Following our review of the 512Gb Mushkin Reactor here I finally got the greenlight to crack it open and check on what’s inside and was generally pleased with what I found.
Starting with a quick tour of the outside we have a fully metallic shell(which appears to be aluminum based on it’s light weight and lack of magnetic properties) with a textured paint finish. The retaining screws that keep the drive assembly held in place are on the sides allowing the drive to be opened easily, although the warranty notice says that removing the screws voids it there are no visible security stickers or other methods to indicate if the drive has been opened(and honestly outside of curiosity there isn’t anything serviceable to open an SSD for)
Coming the end to this little exploration it seems that Mushkin has laid this drive out in a carefully planned and thoughtful manner including considerations for thermal performance as well as the flexibility to produce an enterprise level drive with only minor changes. The addition of a thermal pad on the controller should ensure consistent performance even in low airflow environments as well overall I’m impressed with the design and performance of this drive. My conclusion from my original review not only stands but is reinforced having done an internal exploration that this drive is an excellent choice especially in light of the flood of TLC based products. The pricing I mentioned in my original review hasn’t changed with 147.99 for the 512Gb model which we reviewed, a solid $20 dollars less than the Samsung’s 850 evo at 169.99 an even greater price disparity exists at the 1Tb class drives with the 1Tb Reactor coming in at 249.99 a full 60 less than the evo at 309.99 (that’s enough to buy one of the smaller ~120gb NVME drives in addition to the reactor) and I’d expect even better performance out of the larger drive especially on the write portion of testing although it would retain the same layout internally.