BIOSTAR Announces M500 Series M.2 NVMe SSDs

[btarunr]

BIOSTAR today introduced the M500 line of solid-state drives in the M.2-2280 form-factor, with PCI-Express 3.0 x2 interface. These were first shown off at Computex 2018. The drives take advantage of the NVMe 1.2 protocol. Available in capacities of 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB; the drives feature DDR3L DRAM caches of 256 MB, 256 MB, 512 MB, and 1 GB, respectively. Sequential performance numbers put out by the company are up to 1,700 MB/s reads, with up to 1,100 MB/s writes.

The drives pack a couple of handy innovations, beginning with the integrated metal heatspreader, which wraps around three sides of the drive. Near the end of the drive are two indicators - one is a green link/activity LED and the other is an RGB LED that indicates real-time temperature measured at the controller, with red being the hottest, green being the coolest, and yellow~amber indicating typical/normal temperature. The company didn't reveal pricing.



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[CheapMeat]

It's a minor detail but I was hoping they'd make the PCB black this time. =/ I like the informative LEDs on these. I know it's superfluous but I like stuff like that. I love blinkenlights for example.

 

[dj-electric]

Personally i'm surprised BIOSTAR still exists.

I have no idea how a company with 0 innovation like that can keep on going.
There's absolutely nothing in their products that should convince anyone to buy those.

 

[hat]

How much more innovative can an NVMe drive get? It's a stick with a bunch of memory chips soldered to it. In any case, I thought Biostar was a value brand. They may not make products in the same tier as ASUS, MSI, Gigabyte etc, but they're there... for less.

 

[dj-electric]

but they're there... for less

I wish. Seen no BIOSTAR product with compelling specs and pricing. This poor drive will probably get ran over by something like an ADATA SX8200

 

[bonehead123]

Why.....

x2 interface ????
1.2 protocol ????
1700/1100 r/r ????
blinky bling bling.....

really, whats the point of this, other than yet ANUTH elcheapo, bottom barrel drive sold by an elcheapo company with zero talent for innovation and absolutely no marketing savvy whatsoeva......

 

[FreedomEclipse]

Personally i'm surprised BIOSTAR still exists.

I have no idea how a company with 0 innovation like that can keep on going.
There's absolutely nothing in their products that should convince anyone to buy those.

Because Asia is their main target market. They are also a big OEM board maker or at least used to be.

Their products are distribution outside of Asia is rather limited but they still get some of their stock out to europe and stuff. They tried to hit the enthusiast motherboard market back in the skt.939 days then again during the intel skt.775 but just like ECS, didnt really keep the pressure on and just decided to fade away.
Biostar did a lot better than ECS did though I had a Biostar P45 board which was pretty good.

 

[Prima.Vera]

I stop reading after PCI-Express 3.0 x2 interface...

 

[Ruru]

Do I see right or does the heatsink go around the drive? At least for Rampage V Extreme that prevents the installation, even with my little Alphacool heatsink installing my M.2 drive was impossible.

Personally i'm surprised BIOSTAR still exists.

I have no idea how a company with 0 innovation like that can keep on going.
There's absolutely nothing in their products that should convince anyone to buy those.

I guess they made money so much with their mining stuff

 

[pccrazy]

Really nice, let's say innovation with LED that indicates the temps. Not bad at all. Would really like to see soon some real tests and comparisons to other M.2 SSDs and of course the prices.