XPG Gammix S50

PCIe Gen 4 and TLC memory for a price you can afford? Jeremy Laird would never fall for that old tale…

- Jeremy Laird

SPECS

Capacity: 2TB

Interface: M.2 2280, PCIe 4.0 x4

Controller: Silicop Motion SM2267

NAND: Micron 96-layer TLC

DRAM cache: 1GB

Seq. (r/w): 3,900MB/s, 3,200MB/s

IOPS (r/w): 490K, 540K Endurance: 1,480TB

Warranty: Five years

We’re well through the early adopter stage of SSD PCIe4 technology, with numerous high-end PCIe 4.0 drives available, along with several value drives. The new ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite, sampled here in 2TB configuration and M.2 2280 format, falls into the latter category. But where some fourth-generation (Gen 4) drives achieve a lower price point by using cheap and not always terribly cheerful QLC or quad-level flash memory, ADATA has managed to price TLC or triple-level flash memory into the bargain – in this case, 96-layer Micron chips.

How has ADATA pulled off TLC at this kind of price point? The answer, at least in part, is a more affordable PCIe Gen 4 controller chip. The original Gammix S50 was a high-end PCIe Gen 4 drive with the Phison controller. This ‘Lite’ model is cheaper and powered by the new Silicon Motion SM2267 controller.

It’s the low-cost option from SM’s latest PCIe 4.0 controllers. It’s fabricated on a cheaper 28nm production node, where fancier controllers are made on 12nm or thereabouts. It’s also limited to four memory channels and two ARM Cortex R5 CPU cores. The SM2267’s SM sibling, for instance, is on 12nm, has eight memory channels and sports four Cortex R8 cores.

Doing more with less