Introduction

Today, we have for review the Toshiba OCZ RC100 in its 480 GB variant. A few years back, the company was acquired by Toshiba, which gave OCZ the ability to be a first-class customer to Toshiba's flash chips and other NAND-related technology. In the meantime, OCZ has been fully integrated into Toshiba as their more consumer-oriented brand, while the parent company focuses on the business and enterprise sectors.

The RC100 is one of the first highly cost-optimized NVMe M.2 SSDs. It is built using just a single chip, which is made by Toshiba, and integrates the SSD controller and NAND flash into a single package. Due to the cost-optimized design, an external DRAM chip is not required—the RC100 is DRAM-less (more on that on the following pages).

This highly integrated design approach allows the RC100 to be shorter than the 80 mm of typical a M.2 SSD. With just 42 mm in length, it is the only M.2 SSD that also uses the PCI-Express interface (all other M.2 2242 drives on the market are SATA).

As its interface, the RC100 uses PCI-Express Gen 3 x2, putting it at half the width of traditional M.2 PCIe SSDs, which are x4. This move is another cost-optimization as it enables a simpler controller and makes the wiring on the PCB less complex. Due to the narrower interface, maximum theoretical transfer speeds drop from 4 GB/s to 2 GB/s, which should still be sufficient for a drive in this performance class.

The Toshiba OCZ RC100 SSD is available in capacities of 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB (this review sample). Warranty is set to three years for all these models.

Packaging and Contents

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2242 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 42 mm long.


Instead of PCIe x4 3.0, OCZ has opted for a narrower x2 interface, which has a theoretical transfer rate limit of 2 GB/s.


The PCB is completely empty except for the controller chip (which contains the NAND, too) and a few housekeeping components.


Not a lot is known about the Toshiba KBG30ZPZ512G controller, other than that it integrates an NVMe 1.2.1 controller and 3D TLC NAND in a single package.

DRAM-Less SSD Technology

The Toshiba OCZ RC100 has no DRAM chip on the PCB, which helps optimize cost even beyond what is possible with TLC as a significant portion of the BOM cost comes from the DRAM memory, in the order of about $8 per GB of DRAM.