No DRAM? Psuedo-SLC caching is a good thing, but I really don't think it replaces DRAM. I'll certainly wait for a full review (even the "pro" model, assuming that still sells) before really considering this.
I think it makes sense compared to SATA, but that depends on street prices. Without the DRAM I wouldn't really want to compare it to other NVMe boards.
As long as their quality control is "very good" these seem like they would work quite well considering their price point and what is on the market currently.
I had the sibling ADATA XPG SX6000, it started to corrupt files before the 6 months mark, and never achieved the read speeds promised, much less the writes. I used it as boot drive (and personal data on a RAID1 of SSD) meanwhile prices dropped for a bigger/faster nvme. However, had to change to a WD Black before I hoped. I don't recommend this family of SX6000 drives.
I've actually had few ADATA drives last beyond their warranty. Which is ok for the most part since they are pretty easy to deal with for warranty. But my experience is they fail spectacularly by either locking\no BIOS detect, or corruption\partition missing. Every failure has resulted in total data loss. Not a huge problem since these are machines that have daily backups but...downtime.
I generally try to not make conclusions based on personal experience with a single model unless I've used a ton of them as my standard company builds, but even if these were very reliable and you just had a case of random bad luck, Adata's pricing structure makes no sense. Their entry level M.2 drives are way too close to the 8200 series which is amazing for the price and seems to be on a constant rotation of sales between Newegg, Rakuten, Amazon. I have not seen it at full MSRP in several months and it has stellar tech site reviews as well as customer reviews from every major vendor. For the last year or so, it's basically the only SSD I've used in quite a few builds for the office and family. Well either the Adata 8200 or the HP 920 clone whichever is cheaper at the time. Unless getting the lowest prices possible for a super budget build, you can get low end SATA 240GB drives for $30 which is a substantial savings, but anything above this is too close to the Adata 8200/HP 920 to justify saving a few bucks.
During BF I stocked up on a stack of the Adata XPG 8200 drives for around $75-$80 for 500GB model, and another stack of AData SU650 240GB drives for $28 each. Every midgrade build and up will use the 8200, and all the budget ones will use the SU650 to meet each price point. Nothing else released yet has been exciting enough for me to replace these trends yet.
That said, it's still safe to assume reliability based on a number of stats: OEM design wins, long term reputation, sourcing, support, feedback.
ADATA has none of those going for them. They have, however, improved their reputation and reliability from what it was. At one point they were on par with OCZ. Look at the historical data of the SP500 series, and even the recent SU600 series. They have incredibly high failure rates. And unlike Samsung and Crucial, when they fail they fail hard, without warning. This shows incredibly poor firmware management in regard to power loss, bad block allocation, wear leveling, etc.
I like competition, but seriously it's really hard to consider SSD's from vendors outside of Tier 1: WD, Samsung, Micron\Crucial, Sandisk, Toshiba, perhaps Seagate, and of course Intel (who admittedly has had some real duds in their portfolio recently)
I'd throw ADATA in that pile of anomaly's that are PNY, Kingston, Patriot, Mushkin, OWC and Teamgroup, where they are all reference designs running nearly identical firmware (because none of these companies has the resources or clout to actually customize firmware) using off the shelf components, controlled entirely by 3rd party's.
ADATA makes like a million different SSD models with no sensible product names. You have to go and chech the specs and/or read a reviewreview to know what kind (tier) of drive tour are looking at. The worst part is that all different models use different controllers and different NAND.
I've used ADATA SATA SSDs in the past and they were reliable, at least the models I used.
The problem with this product stack is much the same as Sandisk and Kingson: you never know what you are getting. They have a notorious habit of changing internals within the same model over time, for better or (usually) worse. There are various models from these vendors that actually changed the controller and NAND to TLC from MLC without even changing the model name. Which is borderline criminal to someone shopping for a specific configuration or direct replacement.
"Entry-Level" and "NVMe", two phrases that don't belong in the same sentence. If you're gonna make an NVMe drive, make it fast or don't make it at all. And a 128GB model as well... why, just why.
Also AnandTech, if you ever feel like hiring a proofreader, I'm sure I'd be up to your "specificaitons".
Why? There is quite a range between limits of PCIe x4 and SATA. Honestly there is no reason that an entry level NVMe drive can't have similar cost as a SATA drive but with better performance. Now I think the prices need to come down some.
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wumpus - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
No DRAM? Psuedo-SLC caching is a good thing, but I really don't think it replaces DRAM. I'll certainly wait for a full review (even the "pro" model, assuming that still sells) before really considering this.I think it makes sense compared to SATA, but that depends on street prices. Without the DRAM I wouldn't really want to compare it to other NVMe boards.
Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
If this supports the NVMe Host Memory Buffer feature, then that's an adequate substitute for on-board DRAM for an entry-level drive.eek2121 - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
Looks to be a typo under TBW for the 512 GB model.LukaP - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
Fairly sure there is also a typo in Sequential writes for 512G/1TB modelsDragonstongue - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
As long as their quality control is "very good" these seem like they would work quite well considering their price point and what is on the market currently.CheapSushi - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
Not bad price wise.rozquilla - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
I had the sibling ADATA XPG SX6000, it started to corrupt files before the 6 months mark, and never achieved the read speeds promised, much less the writes. I used it as boot drive (and personal data on a RAID1 of SSD) meanwhile prices dropped for a bigger/faster nvme. However, had to change to a WD Black before I hoped. I don't recommend this family of SX6000 drives.Samus - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
I've actually had few ADATA drives last beyond their warranty. Which is ok for the most part since they are pretty easy to deal with for warranty. But my experience is they fail spectacularly by either locking\no BIOS detect, or corruption\partition missing. Every failure has resulted in total data loss. Not a huge problem since these are machines that have daily backups but...downtime.gglaw - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
I generally try to not make conclusions based on personal experience with a single model unless I've used a ton of them as my standard company builds, but even if these were very reliable and you just had a case of random bad luck, Adata's pricing structure makes no sense. Their entry level M.2 drives are way too close to the 8200 series which is amazing for the price and seems to be on a constant rotation of sales between Newegg, Rakuten, Amazon. I have not seen it at full MSRP in several months and it has stellar tech site reviews as well as customer reviews from every major vendor. For the last year or so, it's basically the only SSD I've used in quite a few builds for the office and family. Well either the Adata 8200 or the HP 920 clone whichever is cheaper at the time. Unless getting the lowest prices possible for a super budget build, you can get low end SATA 240GB drives for $30 which is a substantial savings, but anything above this is too close to the Adata 8200/HP 920 to justify saving a few bucks.During BF I stocked up on a stack of the Adata XPG 8200 drives for around $75-$80 for 500GB model, and another stack of AData SU650 240GB drives for $28 each. Every midgrade build and up will use the 8200, and all the budget ones will use the SU650 to meet each price point. Nothing else released yet has been exciting enough for me to replace these trends yet.
Samus - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
That said, it's still safe to assume reliability based on a number of stats: OEM design wins, long term reputation, sourcing, support, feedback.ADATA has none of those going for them. They have, however, improved their reputation and reliability from what it was. At one point they were on par with OCZ. Look at the historical data of the SP500 series, and even the recent SU600 series. They have incredibly high failure rates. And unlike Samsung and Crucial, when they fail they fail hard, without warning. This shows incredibly poor firmware management in regard to power loss, bad block allocation, wear leveling, etc.
I like competition, but seriously it's really hard to consider SSD's from vendors outside of Tier 1: WD, Samsung, Micron\Crucial, Sandisk, Toshiba, perhaps Seagate, and of course Intel (who admittedly has had some real duds in their portfolio recently)
I'd throw ADATA in that pile of anomaly's that are PNY, Kingston, Patriot, Mushkin, OWC and Teamgroup, where they are all reference designs running nearly identical firmware (because none of these companies has the resources or clout to actually customize firmware) using off the shelf components, controlled entirely by 3rd party's.
This is your data, why risk it.
Alistair - Thursday, June 27, 2019 - link
just sounds like you're listing the manufacturers based on price, no data to support your claimsKingston and Patriot have good reputations. Adata also. They aren't Intel or Samsung, but they match WD, Toshiba or Seagate.
Glock24 - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link
ADATA makes like a million different SSD models with no sensible product names. You have to go and chech the specs and/or read a reviewreview to know what kind (tier) of drive tour are looking at. The worst part is that all different models use different controllers and different NAND.I've used ADATA SATA SSDs in the past and they were reliable, at least the models I used.
Samus - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
The problem with this product stack is much the same as Sandisk and Kingson: you never know what you are getting. They have a notorious habit of changing internals within the same model over time, for better or (usually) worse. There are various models from these vendors that actually changed the controller and NAND to TLC from MLC without even changing the model name. Which is borderline criminal to someone shopping for a specific configuration or direct replacement.See Sandisk SSD Plus revisions.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
"Entry-Level" and "NVMe", two phrases that don't belong in the same sentence. If you're gonna make an NVMe drive, make it fast or don't make it at all. And a 128GB model as well... why, just why.Also AnandTech, if you ever feel like hiring a proofreader, I'm sure I'd be up to your "specificaitons".
namechamps - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link
Why? There is quite a range between limits of PCIe x4 and SATA. Honestly there is no reason that an entry level NVMe drive can't have similar cost as a SATA drive but with better performance. Now I think the prices need to come down some.jabber - Thursday, December 20, 2018 - link
I have one of the existing 120GB 6000 drives as a Pagefile Cache drive.It works great but it runs really hot. Averages about 56-60 degrees at idle and I've added a copper heatsink to the controller too.