Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/14177/the-gigabyte-aorus-rgb-m2-ssd-review
The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 SSD Review: Nothing Is Too Small For RGB LEDs
by Billy Tallis on April 10, 2019 8:00 AM EST
GIGABYTE entered the SSD market last year somewhat timidly with entry-level SATA drives, and they've been working their way up the market since. Their new Aorus RGB SSDs are high-end NVMe drives designed to catch the attention of gamers. Both M.2 and PCIe add-in card models are hitting the market starting today, and we're taking a look at both of the M.2 models.
The Aorus RGB SSD is based on the now familiar combination of Toshiba 64-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory and the Phison E12 controller. We've repeatedly found this combination to be competitive in the high-end NVMe market segment, though all of our previous tests were in the 1TB capacity class. The Aorus RGB M.2 is our first look at the performance of smaller E12 drives, which are unavoidably challenged by having fewer NAND flash chips to use in parallel.
The Aorus SSDs aren't the first M.2 drives with heatsinks that we've tested, but they are the first M.2s with RGB LEDs to cross our testbed. We have previously reviewed RGB SSDs in larger form factors (SATA and PCIe add-in cards) and often find that the premium aesthetics aren't backed up by premium performance. That is not likely to be a problem for the Aorus SSDs given the choice of the Phison E12 platform.
The heatsink and lighting on the Aorus SSD help it fit in with other Aorus-branded products from GIGABYTE. The RGB lighting illuminates the Aorus eagle logo with a solid color. On its own, the drive cycles through colors while pulsing the brightness of the LEDs. The Aorus SSD's lighting can also be controlled through GIGABYTE's RGB Fusion 2.0 utility, but only when the SSD is installed in a supported GIGABYTE motherboard. The support list is currently very narrow, including only their Z390 Aorus boards and the X299 Aorus Master. We happened to have an H370 Aorus Gaming 3 WiFi motherboard handy during testing and confirmed that it did not enable control of the SSD's LEDs. (We did not have one of the supported Z390 boards on hand for this review.)
The lighting on the Aorus RGB M.2 SSD seems to be much dimmer than most of the lights on our motherboard: the photo above was taken with the SSDs in their default pulsing mode, and the LEDs under the PCH heatsink set to around 20% brightness in the RGB Fusion 2.0 utility. While setting up this picture, the two SSDs were initialized by the system at slightly different times, so their color cycling was not quite synchronized. Aside from this effort to test and photograph the RGB LEDs, all our usual performance tests were performed on our regular SSD testbed.
| GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 NVMe SSD Specifications | ||||
| Capacity | 256 GB | 512 GB | ||
| Form Factor | double-sided M.2 2280 | |||
| Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | |||
| NAND Flash | Toshiba 64L 3D TLC | |||
| Sequential Read | 3100 MB/s | 3480 MB/s | ||
| Sequential Write | 1050 MB/s | 2000 MB/s | ||
| Random Read | 180k IOPS | 360k IOPS | ||
| Random Write | 240k IOPS | 440k IOPS | ||
| Power | Read | 5.085 W | 5.485 W | |
| Write | 3.285 W | 4.085 W | ||
| Idle | 272 mW | 272 mW | ||
| Warranty | 5 years | |||
| Write Endurance | 380 TB 0.81 DWPD |
800 TB 0.85 DWPD |
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| MSRP | $79.99 (31¢/GB) | $119.99 (23¢/GB) | ||
The performance specifications for the Aorus SSDs are typical for drives using the Phison E12 platform, derated somewhat for the lower capacity compared to the 1TB models we are usually sampled. Write speeds suffer the most at low capacity, but random read performance is also much slower for the smallest Aorus.
Write endurance is a little over 0.8 drive writes per day, comparable to other high-end consumer SSDs. Launch pricing is quite steep thanks to the addition of the LEDs and heatsink.
Our review samples shipped with Phison E12 firmware version 12.1, the same that we recently tested in a 1TB drive. Version 12.2 has started to show up on drives from other vendors (including a sample for an upcoming review), but it is not yet clear when GIGABYTE will be rolling out the new firmware to their customers.
The LED lighting and heatsink for the Aorus SSDs required a few relatively minor tweaks to the PCB layout: holes in two opposite corners for mounting the heatsink, and a row of three RGB LED modules sitting between the controller and the NAND flash memory. The heatsink uses thermal pads on both the NAND and the controller/DRAM, with a gap in the thermal pad for the LEDs. Other than the LEDs and heatsinks, all the major components are quite familiar, including the Phison E12 controller and Toshiba 64L 3D NAND.
