Mushkin is well known for its value-minded storage, and its Source drive ($64.99 for the 500GB version we tested) proves that shopping for a 2.5-inch Serial ATA solid-state drive on a budget doesn't have to mean sacrificing performance for price.
With on-the-mark results for a SATA drive through much of our testing, the Source is a solid buy for casual users who want to save a few bucks and still get top-end speeds out of their next SATA drive.
Just know that for users who tend to push a heavy write load day-in and day-out, its lower-than-average endurance rating, short warranty, and DRAM-less nature are the trade-offs for the savings.
Boostin' It on a Budget
The Mushkin Source is based on the same 64-layer 3D NAND TLC fabrication process as most budget drives these days.
(For more about TLC and other key SSD lingo, check out our SSD dejargonizer.) It's also what's known as a "DRAM-less" SSD, which uses an on-drive controller that maps the locations of the drive's data to the main NAND cells, instead of to a hunk of dedicated memory.
This helps reduce the cost, but it tends to force more writes to the memory cells, and thus reduce effective drive life over time, all else being equal.
Indeed, the Source is rated for only 200 terabytes written (TBW) at the 500GB capacity of my test drive, which is slightly below the average for a drive of that size class.
Following from that, in predictable form, it's backed by a three-year warranty, where many competing drives offer five years.
It's less of a worry that the drive will go stone kaput in year four or five, but more a reflection of the write endurance of the NAND cells.
Users who write way more data than average to the drive could see some cells degrade and a reduction in capacity (as "worn" cells get decommissioned) after a few years.
(More on that in a moment.)
At $64.99 MSRP for the 500GB version I have here for testing, the Source comes in just short of 13 cents per gigabyte, which is definitely on the low end of the price spectrum, down there with the early QLC-based efforts.
All else being equal, SATA drives tend to be cheaper than PCI Express ones, and this model is as inexpensive on a per-gigabyte basis as any of its ilk.
(Compare, for example, the cost for the 1TB, QLC-based Samsung SSD 860 QVO that PC Labs tested not long ago, at 15 cents per gig.)
That price makes sense when you consider the durability rating, however.
A typical durability rating for a SATA SSD of this capacity is between 120TBW and 250TBW.
Because, in theory, portions of the drive may give out earlier than others if you write to it a ton, you'd end up potentially needing to buy a new one sooner.
But the likelihood of this being a real concern comes down to how you actually use the drive.
That's because TBW ratings are based on typical user usage patterns, and the length of the warranty reflects that rating.
How so? The drive maker has determined that an average user would not exceed the TBW within the warranty period, or else the drive maker will be in a world of hurt replacing drives under warranty!
Given that 200TBW equates to an average of about 182GB of data written per day, every day, for three years, 99 percent of users won't come within a country mile of that kind of daily data volume.
And that means, for the most part, you can feel secure that you saved a little money while also getting a drive that's snappy for its price bracket.
(If you edit video for hours a day, or do lots of large, single-push file transfers, however, you'd do well to spend a little more.)
Capacities and Features
If you're curious how the other size variants of the Source line up on durability and price, here's a quick table that breaks down the whole line...
Most folks will find that a 120GB or even a 250GB boot drive cramps their style these days, especially if they tend to download recent PC games or lots of high-res photo or video.
The 500GB Source tested here and the 1TB version are the clear value leaders of the Source family.
(Day-to-day reseller sales can skew the dynamic, of course; these calculations are based on MSRP.)
Other features of the Mushkin Source include the company's enhanced data-protection suite, dubbed "MEDS," as well as an SLC caching feature, and support for both secure erase and S.M.A.R.T.
The SLC caching, in particular, is an important piece of this puzzle, as it helps to bring down the cost of manufacturing the drive, while also maintaining the kinds of performance you'd expect from SSDs in higher price tiers.
It does this by temporarily allocating a part of the drive's TLC memory array and treating it as virtual one-bit SLC, writing data to those cells as one bit per cell rather than the three bits it would on the rest of the NAND.
Once the cache is filled or a convenient pause happens, the data is "flushed" to the rest of the drive, and the process restarts.
Unlike most other major SSD makers, Mushkin does not offer its own deep software suite or utility to help you manage the drive.
If you want to make use of typical SSD-utility options such as secure erase, you'll need to do so through a third-party application.
Keeping Pace With the SATA Big Dogs
Admittedly, given the bargain pricing of the Mushkin Source, and the moribund state of SATA-drive performance these days, we weren't expecting a rocket in the speed department.
Sure, any variations you see in SATA speeds these days are minimal enough to be imperceptible.
But even so, the Source's price point should have put it on the lower end of the speed spectrum.
You can imagine our surprise, then, when the drive ran in pace with the rest of the pack.
First up is PCMark 8's Storage test, which simulates everyday disk accesses in tasks such as editing photos and web browsing.
These results were right on the mark for what most SATA 2.5-inch drives post these days...
Its Crystal DiskMark Sequential Q32T1 read results were in the normal range, while its write speeds were a bit faster than we were expecting...
The Crystal DiskMark Sequential tests simulate best-case, straight-line transfers of large files.
In contrast, the 4K (or "random" read/write) tests simulate typical processes involved in program/game loads or bootup sequences...
Reads were a bit lower than we might have liked, but the drive's Crystal DiskMark 4K write results are right in line with what we would hope any SATA 2.5-inch SSD would post, and given the Source's pricing, this marks a win for the drive here.
It remains competitive with the Crucial BX500, another budget drive we tested this year, and was right in line with slightly costlier options such as the Kingston Fury RGB and the Samsung SSD 860 QVO.
Last up is a series of file and folder transfers done in the AS-SSD benchmarking utility, copying large files or folders from one location on the test drive to another...
Here, the Source stumbled slightly during the program folder transfer, but held its own on the ISO and game folder transfers with drives that cost a few cents more per gigabyte.
That's a fist-bump to this budget drive for hanging tough.
Budget Doesn't Always Mean Bad
We were pleasantly surprised to see such an aggressively priced drive perform as well as the Mushkin Source did in our tests.
As we mentioned, the differences in speeds are modest enough that in most situations, a user wouldn't feel the difference in daily use except in edge cases.
But it's good to know that, at least in the Source's case, spending less doesn't have to equate a big performance hit.
If you do a lot of heavy, sustained file transfers on a daily basis, this is not the right drive for you, due to its lower TBW rating and DRAM-less design.
But for run-of-the-mill workloads or upgrading an older PC from a hard drive to an SSD on the cheap, it will serve most folks just fine.
If you can find a competing model on sale for the same price or within $5 or $10, we'd go with the more feature-filled or longer-warranty model.
But for the truly budget-strapped, the Mushkin Source proves it's not always price alone that determines value in the SATA SSD market.
The Bottom Line
Mushkin's Source provides on-the-button SATA speeds at an attractive budget price, minus frills and software utilities.
It's a strong value-SSD pick for users who don't intend to write heavily, or as a first upgrade from a hard drive.
