers blazing fast PCIe Gen 5 speeds of up to 12 GB/s. This makes the drive the fastest SSD we've ever tested. In our comprehensive review we're taking a closer look at real-life performance and how it compares to PCIe Gen 5 10 GB/s drives.

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[chrcoluk]

Crazy sustained writes performance and good it stays online when its throttling.

Glad you mentioned they probably should offer some kind of heatsink.

I am curious, how do you manage the sustained writes test when dealing with throttling? Is that a lower demanding test vs the temperature test?

 

[TristanX]

do you tested it with PCIE4 M2 Slot ? ASUS ProArt Z690-Creator WIFI do not have PCIE5 M2 slots. Or maybe other mobo was used

 

[W1zzard]

do you tested it with PCIE4 M2 Slot ? ASUS ProArt Z690-Creator WIFI do not have PCIE5 M2 slots. Or maybe other mobo was used

I used a X16 PCIe Gen 5 card

 

[mechtech]

You missed mean cool looking shark teeth sticker under positive

will a gen 4 nvme perform any different in a gen 5!slot?

 

[gurusmi]

Not available in germany. We have a small handful PCIe 5.0 NVME drives. Adata, Corsair, Crucial, Gigabyte, Seagate. And that's it. Only Crucial has a 4TB drive available. It's a shame. I will wait and decide later what to integrate on my new rig. I want to have a 2TB and a 4TB drive.

 

[Avro Arrow]

I had never heard of SSTC before but those numbers are just insane. I'm guessing that a lot of it has to do with the fact that the Tiger Shark is PCIe5 but even so, there's no way that it would be worth $300USD to 99.9% of people. My system drive is a 500GB WD Black SN770 PCIe4 NVMe (it beat the SN850 in the 75GB read and write tests, wow!). The NVMe drives that I use to hold games are a WD Blue SN570 PCIe3 1TB and a couple of TeamGroup MP33 PCIe3 2TB. On an MP33, Starfield and Hogwarts: Legacy both load in 5-6 seconds. Sure, the Tiger Shark is way faster but we're kinda splitting hairs at this point. Somewhere in your system there will be a bottleneck that negates most of the advantage from having an uber-fast NVMe. Hell, even if you're getting triple the speed (which won't happen but let's say that it does for the sake of argument), who's going to care about a game taking two seconds to load instead of six? If waiting six seconds for a game to load instead of two is a huge deal to someone, then they clearly have one or more problems that cannot be solved with PC hardware.

If I'm building a high-end gaming box with a budget of ~$2000, these would be my choices (not including case and fans):

CPU: R7-7800X3D - $400
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Spectrum V3 - $35 (-$20 off right now)
Motherboard: ASRock X670E PG Lightning - $260
RAM: GeIL Polaris 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM RGB DDR5 6000 - $94
Video Card: ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC 24GB - $949
System SSD: Soldigm P41+ 512GB PCIe4 NVMe - $25 (-$2 off right now)
Gaming SSD: Soldigm P41+ 2TB PCIe4 NVMe - $65 (-$2 off right now)
PSU: EVGA Supernova 850G5 850W 80+Gold-Certified Full-Modular - $160
Total: $1,984

What would you be willing to sacrifice in that list to get the $300 for an SSTC Tiger Shark? I can't think of anything that I'd be willing to lose for it.

 

[TristanX]

could be nice to test it also on PCIE4 M2. Most users do not have PCIE5 M2 and are curious if there will be advantages on slower slot

 

[gurusmi]

I had never heard of SSTC before but those numbers are just insane. I'm guessing that a lot of it has to do with the fact that the Tiger Shark is PCIe5 but even so, there's no way that it would be worth $300USD to 99.9% of people. My system drive is a 500GB WD Black SN770 PCIe4 NVMe (it beat the SN850 in the 75GB read and write tests, wow!). The NVMe drives that I use to hold games are a WD Blue SN570 PCIe3 1TB and a couple of TeamGroup MP33 PCIe3 2TB. On an MP33, Starfield and Hogwarts: Legacy both load in 5-6 seconds. Sure, the Tiger Shark is way faster but we're kinda splitting hairs at this point. Somewhere in your system there will be a bottleneck that negates most of the advantage from having an uber-fast NVMe. Hell, even if you're getting triple the speed (which won't happen but let's say that it does for the sake of argument), who's going to care about a game taking two seconds to load instead of six? If waiting six seconds for a game to load instead of two is a huge deal to someone, then they clearly have one or more problems that cannot be solved with PC hardware.

