Packaging and Contents

The Drive

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


Instead of PCIe x4 3.0, Apacer has opted for a narrower x2 interface, which has a theoretical transfer rate limit of 2 GB/s.


You will find the SSD controller, four flash chips, and the DRAM chip on the PCB. The other side of the PCB is empty.


The Phison PS5008-E8 is a 4-channel SSD controller with support for TLC flash. It is designed to optimize price/performance, which is why the interface is limited to two PCIe lanes. It is produced using a 40 nm production process at UMC Taiwan.


The four TLC flash chips are made by Toshiba, using their 64-layer 15 nanometer 3D NAND production process.


A Kingston 512 MB DDR3L-1600 DRAM chip provides fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables in.