The Competition
For comparison against the Aorus SSDs, we have chosen to focus mainly on other recent NVMe SSDs of comparable capacity. This leaves out some recent product lines where we have only been sampled the fastest 1TB or larger models, which can often outperform 512GB and 256GB drives even when the larger drive has the inferior controller or firmware. The Silicon Power P34A80 is included as a reference for how the Phison E12 platform with the same 12.1 firmware performs in the 1TB capacity class. Other drives to keep an eye on:
- The MyDigitalSSD SBX uses Phison's current entry-level E8 controller with the same Toshiba 64L 3D TLC NAND
- The Patriot Hellfire and Team T-Force Cardea represent the first generation Phison E7 NVMe controller, paired with Toshiba planar MLC NAND.
- The ADATA XPG SX8200 represents Phison's main competitor Silicon Motion, with the SM2262 controller and Micron 64L 3D TLC. The SX8200 is being replaced with the SM2262EN-based SX8200 Pro, but we only have that in the 1TB capacity.
A few drives in very different product segments are included for a sense of scale: the Intel Optane SSD 900P, Crucial MX500 SATA SSD, and a WD Black 7200RPM hard drive.
| AnandTech 2018 Consumer SSD Testbed | |
| CPU | Intel Xeon E3 1240 v5 |
| Motherboard | ASRock Fatal1ty E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC |
| Chipset | Intel C232 |
| Memory | 4x 8GB G.SKILL Ripjaws DDR4-2400 CL15 |
| Graphics | AMD Radeon HD 5450, 1920x1200@60Hz |
| Software | Windows 10 x64, version 1709 |
| Linux kernel version 4.14, fio version 3.6 | |
| Spectre/Meltdown microcode and OS patches current as of May 2018 | |
- Thanks to Intel for the Xeon E3 1240 v5 CPU
- Thanks to ASRock for the E3V5 Performance Gaming/OC
- Thanks to G.SKILL for the Ripjaws DDR4-2400 RAM
- Thanks to Corsair for the RM750 power supply, Carbide 200R case, and Hydro H60 CPU cooler
- Thanks to Quarch for the XLC Programmable Power Module and accessories
- Thanks to StarTech for providing a RK2236BKF 22U rack cabinet.
Whole-Drive Fill
This test starts with a freshly-erased drive and fills it with 128kB sequential writes at queue depth 32, recording the write speed for each 1GB segment. This test is not representative of any ordinary client/consumer usage pattern, but it does allow us to observe transitions in the drive's behavior as it fills up. This can allow us to estimate the size of any SLC write cache, and get a sense for how much performance remains on the rare occasions where real-world usage keeps writing data after filling the cache.
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The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs show the same general behavior as other Phison E12 drives during a drive fill operation. The SLC cache keeps write speeds high for the first few GB, then the drive drops down to a much lower speed. The SLC write cache is periodically emptied, giving brief bursts back up to full speed, or nearly so. The smaller drives show longer garbage collection cycles than the 1TB models we've previously looked at, and combined with their smaller capacity this means that there are far fewer high-speed bursts while filling the 256GB model than a 1TB drive.
Both peak and baseline write performance scale with drive capacity, though the 256GB model's baseline performance is a bit better than a linear trend would predict.
The initial SLC write cache sizes appear to be about 7GB for the 256GB model and about 13GB for the 512GB model, compared to about 20GB for the 1TB Silicon Power P34A80.
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| Average Throughput for last 16 GB | Overall Average Throughput | ||||||||
The long-term sustained write speeds from the Aorus SSDs are reasonable for their respective capacity classes. The 512GB model is about 15% slower than the Samsung 970 EVO but outperforms the ADATA SX8200, while the 256GB model trails its Samsung competitor by a bit more still stays ahead of the SX8200 and the entry-level NVMe drive.
BAPCo SYSmark 2018
BAPCo's SYSmark 2018 is an application-based benchmark that uses real-world applications to replay usage patterns of business users, with subscores for productivity, creativity and responsiveness. Scores represnt overall system performance and are calibrated against a reference system that is defined to score 1000 in each of the scenarios. A score of, say, 2000, would imply that the system under test is twice as fast as the reference system.
