Patriot Pyro SE 120GB Solid State Drive Review

Final Thoughts
The Pyro SE from Patriot is a very solid drive.  As far as performance goes it is right on par with the other SandFoce-based drives in its class and performs just under its older brother the Patriot Wildfire.  Unfortunately we did not test the original Pyro so we cannot definitely tell you the performance difference between the two, but from what we’ve seen online the Pyro SE fits nicely between the original Pyro and the Wildfire giving Patriot 3 different solid state drive segments.

Although the naming scheme makes things confusing.  What does the SE stand for? Most would assume “Second Edition” and when you are thinking of second edition you think of the newer drive based on new technology.  Like a SATA 3GB/s drive compared to a SATA 6GB/s drive or something similar.  This naming scheme can really confuse people looking at all 3 Patriot drives.

This is a SandForce-based drive so you do get the added features that the SandForce SF-2200 controller offers. The drive will do real-time loss-less compression. This is why there is no need for a cache chip, but also means less writes to the data cells. RAISE (Redundant Array of Independent Silicon Elements) is a term we have heard a lot with these new drives. So on top of ECC for data protection RAISE adds another level of security. This drive also supports TRIM as almost all solid state drives do these days.

Patriot does include a 3-year warranty with the drive, which is pretty standard when it comes to solid state drives.  The drive does not come with a mounting bracket, like many of the other solid state drives we have reviewed.

The Pyro SE 120GB is selling at my favorite online retailer for $179.99, but does have a $40 mail in rebate making the drive only $149.99, which makes it very competitive when compared to other drives in its class.  Overall ThinkComputers gives the Patriot Pyro SE 120GB solid state drive a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!

rating9 10 small TC award recommended small

Pros:
– Great performance
– Competitive Price
– 3 year warranty

Cons:
– Weird naming scheme

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