Packaging and Contents
Inside the package you will find just the SSD; no other accessories or documentation is included.
The Drive
The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 80 mm long. On top of the SSD, ADATA has glued a thin metal heatspreader. You can also find the SX8000 without that heatsink, possibly at slightly reduced pricing.
Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the ADATA XPG SX8000 uses a PCIe x4 3.0 interface.
I ripped off the heatspreader, which really is just a thin piece of flexible metal that's glued onto the SSD to provide a little bit of cooling for the controller and two flash chips on the front side of the PCB.
You will find the SSD controller and four flash chips on the PCB. Two DRAM chips are also present to provide the SSD controller with RAM and soak up write bursts.
The Silicon Motion SMI 2260 controller is the company's first PCIe NVMe controller.
The four MLC flash chips are rebranded to show ADATA markings only. My best guess is that these are Micron 3D MLC.