Heatsink Performance:
While faster than their SATA-based SSDs, PCIe drives like the GAMMIX S70 Blade tend to generate more heat. In fact, if your computer doesn't have enough airflow or a large video card covering your M.2 slots, they can get quite hot. To prevent themselves from overheating, most SSDs have implemented a mechanism called thermal throttling which automatically reduces a drive's performance when it reaches a certain temperature.
If you're someone looking to get the most out of your SSD, this is something that you don't want to happen so companies like ADATA have begun to include an optional, stick-on heatsink with many of their PCIe SSDs.
Without the heatsink, the GAMMIX S70 Blade idled at around 51 ºC. When pushed hard, the drive reached temperatures as high as 66 ºC when reading and 72 ºC when writing. These temperatures had no impact on the GAMMIX S70 Blade's read speeds. However, when it would exceed 71 ºC, thermal throttling would kick in and slow the drive's sequential write speed.
With the heatsink installed, the GAMMIX S70 Blade's temperature dropped by a few degrees while idle and when reading. The drive still thermal throttled when writing. However, it took longer to reach this point and the drop in performance did not seem nearly as pronounced.
Final Thoughts:
At first glance, the XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade may seem to be nothing more than the GAMMIX S70 without its massive CoolArmor heat spreader. However, ADATA's engineers have made a number of improvements to reduce temperatures and squeeze even more performance out of the drive. This compact, M.2 form factor SSD is powered by Innogrit's Rainier (IG5236) controller and is available with up to 2TB of 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. Combine this with a large DRAM cache and an ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4 interface and you have one of the fastest consumer NVMe SSDs on the market today. The 1TB version of the GAMMIX S70 Blade flew through our sequential transfer rate tests, reading at speeds as high as 7,462 MB/s and writing at more than 6,400 MB/s. It also did fairly well in our random write tests, producing more than 164,000 IOPS at low queue depths.
Of course, fast read and write speeds aren't the only things the GAMMIX S70 Blade has to offer. In addition to a good looking, aluminum heatsink, the drive uses dynamic SLC caching and a DRAM cache buffer to improve read and write performance. The GAMMIX S70 Blade also employs LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) error correction, End-To-End (E2E) data protection and a RAID engine to ensure data integrity as well as AES 256-bit encryption for data security. To top it all off, the drive works with ADATA's SSD Toolbox software and is backed by a 5 year warranty.
The XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade is available now in 1TB and 2TB capacities and can be purchased through retailers like Amazon for $160 and $330, respectively.
Highs:
- Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities
- PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
- Innogrit Rainier (IG5236) controller
- Equipped with 176-layer 3D TLC NAND
- Excellent sequential read and write speeds
- Good random read and write performance
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- Dynamic SLC caching and DRAM cache buffer
- Advanced LDPC ECC technology
- End-to-End (E2E) data protection and RAID engine
- Includes optional aluminum heatsink
- AES 256-bit encryption
- Works with ADATA's SSD Toolbox software
- Reasonably priced
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Write speed drops when SLC cache is full
