Adata Atom 50 Ssd: Affordable With Excellent Performance

"While not one of the fastest PCIe 4 NVMe drive in benchmarks, this worthy scored big time in our real-life transfers."

- By Jon L. Jacobi

The Adata Atom 50 is one of the more affordable PCIe 4 SSDs on the market, which would seemingly make it a nice option for the PlayStation 5. It’s second-tier over PCIe 4, according to synthetic benchmarks, but it tied for first place in our real-world 48GB transfers—an eye-opening performance considering the price.

Even more impressive, the Atom 50 managed that feat without a DRAM cache. It instead utilizes HMB (Host Memory Bus, aka your computer’s RAM) primary caching, a technology we’ve seen less than stellar results from previously. Alas, Sony’s FAQ (fave. co/3fPGEek) says the PS5 doesn’t support HMB, which means the Atom 50 may not be quite as fast inside that console.

DESIGN AND SPECS

Adata’s Atom 50 bucks the trend of bargain SSDs based on Phison-based designs by employing a RealTek RTS5766DL to shuttle data to and from the SSD’s 176-layer TLC (Triple-Level Cell, 3-bit/state) NAND. As you’ll see below in the performance section, it proved very proficient.

As noted, there’s no DRAM cache, Adata instead opting for HMB. Also as mentioned, this is the first time we have seen HMB perform up to snuff.