As follows from the statistics that key manufacturers of solid state drives willingly share, shipments of the usual 2,5-inch SATA SSDs are gradually declining in percentage terms, and more advanced NVMe products are coming to the fore. So far, SATA drives hold the lead in the sales structure, but, according to the unanimous opinion, a turning point should occur during this year, and the current active price reduction for NVMe models should contribute to this.
The fact that NVMe drives are getting cheaper now much faster than traditional SATA SSDs is not at all surprising. Initially, for high-speed products that use the PCI Express bus, manufacturers set additional margins. Now they have to be abandoned. As the NVMe segment grows, an increasing number of players come into it who do not want to lose a promising direction from their sphere of influence and are ready to fight aggressively at the same time. However, the current situation is such that very few people are able to compete for the attention of buyers due to the speed or functionality of NVMe products today. The leading position in the consumer NVMe SSD segment in terms of speed and functionality has firmly captured Samsung's offerings. As we have repeatedly seen in tests, a couple of ΠΈ demonstrates a very convincing superiority over any alternatives, and neither large nor small competitors of the South Korean company manage to design any solutions that are close in speed. As a result, most firms have no choice but to try to attract users with low prices and get involved in a fierce price war.
This, of course, plays into the hands of buyers. A characteristic sign of today is that among the whole variety of NVMe SSDs, a fairly significant number of offers have formed with prices that are more typical for models with a SATA interface. A simple example: now on the shelves of stores there are several options for NVME drives at once, which are cheaper than the popular SATA model . And among them are not only solutions based on QLC 3D NAND in the face of ΠΈ - this list also includes SSDs with 3.0D TLC memory that use both a stripped-down PCI Express 2 x1000 bus (for example, the Kingston A5008 and its ilk based on the Phison PS8-E3.0 controller), and a completely full-fledged PCI Express 4 xXNUMX (for example, and analogues on the SMI SM2263XT controller).
We try not to lose sight of these low-cost, but not stripped-down NVMe SSDs, which promise a clearly better combination of price and performance than SATA drives. And today we consider it necessary to pay attention to one very interesting novelty - ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite. This SSD is a relative of the one we recently reviewed. , which made a very decent impression against the background of other low-cost NVMe offerings. But now ADATA has messed around a little with the configuration and offers about the same thing, but at a noticeable 15% cheaper. How it happened - we just try to find out in this review. After all, according to the manufacturer's statements, neither the base controller nor the type of flash memory used has changed in the new ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite. And if this is true, then we have a very attractive model: an extremely affordable NVMe SSD for the PCI Express 3.0 x4 bus, based on high-quality TLC 3D NAND and obviously outperforming any SATA SSD in terms of speed.
Technical specifications
When talking about the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite, we will indeed often refer to the XPG SX6000 Pro. The manufacturer does not lie when he says that these are close relatives. Both drives are based on the same Realtek RTS5763DL controller and use the same Micron second-generation 64-layer TLC 3D NAND. Why did ADATA release two (almost) identical drives at different prices, and how did it manage to drop the price of the Lite model so seriously? The answer to these questions is very simple: the cheaper version uses cheaper memory, which, on the one hand, has a lower gradation in terms of the quality of semiconductor crystals, and on the other, the volume of crystals increased to 512 Gbit. The first reduces the resource, and the second - performance. And just like that, the XPG SX6000 Lite appears before us, at first glance the same as the XPG SX6000 Pro, but in reality it is completely different.
At the same time, if we talk about the architecture of the novelty under consideration, then it is difficult to express any special claims against the XPG SX6000 Lite. Moreover, at first glance, this drive is even too good to be one of the most affordable NVMe SSDs on the market. Although the Realtek RTS5763DL controller, which serves as its basis, is extremely rare in mass storage models, this chip is quite worthy of taking this place.
In fact, only one thing indicates the low cost of the RTS5763DL - it lacks a DRAM controller, which excludes the possibility of implementing traditional address translation table buffering in drives based on it. But it supports non-traditional buffering, based on HMB (Host Memory Buffer) technology. This means that the RTS5763DL in the Windows 10 operating system is able to use for its needs a part of ordinary RAM that is available to it through the DMA mode of the PCI Express bus. In terms of other characteristics, the controller is quite typical: it has four channels for interacting with flash memory, supports LDPC encoding for error correction, and uses four PCI Express 3.0 lanes to be included in the system. In other words, it can be compared with the same SMI SM6263XT, on the basis of which many attractively priced NVMe SSDs are created.
