MSI Spatium M480 Pro 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The MSI M480 Pro is based on the highly popular combination of Phison E18 PCIe Gen 4 controller paired with 176-layer 3D TLC NAND from Micron. In our review, the M480 Pro achieves impressive performance results, making it one of the fastest drives we've ever tested.

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[chrcoluk]

@W1zzard did you ever get a 2TB SN850X to test? curious if the sustained writes on that are improved over the 1TB version, seems looking at TPU review history you didnt review it.

 

[b1k3rdude]

@W1zzard, thanks posting the CDM scores. Overall bit a let down though, apart from the sequencial's, its not much faster than my old 960 pro was when new.

Im still waiting for a SSD to break the 4KQD1, 100MB/s read mark.... Maybe when we get Phison E26+ controllers..?

 

[chrcoluk]

Wow at the sustained write speeds, very impressive on that metric.

 

[QUANTUMPHYSICS]

I am so happy to see memory prices rapidly declining for 2TB, 4TB and hopefully 8TB soon.

 

[Chaitanya]

I think MSI does offer heatsink and non heatsink versions of their drives depending on users needs(laptops and motherboards with beefy heatsinks dont really need a preinstalled heatsink) so lack of heatsink is not really con if there is an option to choose between 2 versions.

 

[b1k3rdude]

@W1zzard -

1. is there any appatite for testing PCIe 5.0 drives in PCIe 4.0 amotherboard to see how its effects 4kQD1 r/w..?
2. is there any chance TPU can add an SLC cache filter to the SSD DB - https://www.techpowerup.com/ssd-specs/#

 

[MachineLearning]

I really appreciate that MSI often lists the exact controller in its spec sheet (which is also clean and easy to get to unlike some mfgs). Meaning, no bait and switch, in theory.

Thanks for the review.

 

[Chry]

Gen 4 drives in mid 2023

 

[Wirko]

Gen 4 drives in mid 2023

Yeah, no one will buy that when the new hotness is already around.

 

[Chaitanya]

Yeah, no one will buy that when the new hotness is already around.

Watched latest De8bauer's video and these early PCI-e 5 drives dont inspire confidence and they really need some beefy heatsinks just to keep temps in check at idle.

 

[chrcoluk]

Watched latest De8bauer's video and these early PCI-e 5 drives dont inspire confidence and they really need some beefy heatsinks just to keep temps in check at idle.

Also losing power consumption advantage vs spindles. Gen4 seems sweet spot for NVME currently I think,

 

[Wirko]

Watched latest De8bauer's video and these early PCI-e 5 drives dont inspire confidence and they really need some beefy heatsinks just to keep temps in check at idle.

See the TPU review of a Gen 5 drive, in particular the "Power at fixed speed" graph ... Yes, idle is bad enough (but lower in laptop-specific L1 ASPM power state). But it gets really bad when even a minimal activity is demanded form the drive. At Gen 3 speed of 4 GB/s you see what I'd call Gen 6 power consumption, about 4.7 W reading, 6.9 W writing.

 

[Chry]

See the TPU review of a Gen 5 drive, in particular the "Power at fixed speed" graph ... Yes, idle is bad enough (but lower in laptop-specific L1 ASPM power state). But it gets really bad when even a minimal activity is demanded form the drive. At Gen 3 speed of 4 GB/s you see what I'd call Gen 6 power consumption, about 4.7 W reading, 6.9 W writing.

I wonder what causes it? Isn't Gen 5 simply equal to PCIe 5 support? If so, it should simply allow more bandwidth without doing anything with the SSD itself? Unless those new gen5 models are pushed to their limits somehow?

 

[Wirko]

I wonder what causes it? Isn't Gen 5 simply equal to PCIe 5 support?

Yes, two names for the same thing.

If so, it should simply allow more bandwidth without doing anything with the SSD itself? Unless those new gen5 models are pushed to their limits somehow?

We don't know why. The E26 controller just seems like an unfinished product. It's made on 12 nm process and maybe had to be clocked very high so it can process data at the required speed. Also the industry hasn't yet gathered much experience in building stuff with PCIe 5.0 interfaces, so they chose not to optimise for low power but rather for reliability.