SYSmark scores are based on total application response time as seen by the user, including not only storage latency but time spent by the processor. This means there's a limit to how much a storage improvement could possibly increase scores, because the SSD is only in use for a small fraction of the total test duration. This is a significant difference from our ATSB tests where only the storage portion of the workload is replicated and disk idle times are cut short to a maximum of 25ms.
| AnandTech SYSmark SSD Testbed | |
| CPU | Intel Core i5-7400 |
| Motherboard | ASUS PRIME Z270-A |
| Chipset | Intel Z270 |
| Memory | 2x 4GB DDR4-2666 CL15 |
| Case | In Win C583 |
| Power Supply | Cooler Master G550M |
| OS | Windows 10 64-bit, version 1803 |
Our SSD testing with SYSmark uses a different test system than the rest of our SSD tests. This machine is set up to measure total system power consumption rather than just the drive's power.
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| Creativity | Productivity | Responsiveness | Overall | ||||||
The SYSmark Responsiveness scores for the Aorus SSDs are a small step up from the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD or the MyDigitalSSD SBX entry-level NVMe drive, but the Aorus doesn't outperform any other high-end NVMe drives. The Creativity and Productivity scores show almost no difference between the SSDs in this batch, and consequently the Overall scores are also closer together than the Responsiveness scores.
Energy Usage
The SYSmark energy usage scores measure total system power consumption, excluding the display. Our SYSmark test system idles at around 26 W and peaks at over 60 W measured at the wall during the benchmark run. SATA SSDs seldom exceed 5 W and idle at a fraction of a watt, and the SSDs spend most of the test idle. This means the energy usage scores will inevitably be very close. A typical notebook system will tend to be better optimized for power efficiency than this desktop system, so the SSD would account for a much larger portion of the total and the score difference between SSDs would be more noticeable.
The Aorus SSDs have relatively good energy consumption scores for the SYSmark test, though not quite as good as the Crucial MX500 SATA SSD. The Silicon Power P34A80 unsurprisingly uses a bit less energy than the Aorus since it is based on the same controller but with enough capacity to reach its full performance potential, and it lacks the LEDs that the Aorus SSDs have. The Samsung 970s are relatively power-hungry for M.2 drives.
AnandTech Storage Bench - The Destroyer
The Destroyer is an extremely long test replicating the access patterns of very IO-intensive desktop usage. A detailed breakdown can be found in this article. Like real-world usage, the drives do get the occasional break that allows for some background garbage collection and flushing caches, but those idle times are limited to 25ms so that it doesn't take all week to run the test. These AnandTech Storage Bench (ATSB) tests do not involve running the actual applications that generated the workloads, so the scores are relatively insensitive to changes in CPU performance and RAM from our new testbed, but the jump to a newer version of Windows and the newer storage drivers can have an impact.
We quantify performance on this test by reporting the drive's average data throughput, the average latency of the I/O operations, and the total energy used by the drive over the course of the test.
The average data rates for the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSD on The Destroyer are pretty good, but still below the Samsung competitors of similar capacity. The performance gap between the 256GB and 512GB Aorus drives is larger than between the larger Aorus and the 1TB Silicon Power drive that uses the same controller and NAND, and the 480GB ADATA SX8200 is on par with the smallest Aorus SSD.
The 512GB Aorus SSD follows in the footsteps of previous larger Phison E12 drives with excellent average and 99th percentile latency scores on The Destroyer. The smaller 256GB Aorus ranks lower, but still outscores the other drives in its capacity class—the Team Cardea 240GB is an older Phison E7 drive with MLC NAND.
The average read latency on The Destroyer for the 512GB Aorus is excellent, only slightly behind the Samsung 970 EVO and the 1TB Phison E12 drive. The 256GB Aorus SSD's average read latency score is significantly higher, but still better than the rest of the competition. The average write latency scores aren't quite as impressive, but the larger Aorus is still in the lead for its capacity class and the smaller one beats all the 256GB-class drives but the older MLC SSD.
The 99th percentile read and write latency scores show similar rankings to the averages, with both drives outperforming any other TLC-based SSDs in their capacity class.
The GIGABYTE Aorus SSDs had RGB LEDs pulsing throughout the hours of The Destroyer, but the total energy consumption was still relatively low compared to most other M.2 NVMe SSDs. The MyDigitalSSD SBX entry-level NVMe drive and Crucial MX500 SATA drive score a bit better than the Aorus, but the Samsung and Silicon Motion drives require substantially more energy to complete The Destroyer, even when overall performance (and thus test duration) is similar.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Heavy
Our Heavy storage benchmark is proportionally more write-heavy than The Destroyer, but much shorter overall. The total writes in the Heavy test aren't enough to fill the drive, so performance never drops down to steady state. This test is far more representative of a power user's day to day usage, and is heavily influenced by the drive's peak performance. The Heavy workload test details can be found here. This test is run twice, once on a freshly erased drive and once after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs face tougher competition on the Heavy test than they did on The Destroyer, since the ADATA SX8200 doesn't suffer so badly on this shorter test and instead takes the lead with the highest average data rates. The Aorus is still slightly ahead of the SX8200 and most other competitors when the Heavy test is run on a full drive.
