Adata S50 SSD
A PCIe 4.0 drive at PCIe 3.0 prices.
PCIe 4.0 SSD’s are on track to take over the performance NVMe SSD market. It will take some time, but soon PCIe 4.0 drives will find their way into all but basic SATA-equipped systems. That trend will be accelerated by the likes of the Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite. The name might be a mouthful but at $499 for the 2TB version, it offers a lot of value. In fact, it’s already competitive in both performance and price with PCIe 3.0 drives; at the time of writing it was some $200 cheaper than Adata’s own 2TB S70.
The XPG Gammix S50 Lite is a standard form factor 2280 (80mm length) M.2 drive that connects via a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface. It’s designed to be a budget-oriented drive but with sustained read and write speed ratings of 3,900 and 3,200 MB/s respectively, its already as good as the fastest PCIe 3.0 drives. Its random performance and IOPS are also competitive with quality PCIe 3.0 drives. The S50 Lite makes use of quality Micron 96-Layer TLC NAND. Unlike cheaper drives, the 2TB S50 Lite includes a 1GB DRAM buffer and 300GB of SLC caching. This helps the drive maintain its performance under a heavy load for far longer compared to DRAM-less budget drives. It also features AES 256-bit encryption and a very impressive 1,480TBW endurance rating (or 740TBW for the 1TB drive). The much more expensive WD SN850 doesn’t have that, and it has a lower endurance rating too. So, while the S50 Lite might be an affordable PCIe 4.0 SSD, it packs in features that belie its affordable price. It looks nice too with its classy heatsink, and it also doesn’t run as hot as the premium drives.
The S50 Lite uses the new Silicon Motion SM2267EN controller. This affordable PCIe 4.0 controller is key to the performance of the drive, as PCIe 4.0 support allows this 4-channel controller to match the performance of more complex and expensive 8-channel PCIe 3.0 controllers. It seems like the S50 Lite ticks all the boxes. So how does it perform?
Sequential read and write performance is at the low end for a PCIe 4.0 drive but that tends to be an overrated spec for desktop users. It’s not all that often that a regular user will need to shift around hundreds of gigabytes of data, where you will exhaust the cache. In terms of random read performance, the S50 Lite actually managed to steal the thunder of the much more expensive S70, though it can’t match its write performance. It also ran much cooler than other PCIe 4.0 drives without having to resort to a big chunky heatsink. We saw a peak temperature of 62c.
The Gammix XPG S50 Lite is one of the best value NVME SSDs on the market. There’s still a price premium attached to PCIe 4.0 drives, but that’s likely to change as demand picks up, especially as Intel upgraders enter the market. At $499 for the 2TB version, considering its feature set, decent read performance and excellent endurance rating, it’s one of our favourite SSDs and comes highly recommended.
CHRIS SZEWCZYK
The Adata S50 Lite offers great features and value. It will surely find its way into many new PCIe 4.0 systems.