The drive
Standing at 9mm high and encased in aluminium that is thicker than most other SSDs', the Prevail Elite feels suitably premium at the outset.
Four regular screws are all that need to be removed to access the PCB inside. Note that doing so voids the warranty.
Here's the top side of the PCB. Eight Intel (IMFT) 25nm MLC NAND chips line this side. Remember, it is the quality of the NAND that predicates P/E performance, and PNY uses the same memory as found on Intel's DC S3700 enterprise drives. The vast majority of the SSD's cost rests with the quality of the flash memory.
Flip it over and the remaining eight 128Gbit chips are on display. PNY has used the SandForce controller (pictured left) for a while now and it works well with 25nm NAND. Be aware that the SF-2281 doesn't do so well when the files it deals with are incompressible in nature.
In a nutshell, PNY has used a popular flash controller that's allied to some of the longest-wearing MLC NAND available. Long-term reliability is more important than straight-line speed, clearly, but do understand that need for over-provisioning reduces available capacity by around 14GB when compared to other high-end drives.