Nevertheless, do not forget: in the XPG SX6000 Lite, the developers saved on flash memory. The size of TLC 512D NAND crystals increased to 3 Gbit is not as scary as QLC, but nevertheless, the negative impact of this factor is visible even from the passport characteristics.
| Manufacturer | ADATA | |||
| Π‘Π΅ΡΠΈΡ | XPG SX6000 Lite | |||
| Model number | ASX6000LNPβ128GTβC | ASX6000LNPβ256GTβC | ASX6000LNPβ512GTβC | ASX6000LNPβ1TTβC |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 | |||
| Interface | PCI Express 3.0 x4 - NVMe 1.3 | |||
| Capacity, GB | 128 | 256 | 512 | 1024 |
| Configuration | ||||
| Memory chips: type, interface, manufacturing process, manufacturer | Micron 64-layer 512-Gbps TLC 3D NAND | |||
| Controller | Realtek RTS5763DL | |||
| Buffer: type, volume | No | |||
| Performance | ||||
| Max. sustained sequential read speed, MB/s | 1800 | 1800 | 1800 | 1800 |
| Max. sustained sequential write speed, MB/s | 600 | 600 | 1200 | 1200 |
| Max. random read speed (blocks of 4 KB), IOPS | 100 000 | 100 000 | 180 000 | 220 000 |
| Max. random write speed (blocks of 4 KB), IOPS | 130 000 | 170 000 | 200 000 | 200 000 |
| physical characteristics | ||||
| Power consumption: idle / read-write, W | N/A | |||
| MTBF (mean time between failures), million h | 1,8 | |||
| Recording resource, TB | 60 | 120 | 240 | 480 |
| Overall dimensions: LxHxD, mm | X x 80 22 3,58 | |||
| Mass, g | 8 | |||
| Warranty period, years | 3 | |||
If we compare the characteristics of the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite with the specifications of the XPG SX6000 Pro, it immediately becomes clear that the cheapness of the novelty will be traced in all aspects without exception. Even the declared speeds have decreased, which drive manufacturers usually try to overestimate in every possible way, taking into account both SLC caching technologies and the deepest request pipelining. So, the official performance indicators for reading lost 12-15%, and for writing - 17-20%.
The fact that the performance has decreased due to the reduced degree of parallelism of the flash memory array (this is caused by the transition to more capacious crystals) is also easy to see in the decrease in direct write speeds, bypassing the SLC cache. In order to clarify how the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite's accelerated write technology works, we conducted a traditional experiment with continuous filling of the 512 GB version of the SSD through sequential writing. Its results can be seen in the chart below.
SLC caching in ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite works according to a simple dynamic algorithm - all available free memory is used for recording in high-speed mode. Therefore, about 170 GB (a third of the total volume) can be written to a blank drive in SLC mode. SLC write performance reaches 1,2 GB / s, but then it drops sharply to about 130 MB / s, and with a very wide spread in instantaneous performance. In comparison, the flash array speed of the XPG SX6000 Pro was 20-25% faster. This is how the penalty associated with halving the parallelism of the flash memory array in a cheaper drive model manifests itself. As a result, it will take approximately 512 minutes to fill the entire 6000 GB version of the ADATA XPG SX45 Lite. And this is very long: for example, a Samsung 970 EVO Plus of a similar volume can be completely recorded in 10 minutes.
At the same time, it should be noted that dynamic caching is good because it protects the user as much as possible from meeting the true speed of a flash memory array in TLC mode. If you leave enough free space on the drive, even an SSD as leisurely as the XPG SX6000 Lite can provide acceptable write speeds. True, there is one more βbutβ. Since this drive does not have its own DRAM buffer and uses the system's RAM to buffer the address translation table, the speed of the XPG SX6000 Lite can also decrease when working with large amounts of data for this reason. As practice shows, a noticeable drop in speed parameters in the XPG SX6000 Lite (as in the XPG SX6000 Pro) occurs during random operations with files or groups of files with a total size of more than 4 GB.
