- Lowest price per GB of all NVMe drives
- Faster (usually) than any SATA SSD
- Slower than almost any other NVMe SSD
- TLC can bog down a bit in write-heavy scenarios
NVMe is mostly the domain of expensive offerings, but things are beginning to change, with multiple companies offering NVMe drives that use TLC 3D NAND. XPG SX7000 is similar to Intel’s 600p (same SM2260 controller, same IMFT 3D NAND), but it has a substantially lower price. In fact, the price per GB can compete with some of the faster SATA drives. If you’re looking for the lowest price on an NVMe SSD, Adata has you covered.
The SX7000 comes in capacities ranging from 128GB to 1TB, though the 1TB model can be hard to find. With most 512GB NVMe SSDs priced around $200, Adata has a clear advantage at only $155. The drive has been out for nearly a year, and performance is weaker than the fastest NVMe drives, but it’s still faster than any SATA drive in most workloads. As long as you’re not planning on doing lots of random writes or heavy mixed IO, this is a good budget NVMe drive, and a good fit for a gaming PC.
I recommend skipping the 128GB and 256GB options—they’re simply not large enough to hold all your important files, and you lose some performance as well. It’s at 512GB that the SX7000 becomes interesting, with enough space for your OS, major applications, and a decent collection of games. Many users don’t do enough to really warrant spending a ton of money on the fastest SSD possible, but for the modest price premium over SATA drives, the SX7000 does very well. You also get the benefit of omitting SATA and power cables in your PC.
I’ve plotted overall performance against capacity and cost (see below), and while the SX7000 doesn’t rank at the top of the charts, the diminishing returns you get with faster SSDs need to be factored in. We heard about several other upcoming ‘budget NVMe’ SSDs at this year’s CES, which might provide competition in the future. For now, however, the SX7000 is almost alone in the sub-$200 category for a 512GB drive.
Almost, but not quite. Basically, whichever costs the least is the best value for an NVMe drive.
If you work with tons of small files or want to run an IO heavy database or server, there are better choices. If you’re putting together a new PC and you want to avoid unsightly cable clutter as much as possible, going with an M.2 drive is an excellent option over SATA. For the price of a lunch or two, making the switch to an M.2 drive is certainly worth considering.
source: pcgamer
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