Some people like me don't play on a computer.

I use my build for 3D scanning/Modelling/Print preparation. And there one is using much bigger data. Also for programming and Excel. My actual tablesheets takes around 15min for recalculation with my actual 3800x. A full scan on a foot i.e. takes up to 3-5millions of data points. Those ones have to be saved. When converting it to a 3D Model this Model will have a filesize of at least 100MB saved at each modification. When that model-file is prepared to print one saves the file more often. After the print peparation one has (Depending on the size= let's say >500MB of a file. So tjhis is a more heavy usage of the SSD sub system.

To get all of this running fast my rig looks like the following:

CPU: 7950X
CPU Cooler: Custom Loop with all from Alphacool and EKWB
Motherboard: Asus X670e ProArt
RAM: Kingston Fury 64GB (2 x 32GB) 288-Pin PC RAM RGB DDR5 6000
Video Card: Sapphire Nitro+ RX7900XT water cooled
System SSD: Crucial T700 2TB or Samsung 990 Pro 2TB
Data SSD: Crucial T700 4TB or Samsung 990 Pro 4TB
PSU: MSI (Whatever) 1000W

The total incl. Case and Water cooling is around 6k €. Additional different 3D printed individual parts.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

@W1zzard have i missed something here??

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard have i missed something here??

View attachment 313380


View attachment 313381

Ah I forgot to update it in the table, it's 3 years .. fixed, thanks!

 

[Alexandru Laslau]

Hi, I don't think it's a matter of 2000 GB and 1800 usable. From what I know hard disks use base 10 to count bytes and windows uses base 2.
You can search like this on google: 2000 gigabytes to gibibytes and it will give same answer you posted in review.

 

[Chrispy_]

Hey look, it's this month's new "fastest SSD ever" to replace last month's "fastest SSD ever" in a market that's completely bored of speed because real-world performance has barely improved enough to measure despite the order-of-magnitude speed improvements....

The exciting SSDs in today's market are the ones breaking ground in the capacity/$ metric, whilst still being fast enough that their speed isn't ever the bottleneck. In other words, the opposite end of the spectrum to this Tiger Shark Elite.

There's nothing wrong with a fast, expensive drive, but they're just pointless for 99.9x% of people.

 

[DemonicRyzen666]

If I'm building a high-end gaming box with a budget of ~$2000, these would be my choices (not including case and fans):

CPU: R7-7800X3D - $400
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Spectrum V3 - $35 (-$20 off right now)
Motherboard: ASRock X670E PG Lightning - $260
RAM: GeIL Polaris 32GB (2 x 16GB) 288-Pin PC RAM RGB DDR5 6000 - $94
Video Card: ASRock Radeon RX 7900 XTX Phantom Gaming OC 24GB - $949
System SSD: Soldigm P41+ 512GB PCIe4 NVMe - $25 (-$2 off right now)
Gaming SSD: Soldigm P41+ 2TB PCIe4 NVMe - $65 (-$2 off right now)
PSU: EVGA Supernova 850G5 850W 80+Gold-Certified Full-Modular - $160
Total: $1,984

What would you be willing to sacrifice in that list to get the $300 for an SSTC Tiger Shark? I can't think of anything that I'd be willing to lose for it.

That's not high-end that's mid-range.

 

[Chrispy_]

I think I have a good analogy for NVMe drives:

Two people board the same transatlantic flight and sit in adjacent seats but one of them paid $1000 for their ticket and the other paid $5000. The flight lands after 10 hours and the person who bought the $5000 ticket exits the airport 30 seconds ahead of the other person because they're slightly better at navigating the airport terminal.

 

[Avro Arrow]

That's not high-end that's mid-range.

An R7-7800X3D with an RX 7900 XTX is "mid-range"? Yeah, ok....

I did say it was a "Gaming box" didn't I? Yup, I sure did!

 

[sLowEnd]

I'm not sure why anyone would want one of these E26-based SSDs at this point, when more efficient controllers are around the corner.

Silicon Motion Readies PCIe Gen5 SSD Platform with 3.5W Power Consumption [UPDATED]

www.anandtech.com

 

[Mussels]

Not available in germany. We have a small handful PCIe 5.0 NVME drives. Adata, Corsair, Crucial, Gigabyte, Seagate. And that's it. Only Crucial has a 4TB drive available. It's a shame. I will wait and decide later what to integrate on my new rig. I want to have a 2TB and a 4TB drive.

With your profile pic, it's an utter crime you can't get one easily.

