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The XPG SX8000 comes in a small eye-catching, red and black box. Along with a picture of the drive, the front advertises many of its key features including its 256GB capacity, PCIe Gen3x4 interface, NVMe 1.2 support and 3D NAND. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding the SX8000's features and performance.
For whatever reason, ADATA opted not to include any sort of documentation with the SX8000. While gamers and enthusiasts probably don't need help installing the drive in their computer, it still would have been good to include some warranty and service information.
Physical Features:
The XPG SX8000 uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 22 x 80 x 3.5 mm and tips the scales at a mere 8g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.
The SX8000 is one of the first drives to use SMI's new SM2260 controller. This 8 channel, PCIe Gen 3 x4 SSD controller is powered by a dual ARM Cortex CPU and offers support for MLC, TLC and 3D NAND flash from all the major suppliers. The SM2260 also employs SMI's proprietary NANDXtend ECC technology, which uses LDPC hard and soft decoding as well as RAID protection to enhance the P/E cycles of 3D NAND.
For the 256GB version of the SX8000, ADATA has opted to use its own Micron manufactured 3D MLC NAND flash. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are two 64GB NAND flash packages on either side of the PCB. The drive also has a pair of 128MB NANYA DDR3L memory chips that are used for caching.