The average and 99th percentile latency scores for the Aorus SSDs are very good for their respective capacity classes, but also make it quite clear that 1TB drives can offer significantly higher and more consistent performance than the smaller models.
The ADATA SX8200 drives offer the best average read latency on the Heavy test, followed by the Samsung drives, but the Aorus SSDs are not far behind. The Aorus SSDs also have better full-drive performance than some of the drives that perform better on the easier empty-drive test runs. For average write latency, the 512GB Aorus ranks just below the 1TB Phison E12 drive from Silicon Power, but there's a pretty big gap between those capacity classes. The smaller 256GB Aorus is not quite a class-leading performer, since the SX8200 has lower write latency for the empty drive test run, and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus has better full-drive performance.
The 99the percentile read and write scores for the Aorus SSDs are overshadowed by the performance of the ADATA SX8200, though the scores from the full-drive test runs put the Aorus ahead.
The energy usage of the Aorus SSDs on the Heavy test again ranks as relatively low among NVMe SSDs (especially the high-end segment), but the ADATA SX8200 and other competitors aren't far behind this time.
AnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The average data rates from the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs on the Light test are close to other high-end NVMe SSDs, but the Aorus is definitely at the bottom of that product segment. There's a big gap between the Aorus drives and the tier of entry-level NVMe SSDs.
The average and 99th percentile latencies from the Aorus SSDs during the Light test are mostly too small to be of any concern, but they do still serve to show how the smaller models struggle more with full-drive performance than the 1TB Phison E12 drive included for comparison.
Average read and write latencies for the Aorus SSDs during the Light test trail behind the scores for the Samsung drives, and on the read side the ADATA SX8200 also comes out ahead, but these average latencies are too low to cause problems.
The ADATA SX8200 beats the Aorus SSDs for 99th percentile read latency, but for writes they trade places. Samsung's QoS beat either vendor.
The energy usage by the Aorus SSDs during the Light test is again a bit worse for the Aorus drives than for the 1TB Silicon Power P34A80, but given the LEDs that only the Aorus has, this result is quite welcome.
Random Read Performance
Our first test of random read performance uses very short bursts of operations issued one at a time with no queuing. The drives are given enough idle time between bursts to yield an overall duty cycle of 20%, so thermal throttling is impossible. Each burst consists of a total of 32MB of 4kB random reads, from a 16GB span of the disk. The total data read is 1GB.
The burst random read performance from the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs is competitive with the SMI-based ADATA SX8200 at the 512GB capacity class, but in the 256GB class the Aorus is about 15% slower than the SX8200. The smaller Aorus is still faster than the Phison E8-based entry-level drives, but the last-generation Phison E7 drive that used planar MLC NAND was very slightly faster for QD1 random reads.
Our sustained random read performance is similar to the random read test from our 2015 test suite: queue depths from 1 to 32 are tested, and the average performance and power efficiency across QD1, QD2 and QD4 are reported as the primary scores. Each queue depth is tested for one minute or 32GB of data transferred, whichever is shorter. After each queue depth is tested, the drive is given up to one minute to cool off so that the higher queue depths are unlikely to be affected by accumulated heat build-up. The individual read operations are again 4kB, and cover a 64GB span of the drive.
On the longer random read test that brings in some higher queue depths, the Phison drives all fare worse than the Silicon Motion-based and Samsung drives, regardless of capacity. The Phison E12 drives like the Aorus have not clearly surpassed the older MLC-based Phison E7 drives, but they are ahead of the low-end E8 drives.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency rankings are almost the inverse of the performance rankings for the random read test. The Phison drives are in the lead among NVMe drives, with the entry-level MyDigitalSSD SBX slightly ahead of the Aorus SSD—though without the LEDs the Aorus would likely tie or pull ahead. The Samsung and Silicon Motion drives all sacrifice a bit of efficiency for their performance advantage over the Aorus and other Phison E12 drives.