Hey look, it's this month's new "fastest SSD ever" to replace last month's "fastest SSD ever" in a market that's completely bored of speed because real-world performance has barely improved enough to measure despite the order-of-magnitude speed improvements....

The exciting SSDs in today's market are the ones breaking ground in the capacity/$ metric, whilst still being fast enough that their speed isn't ever the bottleneck. In other words, the opposite end of the spectrum to this Tiger Shark Elite.

There's nothing wrong with a fast, expensive drive, but they're just pointless for 99.9x% of people.

That's why w1zzy does real-world testing and not just synthetics - windows/game load times are more important to the average user.

 

[gurusmi]

@Mussels:
My profile pic is the shark at the movie Nemo.
The only 4TB PCIe 5.0 drive available in Germany is that crucial T700.

 

[Chrispy_]

That's not high-end that's mid-range.

What exactly are you smoking? That's a flagship CPU and GPU.

CPU: R7-7800X3D - $400
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 Spectrum V3 - $35 (-$20 off right now)

No! 7800X3D and 5800X3D have very high heat density, you absolutely cannot cool them effectively with cheap direct-contact heatpipe coolers. At the bare minimum you need a beefier air cooler with a proper base plate that can spread the load over multiple heatpipes. The concentrated area where heat is produced in a 7800X3D is channeled into one or two heatpipes at most with a direct contact cooler, resulting in those heatpipes being overwhelmed and vapor-locked. I've read about the issue on forums, and I've experienced it first-hand with a large 5-heatpipe direct-contact model like the Thermalright Assassin King, getting completely overwhelmed by a 5800X3D, whilst the same CPU not throttling on an old Cryorig M9 which is a pissy little 92mm cooler with just 3 heatpipes, but also a proper copper base plate to sread the hotspot to all three heatpipes.

 

[TheLostSwede]

will a gen 4 nvme perform any different in a gen 5!slot?

No.

 

[Gameslove]

So, for gaming PCI-E 5.0 SSD is useless... The best price / performance stay here 3.0 / 4.0 PCI-E.

 

[Chrispy_]

So, for gaming PCI-E 5.0 SSD is useless... The best price / performance stay here 3.0 / 4.0 PCI-E.

*IF* DirectStorage catches on and improves, maybe faster SSDs will show an advantage.

At the moment, DirectStorage appears to be almost vaporware and the only two games that use it don't show any significant differences; We're talking 2% framerate differences at most (within the margin of error for testing) comparing a slow SATA Samsung 870 EVO at ~500MB/s to a PCIe 4.0 Crucial P5 Plus at ~6000MB/s.

A decent Gen3 drive is plenty fast enough, and I couldn't see a difference when I moved my install to the library drive sitting in a PCIe 3.0 x2 slot, which limits speeds to around 1700MB/s.

 

[chrcoluk]

*IF* DirectStorage catches on and improves, maybe faster SSDs will show an advantage.

At the moment, DirectStorage appears to be almost vaporware and the only two games that use it don't show any significant differences; We're talking 2% framerate differences at most (within the margin of error for testing) comparing a slow SATA Samsung 870 EVO at ~500MB/s to a PCIe 4.0 Crucial P5 Plus at ~6000MB/s.

A decent Gen3 drive is plenty fast enough, and I couldn't see a difference when I moved my install to the library drive sitting in a PCIe 3.0 x2 slot, which limits speeds to around 1700MB/s.

Testing I seen shows DS to significantly improve texture pop in and have stutter benefits on these games, not sure why avg FPS is being used to assess DS. Also preventing textures loading in at lower resolution as much.

Can people not see past FPS numbers or something as if thats the only metric that matters?

The testing also showed however gen 5 isnt needed for DS, so any company marketing a gen 5 SSD I would take that with a pinch of salt, I think the SN850X gaming mode has been talked about on here as well with suggestions to keep it turned off.

Agreed on fast gen 3 being good enough.

 

[Chrispy_]

Testing I seen shows DS to significantly improve texture pop in and have stutter benefits on these games, not sure why avg FPS is being used to assess DS. Also preventing textures loading in at lower resolution as much.

Can people not see past FPS numbers or something as if thats the only metric that matters?

The testing also showed however gen 5 isnt needed for DS, so any company marketing a gen 5 SSD I would take that with a pinch of salt, I think the SN850X gaming mode has been talked about on here as well with suggestions to keep it turned off.

Agreed on fast gen 3 being good enough.

was that early Forspoken testing, pre patch?
That wasn't a good example, the game was broken and does not reflect on DirectStorage particularly accurately.