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.

Packaging

The Drive

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


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the MSI Spatium M390 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller and two flash chips.

Chip Component Analysis

The Phison E15T is a brand-new controller that supports TLC NAND without DRAM cache, for cost optimizations. The bus interface is PCI-Express 3.0 x4 and supports NVMe 1.4.


The two flash chips are 176-layer 3D TLC NAND made by Micron.

Test Setup