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While the two capacities of the Aorus SSD perform similarly for random reads at low queue depths, they diverge greatly at higher queue depths. By QD32 the 256GB model has passed its inflection point and is close to a maximum throughput in the neighborhood of 400MB/s, while the 512GB model's performance is still increasing steeply beyond 600MB/s.
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| 512 GB | 256 GB | ||||||||
Comparing the Aorus SSDs against the entire field of drives that have run through our benchmark suite, the power consumption is reasonably good but nothing special, and neither capacity comes close to breaking any performance records at high queue depths—no surprise for relatively small drives. The 256GB model doesn't make it out of SATA performance territory, and the 512GB only makes it a little more than halfway to the highest performance levels that TLC drives have hit.
Random Write Performance
Our test of random write burst performance is structured similarly to the random read burst test, but each burst is only 4MB and the total test length is 128MB. The 4kB random write operations are distributed over a 16GB span of the drive, and the operations are issued one at a time with no queuing.
With a 1TB Phison E12 drive currently holding the record for our burst random write test, it's not too surprising to see the lower-capacity Aorus SSDs outperforming all the competition. The 256GB model is oddly slightly faster than the larger 512GB model, and they both score higher than any other drive from either capacity class.
As with the sustained random read test, our sustained 4kB random write test runs for up to one minute or 32GB per queue depth, covering a 64GB span of the drive and giving the drive up to 1 minute of idle time between queue depths to allow for write caches to be flushed and for the drive to cool down.
The sustained random write performance of the Aorus SSDs is less impressive; with a test that runs long enough to fill the SLC caches, the Aorus drives end up as the slowest drives in the high-end segment. They're still twice as fast as SATA or entry-level NVMe drives, but they are clearly lagging a bit behind their main competition.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency of the Aorus SSDs during the random write test isn't as high as a 1TB Phison E12 drive with no LEDs, but they're still pretty good. The ADATA SX8200 outscores the Aorus at both capacity points by a wide enough margin that it cannot be blamed solely on the LEDs, so Silicon Motion-based drives still have a lead here.
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The SLC cache of the 256GB Aorus SSD runs out during the QD1 phase of the test and doesn't recover, leaving it at around 400MB/s for all higher queue depths. The larger 512GB model improves performance through QD4 before it flattens out. Power consumption is nearly constant across the entire range of tested queue depths.
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| 512 GB | 256 GB | ||||||||
Comparing against the entire database of results for this test shows that the Aorus SSDs both offer random write performance that is clearly above what SATA SSDs can deliver, but the limited capacity prevents them from getting anywhere close to the records set by larger drives.
Sequential Read Performance
Our first test of sequential read performance uses short bursts of 128MB, issued as 128kB operations with no queuing. The test averages performance across eight bursts for a total of 1GB of data transferred from a drive containing 16GB of data. Between each burst the drive is given enough idle time to keep the overall duty cycle at 20%.
The QD1 burst sequential read performance of the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs is quite clearly in the high-end NVMe tier, but they are the slowest drives in this market segment with performance in the 1.8-1.9GB/s range compared to 2.4GB/s for the ADATA SX8200.
Our test of sustained sequential reads uses queue depths from 1 to 32, with the performance and power scores computed as the average of QD1, QD2 and QD4. Each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB transferred, from a drive containing 64GB of data. This test is run twice: once with the drive prepared by sequentially writing the test data, and again after the random write test has mixed things up, causing fragmentation inside the SSD that isn't visible to the OS. These two scores represent the two extremes of how the drive would perform under real-world usage, where wear leveling and modifications to some existing data will create some internal fragmentation that degrades performance, but usually not to the extent shown here.
On the longer sequential read test that goes a bit beyond QD1, the Aorus and other Phison E12-based SSDs fall well behind other recent high-end NVMe SSDs. However, the E12 drives do provide competitive performance when reading data that was not written sequentially.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The Aorus SSDs and other Phison E12 drives also lag behind other top NVMe drives on the power efficiency scores for the sequential read test, but it's not a large gap as it was for raw performance. In absolute terms, the Aorus SSDs only draw slightly more power than SATA SSDs or the entry-level NVMe drives based on the Phison E8.
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The Aorus SSDs continue the pattern of Phison E12 drives requiring high queue depths before sequential read performance starts to improve beyond the QD1 performance; this is also evident to a lesser extent with Phison E8 drives, but most of the competition is at or close to its full speed by QD2.
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| 512 GB | 256 GB | ||||||||
At sufficiently high queue depths, the 512GB Aorus SSD provides reasonable performance and power efficiency for a high-end NVMe SSD, falling in the middle of the cluster of results that surpass 3GB/s. The smaller 256GB model doesn't quite get there in terms of performance, but when it does saturate it at least offers decent power efficiency for the speed.
