Summary
When shopping for an SSD, you probably mainly care about its read and write speeds, as well as the capacity and price. That’s not a bad approach, but there’s another aspect of SSDs that can have a huge performance impact: the SSD controller.
What Is an SSD Controller?
An SSD controller is the brain of anSSD. It’s in charge of everything the SSD does. SSD controllers are specialized processors, and like any other computer processor, they can have significant differences in performance, features, quality, and price. These are the main jobs the SSD controller does:
There are other smaller jobs the controller does, such as garbage collection, bad block management, thermal throttling, and, honestly, many more. So it should be clear that the caliber of an SSD’s controller is a major factor in how well it works.
Why You Should Know Your SSD Controller
When you’re shopping for an SSD, it’s usually not too hard to find out what controller it’s using. Sometimes this will be listed in the official specifications of the drive. At other times, someone online may have opened their drive and physically checked the model number of the controller chip. This is usually necessary for drives made by small brands of uncertain providence.
Once you know what specific controller is in a drive you’re considering, you can get important information about what sort of performance you can expect. For example, any SSD can attain fast sequential read and write speeds, but for day-to-day computeringrandom read and write performanceis a bigger factor and more advanced controllers may be considerably better at this than others.
Picking the right SSD controller can make the difference when it comes to performance, durability, and data integrity.
Choosing the Right SSD Controller
If you want to dig into the minutia of scoping out the exact SSD controller in a prospective drive, here’s what to look for:
It’s always a good idea to look at how other (possibly more expensive) drives that use the same controller perform. Just bear in mind that the controller is not the entire picture. The type and quality of the flash memory will also affect the performance and durability of the drive. So try to compare drives that are similar in that regard as well.
