Product Showcase

Product Showcase

The tested unit then; you should easily be able to place the M.2 unit into a compatible NVMe protocol motherboard. Most motherboards chipsets support it. You should, however, check out with the motherboard manufacturer if you have an x4 lane PCIe Gen 3.0 version with NVMe protocol support. Of course, these SSDs are backward compatible thus PCIe Gen 2.0 will work as well, however, the interconnect is halved in bandwidth per generation and that thus has an extensive effect on performance. The latest Windows 10 iteration has an up-to-date NVMe 1.3 protocol driver natively, so you do not necessarily need to install a 3rd party driver.  

The 1TB model has one DRAM chips (Kingston), and a total of four NAND chips (we assume 64L). With the sticker removed we can more clearly spot the Phison 5012-A12 controller. We're quite confident that these SSDs are bought from an OEM somewhere as we recognize the sticker on that NAND chip as well as the design. That's the same for TeamGroup, Galax, Patriot, Corsair and so on. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with the next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface. The 80 on 2280 is short for 80mm, aka, that is the length of the card and 2280, you guessed it now .. 22mm for its width. The heatsink does raise a new concern, it's higher and very low PCIe devices could be blocked albeit there was enough clearance for graphics cards that we quickly inserted to check that out.