Sequential Write Performance
Our test of sequential write burst performance is structured identically to the sequential read burst performance test save for the direction of the data transfer. Each burst writes 128MB as 128kB operations issued at QD1, for a total of 1GB of data written to a drive containing 16GB of data.
The 256GB and 512GB Aorus SSDs offer far less performance on the burst sequential write test than a 1TB drive using the same controller and flash, and the Aorus drives are also underperforming all the competition of comparable capacity. The 256GB Aorus even manages to be slower than the 256GB MyDigitalSSD SBX, based on the lower-end Phison E8 controller.
Our test of sustained sequential writes is structured identically to our sustained sequential read test, save for the direction of the data transfers. Queue depths range from 1 to 32 and each queue depth is tested for up to one minute or 32GB, followed by up to one minute of idle time for the drive to cool off and perform garbage collection. The test is confined to a 64GB span of the drive.
On the longer sequential write test that includes some higher queue depths, the Aorus SSDs are clearly faster than the entry-level NVMe drives but are not competitive with the top high-end drives. The ADATA SX8200 based on the Silicon Motion SM2262 is able to compete against Phison E12 drives twice its size on this test, and the Samsung drives also have a substantial lead over the Aorus SSDs.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The 512GB Aorus SSD has decent but not class-leading power efficiency on the sequential write test, but the 256GB model scores much lower, thanks to having less than half the raw performance. In spite of the RGB LEDs, the Aorus drives are still some of the lowest-power drives in the high-end NVMe market segment, but in cases like this test, that's because they're having a hard time keeping up with the competition.
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The performance of the Aorus SSDs during the sequential write test is quite flat across the range of queue depths. Each phase of the test writes more than enough data to fill the SLC cache, while the 1TB Silicon Power P34A80 with the same Phison E12 controller shows wild performance oscillations because its SLC cache size and best-case write speed are significantly larger.
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| 512 GB | 256 GB | ||||||||
The smaller 256GB Aorus SSD's performance and power consumption on the sequential write test are stuck down in SATA SSD territory. The larger 512GB model is fast enough to significantly outpace SATA drives, but among the broader field of NVMe competition it is unimpressive.
Mixed Random Performance
Our test of mixed random reads and writes covers mixes varying from pure reads to pure writes at 10% increments. Each mix is tested for up to 1 minute or 32GB of data transferred. The test is conducted with a queue depth of 4, and is limited to a 64GB span of the drive. In between each mix, the drive is given idle time of up to one minute so that the overall duty cycle is 50%.
On the mixed random I/O test, the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs once again come in last place among high-end NVMe SSDs of comparable capacity, but maintain a significant performance advantage over SATA drives or entry-level NVMe drives.
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency of the Aorus SSDs on the mixed random I/O test is good, with the 512GB model basically tied for first place for that capacity class, and the 256GB model coming in second behind the Silicon Motion-based ADATA SX8200.
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The Aorus SSDs fall behind mostly during the second half of the mixed random I/O test, when the workload shifts to be very write-heavy. Write combining and SLC caching usually allow drives to pick up a lot of speed as the workload approaches pure writes, but the Aorus drives fill their SLC caches and get stuck with relatively low write performance as a result.
Mixed Sequential Performance
Our test of mixed sequential reads and writes differs from the mixed random I/O test by performing 128kB sequential accesses rather than 4kB accesses at random locations, and the sequential test is conducted at queue depth 1. The range of mixes tested is the same, and the timing and limits on data transfers are also the same as above.
The Aorus and other Phison drives fare poorly on the mixed sequential I/O test, with average speeds that are much slower than the Samsung or ADATA/Silicon Motion competition. Both capacities of the Aorus score worse than either capacity of the ADATA SX8200 or Samsung 970 EVO (Plus).
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| Power Efficiency in MB/s/W | Average Power in W | ||||||||
The power efficiency scores for the Aorus SSDs on the mixed sequential I/O test are good, especially for the 512GB model that is basically tied with the ADATA SX8200. The Samsung drives lead for their capacity classes despite having relatively high power draw in absolute terms.
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Performance for the Aorus SSDs on the mixed sequential I/O test drops at the beginning when writes are first added to a pure-read workload, but by the middle of the test things have started to settle down as the SLC cahces are staying more or less full and the overall throughput is limited mainly by write speed.
