Packaging and Contents

Inside the package, you will find the SSD and a black heatsink you may install. ADATA has decided not to pre-install the heatsink to avoid problems on motherboards that come with their own M.2 cooling solution, which means you'd have to rip off a pre-installed heatsink. Very good idea!

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which means it is 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the ADATA XPG SX8200 uses a PCIe x4 3.0 interface.


Heatsink installation is really easy; just make sure you stick it on in the right orientation. Note how the white sticky thermal pads line up with the controller (silver) and both flash chips (black).


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 SM2262 is an eight-channel flash controller with support for NVMe 1.3, TLC, and DDR3/DDR4 memory.


The four 3D TLC flash chips are produced by Micron and rebranded by ADATA. For cost optimization, ADATA buys silicon wafers from Micron, cuts them up, tests and bins the chips, and puts them inside their own packaging.