Final Words & Conclusion
Final Words & Conclusion
Yeah, you can purchase enthusiast class performance at less than 35 cents per GB. The ADATA SX8200 managed to really impress me, especially when looking at overall performance averaged out over all types of workloads, this SSD averages out incredibly well. The new 64-layer Vertically stacked TLC written NAND in combination with the Silicon Motion SM2262 controller and a DRAM cache reveal close to 3GB/s reads in specific workloads with close to 2 GB/s in writes. The development rate and curve of current NVMe and regular NAND flash-based storage technologies are simply breathtaking.
Nearly 10 years ago in 2008 that we reviewed the first SSD. It was 32GB and would cost you 349 USD. The read performance was ~150MB/sec at the time, which was just staggering. It had no cache and connected to a regular SATA connector. How things have changed from that ' blisteringly fast' 150 MB/sec towards numbers that are 20 to 30 fold of that whilst offering more capacity, reliability, endurance, and performance. Prices have been coming down, reliability has been top notch and ever so importantly volume sizes have moved upwards to a level where now 1TB SSDs are getting a norm slowly. The current new mainstream is roughly 512GB which offers a nice balance in between performance and value. ADATA did not even bother to fab a 120GB version, as for most consumers that want the NVMe experience that is just a too small volume size to work with. Now, I have stated it a number of times already, I really would like to see motherboards to design and make move to SATA4, rapidly, to be able to keep up with M2 form factors and the NVMe protocol. This SSD offers seriously fast performance in both reads and writes relative to what you pay for it. At just over 1 or even 2 GB/s writes per seconds it is easily three times faster compared to that mainstream SATA3 SSD, while topping 3 GB/s reads (!) and thus over quadrupling that number compared to a SATA3 SSD. Combined with a 3-year warranty you should be good to go for a long time. The TBW written values are pretty sweet as well, 300 TB written for this 1 TB model, and 100TB less for each smaller volume size.
Performance
The new storage units are fast and strong, on all levels really, IOPS performance is good, easily over 200K. This SSD writes and reads serious amounts of tiny files in a very fast fashion. We stated it before though, IOPS is not something you as a consumer should worry about too much unless you are doing a lot of database related work or create similar workloads on your PC, but this SSD certainly ranks high within this aspect. Trace testing - we feel that one of the best tests in our entire benchmark suite is PCMark Vantage 64-bit. This is a trace test and can emulate what you guys do on your PC but then multiplied by a factor of 100, this test puts more focus on reading performance opposed to writing though. The outcome of the results with the SSD is exceptionally good. Sustained read / write performance, again excellent as advertised. Read performance in particular leads and is top ranking. Overall the series is impressive. Zoom in at both IOPS and trace performance and you'll notice that the SSD can manage serious workloads without breaking so much as a drop of sweat. So whether you write lots of small files, copy big MKV movies or do it all together.
Pricing & Warranty
ADATA should be able to keep the prices competitive, but obviously a unit this fast is more expensive as opposed to a regular SATA3 SSD. For the bigger volume sizes expect prices in the 33~35 Cents per GB range. So we expect to see something in the 319 USD range for a 1 TB model, but that might vary a bit based on region and industry demand. Any SSD is enjoyable, very much so. If you put a drive like this into your compatible PC, you'll have no idea what is about to hit you. We very much enjoy the grand sustained performance of this SSD series; if you copy a vast amount of compressed data, then the SSD will perform seriously fast in performance. Make no mistake, replacing an HDD with an SSD in your PC eliminates the random access lag of the HDD head, it is no longer mechanical. That combined with the performance SATA3 / M.2 / mSATA offers these days is simply a massive difference and probably the best upgrade you can make for your computer anno 2018. The 5 years warranty tops thing off really. Below listed are the TBW value.
- 240GB: 160 Terabyte
- 480GB: 320 Terabyte
- 960GB: 640 Terabyte
Thermal throttling
So, there is a reason why we always test on an open bench with no airflow. If there is a thermal issue that is serious enough then it will reveal itself. With normal usage, this SSD will not quickly overheat. However thermal imaging proofs that after roughly 4 to 5 minutes of writing at maximum performance, the SSD will heat up and overheat. A certain spot on the PCB that passed 90 Degrees C, and since M2 units are small that heat will leak throughout the components of the PCB when left un-cooled. You can address that with something as simple as a decent amount of cold airflow inside your chassis. Also, many modern motherboards these days offer proper heatsink based cooling for M2 SSDs, if you use that, it's will not become a problem. In a poorly ventilated chassis, under multiple minutes of stress, as-is, this SSD has to throttle down in performance to match thermal targets.
Concluding
The latest 64-layer Vertically stacked NAND works its miracles, and the add-in partners benefit from that. The ADATA SX8200 range M2 SSDs will offer grand levels of performance at a more acceptable price level. The MLC versus TLC discussion as far as I am concerned can be put to rest, SSDs with TLC NAND has proven to be extremely long-lasting and reliable. For many TLC is a bit of a dirty word endurance wise (albeit I consider that an overrated in the year 2018), so you'll be very happy with this TLC written SSD and yes, MLC is more expensive compared to TLC writes for obvious reasons. ADATA will give you a proper 5-year warranty on the product series, and that in technology land is an okay warranty to have. So what's it going to be then? HDD, regular SATA SSD or NVMe M2? It remains to be a topic of much discussion in our forums. Here's my take on that; going from an HDD towards an SSD is a huge difference. Even with the slowest SATA3 SSD, you can find, the access times will make a tremendous difference as you do not have a mechanical magnetic head seeking data on platters. HDDs, however, are still relevant, for big storage and perhaps games. But for your OS a proper fast SATA3 SSD in the 400~500 MB/sec range already is golden. Some, however, want that platinum experience, going from a fast SATA3 SSD towards NVMe M2 again is a much faster step, but less noticeable compared to that regular SATA3 SSD, as you already have the fast access times and split-second application loading. You'll benefit greatly from NVMe SSD storage units if you have the workloads for it, writing continuously, video editing and so on. For just gaming and OS functionality, however, the differences are too small too measure, as then other things in your PC are the bottleneck, your PC for example, or the calculation time a game needs to set up a scene. That will be the discussion of the years to come, how fast do SSDs really need to be? Storage technology not evolving would mean us still be in the stone-age technology wise. That said and done, the ADATA SX8200 480GB is simply put, very impressive. You will easily quadruple your read performance over a regular SATA3 SSD. For writes that value is easily triple the performance of today's SATA3 solutions. Remember, there are requirements for proper M.2 usage though. You do need to use the right combination of OS/UEFI motherboard and CPU, we do recommend X99/X299 and Z87/Z97/Z170/Z270/Z370 and for AMD X370/X470/X399 or newer gear here. Check with your motherboard manufacturers if the board can support M.2 with four PCI-Express lanes (Gen 3.0) and NVMe. Almost any modern one, can. Whatever you are planning with this storage unit, you are good to go from gaming, overall net pc usage (albeit overkill) to video transcoding and editing and content creation, this is by far one of the faster SSD series available for I/O intensive workloads, consumer grade that is. The ADATA SX8200 480GB M.2. SSD we tested offers fantastic performance, and might even be overkill for your storage performance needs. If you are hunting down an M2 unit in the enthusiast range, hey this SSD should be high on your shortlist. Highly recommended by Guru3D.com, but please do apply an M2 heatsink.
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