In other words, do not forget that ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite is still a budget NVMe drive, and if you decide to save money, you will have to put up with some features. Moreover, there are noticeably more such compromises in this case than in the case of the XPG SX6000 Pro. And it's not just about performance. For example, a cheaper version of the SSD has worse warranty conditions and a lower declared flash memory resource. While the warranty period for the XPG SX6000 Pro is 5 years, the Lite version is given only a reduced warranty to three years, which is completely uncharacteristic of NVMe drives, including models based on QLC memory. In addition, for the XPG SX6000 Lite, the warranty conditions only allow 480 times overwriting of the drive volume, while the ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro can be completely overwritten 600 times during its operation. However, as you know, such requirements are of a formal nature and have a rather distant relationship to practice.
To be fair, the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite still outperforms the XPG SX6000 Pro in some ways. The lineup of this novelty includes four representatives, and the minimum SSD capacity is only 128 GB. However, the performance of junior modifications is at a very low level. A 128 GB model, where the flash memory array operates in dual-channel mode, is unlikely to please its owners with superiority over SATA SSD. That's why the XPG SX6000 Pro capacities started at 256 GB.
Appearance and internal arrangement
For testing, we used a representative of the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite lineup with a capacity of 512 GB. On the one hand, this version has a quite sufficient degree of flash memory parallelism and promises good performance, and on the other hand, it costs a little more than 5 thousand rubles.
The first glance at this SSD is enough to understand that this is indeed a close relative of the XPG SX6000 Pro. Like the Pro drive, the new XPG SX6000 Lite is not only a single-sided module in the M.2 2280 form factor with black textolite, but is also equipped with a similar set of components distributed across the board in exactly the same way. Only the nomenclature of flash memory chips differs, of which there were two on the XPG SX6000 Lite 512 GB, and not four, as on a more expensive SSD.
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Actually, this is the main characteristic feature of the XPG SX6000 Lite. If the XPG SX6000 Pro used microcircuits assembled by ADATA itself from 256-gigabit 64-layer TLC 3D NAND semiconductor crystals purchased from Micron, now the SpecTek marking flaunts on the flash memory microcircuits. And this is a clear sign that well describes the essence of the drive in question, because SpecTek is a subsidiary of Micron, through which the American semiconductor manufacturer, in order not to tarnish its reputation, sells products with reduced quality gradations. However, those TLC 3D NAND chips that are installed on the XPG SX6000 Lite belong to the Full Spec for SSD (100%) category, that is, they have been pre-tested and still recognized by the manufacturer as suitable for use as part of solid state drives.
Each of the flash memory chips contains four TLC 3D NAND semiconductor crystals with an increased capacity of up to 512 Gbps, which means that the Realtek RTS5763DL four-channel controller in a one and a half byte drive has the ability to use only two interleaving devices in channels. That is why in the XPG SX6000 Lite model range, performance increases with increasing volumes up to the maximum version of the SSD with a volume of 1 TB.
The entire element base of the ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite is placed in three microcircuits. In addition to flash memory, the board also has a basic Realtek controller, and no other add-ons are required. Empty "landing pads" for additional flash memory chips remain on the board, but they are used exclusively in the older modification. The usual dynamic memory chip is not needed here at all, since the SSD in question relies on a bufferless architecture and HMB technology.
Although the XPG SX6000 Lite is one of the most affordable NVMe SSDs, which is directly reflected in its hardware design, ADATA has unexpectedly paid some attention to heat dissipation. The SSD comes with an aluminum heat-distributing plate with an adhesive layer, which the user, if desired, can attach to the surface of the chips.
True, its small thickness and smooth profile are unlikely to provide high heat dissipation efficiency, but even this option is still better than nothing.
Software
With ADATA's service software, the situation is far from being the best. A proprietary utility for the company's drives exists, but it develops extremely sluggishly, and its capabilities and interface leave much to be desired. Moreover, a number of users who have activated the interface scaling functions in Windows will not be able to use it at all.
Nevertheless, the ADATA SSD Toolbox utility still provides basic functionality.
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So, in addition to issuing complete diagnostic information about the SSD, ADATA SSD Toolbox allows you to check the flash memory of the drive, send a TRIM command package to it, or automatically configure the operating system settings (disabling Superfetch, Prefetch and defragmentation).
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Also through ADATA SSD Toolbox, you can update the firmware and perform the Secure Erase procedure.
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In addition, after registering the purchased XPG SX6000 Lite on the manufacturer's website, you can get a key to the popular Acronis True Image HD 2013/2015 data cloning program.
Source: 3dnews.ru