Power Management Features
Real-world client storage workloads leave SSDs idle most of the time, so the active power measurements presented earlier in this review only account for a small part of what determines a drive's suitability for battery-powered use. Especially under light use, the power efficiency of a SSD is determined mostly be how well it can save power when idle.
For many NVMe SSDs, the closely related matter of thermal management can also be important. M.2 SSDs can concentrate a lot of power in a very small space. They may also be used in locations with high ambient temperatures and poor cooling, such as tucked under a GPU on a desktop motherboard, or in a poorly-ventilated notebook.
| GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 NVMe Power and Thermal Management Features |
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| Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | ||
| Firmware | ECFM12.1 | ||
| NVMe Version |
Feature | Status | |
| 1.0 | Number of operational (active) power states | 3 | |
| 1.1 | Number of non-operational (idle) power states | 2 | |
| Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) | Supported | ||
| 1.2 | Warning Temperature | 70°C | |
| Critical Temperature | 90°C | ||
| 1.3 | Host Controlled Thermal Management | Supported | |
| Non-Operational Power State Permissive Mode | Not Supported | ||
The power and thermal management feature set supported by the GIGABYTE Aorus SSD matches other Phison E12 drives. The maximum power ratings declared for the drive's active power states are lower than we've seen on 1TB Phison E12 drives. This is the first time I can recall encountering a product line that actually scales these values with capacity, though they're all still much higher than any of the sustained power consumption numbers we've measured. The idle power ratings have not been adjusted to account for the RGB LEDs.
| GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 NVMe Power States |
|||||
| Controller | Phison PS5012-E12 | ||||
| Firmware | ECFM12.1 | ||||
| Power State |
Maximum Power |
Active/Idle | Entry Latency |
Exit Latency |
|
| PS 0 | 6.77 W (256GB) 8.09 W (512GB) |
Active | - | - | |
| PS 1 | 5.71 W (256GB) 6.37 W (512GB) |
Active | - | - | |
| PS 2 | 5.19 W (256GB) 5.52 W (512GB) |
Active | - | - | |
| PS 3 | 49 mW | Idle | 2 ms | 2 ms | |
| PS 4 | 1.8 mW | Idle | 25 ms | 25 ms | |
Note that the above tables reflect only the information provided by the drive to the OS. The power and latency numbers are often very conservative estimates, but they are what the OS uses to determine which idle states to use and how long to wait before dropping to a deeper idle state.
Idle Power Measurement
SATA SSDs are tested with SATA link power management disabled to measure their active idle power draw, and with it enabled for the deeper idle power consumption score and the idle wake-up latency test. Our testbed, like any ordinary desktop system, cannot trigger the deepest DevSleep idle state.
Idle power management for NVMe SSDs is far more complicated than for SATA SSDs. NVMe SSDs can support several different idle power states, and through the Autonomous Power State Transition (APST) feature the operating system can set a drive's policy for when to drop down to a lower power state. There is typically a tradeoff in that lower-power states take longer to enter and wake up from, so the choice about what power states to use may differ for desktop and notebooks.
We report two idle power measurements. Active idle is representative of a typical desktop, where none of the advanced PCIe link or NVMe power saving features are enabled and the drive is immediately ready to process new commands. The idle power consumption metric is measured with PCIe Active State Power Management L1.2 state enabled and NVMe APST enabled if supported.
The LED lighting doesn't do much to hurt the idle power management of the Aorus SSD, only adding about 70mW compared to a plain 1TB Phison E12 drive. The Aorus RGB barely stands out from the field of competitors with well-behaved power management, and it is significantly less power-hungry at idle than several of the drives with somewhat broken power management, such as the older Phison E7 SSDs. The averages shown above are for the default color-cycling behavior of the SSD. The graph below from Quarch Power Studio shows how the power draw fluctuates with brightness and depending on which color the drive is displaying, but the LEDs don't account for too much power overall.
The Aorus SSDs take a bit longer to come out of sleep than the previous Phison E12 drive we tested, but at slightly less than 4ms it's still a reasonably quick wake-up period, and far faster than the ADATA SX8200.
Conclusion
The high-end NVMe SSD market offers a wide range of options, but the GIGABYTE Aorus SSDs stand out as one of the few enthusiast-class M.2 SSDs equipped with the RGB SSDs that are now de rigueur for almost every other component in a gaming desktop. Underneath the fancy glowing heatsink, the Aorus SSDs use the familiar Phison E12 controller platform with 256GB or 512GB of Toshiba 3D TLC NAND.
