 |
 |
The ATOM 50 comes in a small black box. Along with a picture of the drive, the front advertises a number of its key features including its 1TB capacity, PCIe 4.0 interface and maximum read speed. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding the ATOM 50's features and performance. Inside, you'll find the SSD as well as a black, aluminum heatsink that can be attached to the drive.
Physical Features:
The ATOM 50 uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 80 x 22 x 3.3 mm and weighs in at 9g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.
Like the LEGEND 840, the ATOM 50 uses Innogrit's RainierQX (IG5220) controller. Designed for low-cost client solutions, this DRAM-less, PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4 controller has 4 NAND channels and supports SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC NAND flash with either ONFI or Toggle Mode interface. The RainierQX also features multiple data encryption and protection schemes as well as InnoGrit’s proprietary Gen3 LDPC ECC technology
For the 1TB version of the ATOM 50, ADATA has opted to use its own Micron manufactured 176-layer (B47R) 3D TLC NAND flash. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are two 512GB NAND flash packages on top of the PCB. There is also no DRAM cache chip as the ATOM 50's RainierQX controller takes full advantage of NVMe's Host Memory Buffer feature by using a small portion of the computer's memory to cache the mapping tables.
The aluminum heatsink included with the ATOM 50 is simple, yet functional. It attaches to the top of the drive using thermal adhesive and does have a small, yet measurable, impact on temperature. I found that with the heatsink installed, the ATOM 50's temps dropped by a few degrees during idle periods and heavy workloads.
