Introduction

MSI is a world-leading hardware manufacturer that is mostly famous for their graphics cards, motherboards, and laptops. In addition to these, MSI also offers monitors, peripherals, cases, and power supplies. With such a complete lineup, it's not surprising that MSI has entered the SSD market this year.



MSI is the youngest player in the SSD business. Just in August, I reviewed their first drives, the Spatium M480 and Spatium M470, which are both targeted at the PCI-Express Gen 4 market and based on controllers from Phison: the E18 and E16, respectively. Today, we have for review the MSI Spatium M390, which is geared towards being a cost-effective drive for the masses of gamers on PCIe Gen 3, or those who aren't willing to pay the premiums for Gen 4 SSDs.

The MSI Spatium M390 is the first SSD we review that's built using Phison's new E15T controller, a brand-new design that's supposed to maximize the potential of PCIe Gen 3 in a more compact form factor without the need for a DRAM cache chip. Its similarly positioned predecessor, the Phison E12, requires DRAM, which increased the manufacturing cost of SSD designs by a few dollars. The flash chips are 176-layer 3D TLC from Micron.

The MSI Spatium M390 comes in capacities of 500 GB ($65) and 1 TB ($110). Endurance for these models is set to 200 TBW and 400 TBW respectively. MSI includes a five-year warranty with the M390 SSD.