1TB Phison E12 drives have turned in some great results, but as the first smaller drives we've tested based on this controller platform, the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs don't impress. More often than not, they're the slowest drives in the high-end NVMe tier of products, coming up short when compared to other drives in the same capacity class. However, this failure to turn in record-setting results doesn't mean the Aorus SSDs are truly slow—on most tests they are still significantly faster than SATA or entry-level NVMe drives.
It is a bit odd that the enthusiast targeting of the Aorus did not push GIGABYTE toward higher capacity options. Staying below 1TB prevents these drives from making full use of the performance their controller can offer, and the next generation of high-end SSD controllers may require 2TB for peak performance. The Aorus M.2 SSDs offer plenty of capacity for most use cases, but they're not large enough for the typical Steam library of a dedicated PC gamer.
The RGB aspect of the Aorus SSDs is hard to objectively evaluate, especially without one of the handful of supported motherboards for controlling the LEDs. However, unlike several other LED-equipped SSDs we have tested, the Aorus SSDs don't seem to have made serious compromises to deliver the lighting—a bit of a surprise given that the M.2 form factor leaves the least room to squeeze in unnecessary features. Without the LEDs, the Aorus would still be a decent and current-generation high-end NVMe SSD. The addition of the LEDs has not severely affected power consumption, and instead the Aorus consistently draws significantly less power under load than the fastest NVMe SSDs. The only place where the extra bling really hurts is the price tag.
| High-End NVMe SSD Price Comparison (April 9, 2019) |
|||||||
| 240-280GB | 480-512GB | 960GB-1TB | 2TB | ||||
| 2019 / Late 2018 models | |||||||
| GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 | $79.99 (31¢/GB) | $119.99 (23¢/GB) | |||||
| MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro | $149.99 (16¢/GB) | $329.99 (17¢/GB) | |||||
| Corsair Force MP510 | $49.99 (21¢/GB) | $89.99 (19¢/GB) | $149.99 (16¢/GB) | $495.33 (26¢/GB) | |||
| Silicon Power P34A80 | $44.99 (18¢/GB) | $139.99 (14¢/GB) | |||||
| Team MP34 | $79.99 (16¢/GB) | $159.99 (16¢/GB) | |||||
| ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro |
$56.99 (22¢/GB) | $87.99 (17¢/GB) | $169.99 (17¢/GB) | ||||
| ADATA XPG GAMMIX S11 Pro |
$59.99 (23¢/GB) | $102.99 (20¢/GB) | $194.99 (19¢/GB) | ||||
| HP EX950 | $97.99 (19¢/GB) | $169.99 (17¢/GB) | $359.99 (18¢/GB) | ||||
| Samsung 970 EVO Plus | $85.98 (34¢/GB) | $125.90 (25¢/GB) | $249.99 (25¢/GB) | ||||
| Western Digital WD Black SN750 | $74.99 (30¢/GB) | $129.99 (26¢/GB) | $229.99 (23¢/GB) | ||||
| 2018 models | |||||||
| ADATA XPG SX8200 | $71.87 (30¢/GB) | $118.78 (25¢/GB) | |||||
| HP EX920 | $42.99 (17¢/GB) | $80.99 (16¢/GB) | $149.99 (15¢/GB) | ||||
| Mushkin Pilot | $49.99 (20¢/GB) | $73.99 (15¢/GB) | $139.99 (14¢/GB) | $369.99 (18¢/GB) | |||
| Samsung 970 EVO | $96.44 (39¢/GB) | $149.99 (30¢/GB) | $299.99 (30¢/GB) | $527.99 (26¢/GB) | |||
| Samsung 970 PRO | $167.83 (33¢/GB) | $347.99 (34¢/GB) | |||||
The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 SSD is a bit unusual among high-end models by including only smaller capacities, which makes the $30-40 premium for the heatsink and RGB LEDs especially painful: The 256GB Aorus RGB ends up with the same price as the cheapest 512GB Phison E12 drives currently available. The price premium on the 512GB Aorus RGB is $10 more than on the 256GB model, and that's enough for the larger Aorus RGB to reach the price range of 1TB SATA or entry-level NVMe drives, but not quite up to the level of 1TB high-end NVMe drives.
It should also be clear that the premium for the Aorus RGB over unadorned Phison E12 drives is more about the RGB lighting than the heatsink—the GIGABYTE Aorus motherboards that support controlling the Aorus RGB's lighting already come with M.2 heatsinks that work with any drive, and some of those heatsinks have motherboard-provided lighting of their own.
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