Adata S70 SSD
Hitting the limits of PCIe 4.0.
PCIe 4.0 SSDs are coming thick and fast. With Intel’s upcoming 11th Gen CPUs finally including support, PCIe 3.0 SSDs will rapidly fall by the wayside. Adata mightn’t have the manufacturing capabilities of the likes of Samsung or Western Digital, but that doesn’t mean the company isn’t a serious player in the memory and SSD business. We’ve always loved the great blend of performance and affordable pricing. Can the 2TB Adata XPG Gammix S70 impress us once more?
The S70 is a standard form factor M.2 2280 (80mm length) NVMe drive that makes use of a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. Its attention grabbing headline is its incredible sequential read and write speeds. At 7,400MB/s and 6,400MB/s, it’s the fastest rated drive we’ve seen to date. It makes use of Micron-sourced 96-Layer TLC NAND. The S70 includes a 2GB DRAM buffer and it can allocate up to around 30 percent of its capacity as an SLC cache. This would mean around 600GB for the 2TB drive. Unless you’re doing some truly mega writes, that will be more than enough to keep the drive performing at its best for sustained durations. Other key features include AES 256-bit encryption and a very impressive 1,480TBW endurance rating. The 1TB S70 has a 740TBW rating which is better than competitors including the Samsung 980 Pro and WD SN850.
The S70 uses an Innogrit Rainer controller, one that we haven’t seen utilised to date. This eight-channel controller allows the drive to reach the limits of a PCIe 4.0x 4 connection, a stunning achievement, though we’re at the stage where sequential performance of 6 or 7 GB/s is rarely utilised in a desktop PC. It comes equipped with a chunky heatsink. Adata says it should not be removed. If this doesn’t suit your build, a heatsink-less S70 is due to arrive on the market in March. The S70 needs some kind of cooling though, as in our testing the drive hit 70C, even with the heatsink attached and decent airflow.
Just look at those sequential read and write numbers. They put the WD and Samsung to shame. But, while sequential performance looks good on a spec sheet, it isn’t what truly makes an SSD fast. It’s the random performance, IOPS and latency. This is where the S70 falls a little behind, and its even behind the much cheaper S50 Lite in some cases. The write performance is strong though, and the DRAM buffer and SLC cache really assist with write performance. So that, along with the excellent endurance rating, makes this drive a great choice if you frequently move a lot of files around, such as you might do when video editing.
The Gammix XPG S70 is very fast drive if you can make use of its strengths. while its sequential performance is very good, it’s not a one size fits all drive. If you’re a gamer there are better and more affordable options. Right now it’s too expensive compared to many other 2TB NVMe drives and particularly Adata’s own S50 Lite. The way the market is though, we’d expect pricing to stabilise. For now, it’s tough to recommend the S70 unless you need a drive for heavy sustained use. In that case, its great, but for a more casual user or gamer, there are better options. CHRIS SZEWCZYK
The S70 is blazing fast, but its random read performance isn’t as exceptional as its stunning sequential performance.