A-Data XPG SX8200 Pro M.2 ASX8200PNP-512GT-C 512 GB

Grey mouse

ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro is an ascetic-looking M.2 NVMe SSD due to the absence of a heatsink, which is now a rarity. However, it is one of the fastest 512 GB PCI-E 3.0 x4 SSDs. Models with even faster PCIe Gen4 interfaces tend to start at 1TB.

Honorary Pioneer

The XPG SX8200 Pro is based on the dual-core SM2262EN controller, the older PCI-E 3.0 Silicon Motion controller. The EN suffix indicates support for an external operational buffer. Moreover, SM2262EN is the first and so far the only SSD controller with support for dual-channel RAM. Therefore, two DDR3L chips with a total volume of 512 MB and a bandwidth of 32 bits (16 + 16 bits) are soldered on the printed circuit board of the drive.

At the limit

A powerful controller and fast RAM cache have a positive effect on IOPS, that is, the number of read and write operations per second — 390 and 380K, respectively. The flash memory in the XPG SX8200 Pro uses 3D TLC manufactured by IMFT, a joint venture between Intel and Micron. The sequential read speed in the Crystal Disk Mark test, regardless of the disk size, is 3500 MB / s, which is almost the maximum throughput of PCI-E 3.0 x4.

virtual array

But the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro linear write speed varies: 2300 MB / s for the 512 GB version and 3000 MB / s for the 1 and 2 TB versions. In addition, due to the use of TLC memory, a high write speed is maintained only until the volume of the virtual SLC array is exceeded, which is 15 percent of the storage capacity. And this is more than an SSD on a competing bunch of Phison controller and Toshiba flash memory. After the array overflows, the speed decreases by about a quarter and the disk needs time to recover. ADATA offers both the more affordable QLC SSD A-Data Ultimate SU630 ASU630SS-480GQ-R and the slightly more expensive A-Data XPG Spectrix S40G RGB AS40G-512GT-C with a decorated RGB backlight heatsink.