XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W 3500/3000MB/s SSD

My use case was using 6 of the XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drives in an AMFELTEC PCI Express Gen 3 Carrier Board for six M.2 or NGSFF (NF1) PCIe SSD modules installed in a Razer Core X Chroma Thunderbolt 3 eGPU enclosure. Operating platform: Apple Mac Mini (purchased 2020) running MacOS Catalina v10.15.7. No matter what I tried, the SSDs showed up in DISK UTILITY as 1/2 the capacity could not be partitioned or formatted for Apple file systems. I tried to isolate where the problem was and ruled out the eGPU chassis and the AMFELTEC board as they worked with other PCIe cards. Note: I tried another external cheap enclosure to deduce that the issue was between how the ALFELTEC card saw the 2TB SSD and opened a ticket with AMFELTEC in Ontario, Canada via RMA. Bottom line: ALFELTEC engineering found the source of the problem with the ADATA SSDs. They are shipping my 6 slot SSD card back and my test 2TB SSD back to me for testing in my setup. AMFELTEC Feedback: Found the ISSUE with the XPG ADATA 2TB SSDs and their board: We found the source of the issue that you have. The issue is related to the module not connected pins that ADATA is using for module testing. We adjust logic on the board to support your ADATA modules. Since the host card manufacturer tested and updated the supporting board logic, I have a shot at getting this 12TB SSD RAID working once I get the parts back from Canada. Hats off to AMFELTEC for issuing an RMA, prepaying the FEDEX AIR, resolving the problem with XPG ADATA SSD, and returning the parts back to me. They exceeded my expectations for sales and engineering support for a problem that was outside their direct product line. Since they support all SSDs, they made it work by accomodating ADATA weird module testing logic state that they leave their products in when consumers buy the products. I will know for sure when my parts return but I am feeling better about my purchase of AMFELTEC products and their willingness to support ALL SSDs.

This review is for the ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro 512GB 3D NAND NVMe $78.99 at purchase. I never had an NVME drive before. I was building a new PC and had a budget. At first I was just going to use a SATA SSD that I already owned. After some research I decided it may be worth the money to give it a try. I selected this drive because of a PC Mag review (I dont think Amazon allows links so youll have to search for it). It is about 90% as fast as a Samsung 970 EVO Pro at about half the cost. Its easily as good as anything but that drive if not better. So I did my own tests once I had the system built. I was rather pleasantly surprised that the drive was 5X as fast as a fairly good (Wester Digital Blue) SATA SSD. I also have a HDD that I use for backups, it clocks in 30X faster than that. Note that given the architecture of these type of drives the 1GB version should be about 10-15% faster (for any brand). If, like me, you were wondering if these were worth the money the answer is absolutely yes. This particular model stands out for its value. Its not the fastest you can buy, but that extra 10% performance comes at 215% of the price. Highly recommended.

I bought this to upgrade an HP EliteDesk 800 G2 small form factor desktop, with an I7 6700. Obviously, not a gaming machine. I wanted something a little larger and a little faster than the 256 gig SSD it came with. Im very happy with my purchase. Ive bought dozens of Adata drives and never had a problem. My motherboard does not have an NVME slot. So, I bought the $8 adapter in the pic. amazon.com/gp/product/B07VYWR91T/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s02?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The adapter board was shipped, attached to the larger of the two brackets it was supplied with. I removed the bracket, installed the new drive, then attached the board to the low profile bracket. When I installed the board and powered up, bios and Windows 10 recognized the new drive immediately. I cloned the SSD to the new drive using the free version of Aomei Backupper. I find it less troublesome than other software. Afterward, powered down, removed the old drive and was up and running. All of this in a matter of minutes. I ran Crystal Disk Mark and the pic shows the results. Not bad. Im running the cpu, with turbo boost disabled, because it runs too hot when using video editing software. To see if read and write scores would improve, I enabled turbo boost. I got slightly lower scores. I dont know why. I dont really care either. Im happy.

The drive was fairly easy to install. I had two issues. The first was that there was no mounting screw. It seems petty, but a 2mm screw is not easy to find and you cant install the drive with out it (Ace hardware). The second is that it wasnt super clear how to get the software needed to clone the existing hard drive, but a bit of digging got it done. Unfortunately, there was no warning about disabling the old drive on reboot. My first clone attempt failed, but after reading a ton of comments on the internet, I recloned the drive and after the automatic shutdown, I unplugged the old drive before rebooting. The new drive booted fine after that. I plugged the old drive back in, rebooted, set the boot order in the bios and all was well. After I confirmed that the new drive was functioning well, I was able to reformate the old drive for extra storage and backup space. With the new drive in place, my system is significantly faster. Yes the drive is faster, but because the PC was constantly accessing it, even simple operations were slower than they should have been. The PC is now a joy to use. Slugs like PhotoShop are quick loading and responsive too. It seems that my PC had a fast processor with enough ram, but the old hard drive was the bottleneck.

Cant recommend it. I grabbed the 500GB version based on nice reviews from Toms Hardware, PC World and a few other go to sites. The generic crystal benchmarks are on par with the website specs showing 3000Mbps+ reads and 2200Mbps+ writes - note that they always advertise max writes based on the 1TB drive as well (over 3000Mbps) and its really hard to find the smaller drive specs on the manufacturer page. PC World says it even rivals and bests the Samsung 970 Pro in many tests. Well, unfortunately, the synthetic benchmarks are just that and you should take the them with a grain of salt. 1) at least Samsung now shows the performance of the drives when they run out of TLC cache on the EVO and EVO Plus. When transferring large files, expect no more than 900Mbps write for the 500GB Samsung EVO drives. On the XPG, I cant find that information on their website, but after several of my own 8GB single file transfers to this drive, it usually falls between 400Mbps and 600Mbps in a matter of seconds and fluctuates in that range, although occasionally reaching 900Mbps for very brief periods. This is a far cry from the 500GB versions specifications and well below the capabilities of my existing and older/smaller PCIe NVME drives. You might say these speeds are based on my hardware or the file being transfered, but then why do the older drives in my system still perform better under the same conditions and closer to their advertised speeds? My older 256GB Samsung 950 Pro still outpaces it with a steady 900Mbps on the same file writes and my other first generation MyDigital BPX 500GB also sees 900Mbps writes with the same file tests. Ive also swapped the 3 drives so they each test the file copies in the onboard m.2 slot and the 2 different PCI adapters on the 16 and 8 lane slots. While the Samsung and BPX are relatively consistent at about 900Mbps write copies onto them, the XPG is usually below 600Mbps in these real world file transfers. So, yeah, it meets the Crystal DiskMark test specs, but performs leaps and bounds slower than the advertised speeds when it comes to writing larger files (8GB files arent overly huge when you consider backup software and Blu-ray isos are much larger). Id look elsewhere for your next PCIe NVMe purchase. The price is great at $99, but not when you realize its barely on PAR with standard SATA ssds in real-world file transfers that fall well below the advertised speeds of inflated and synthetic benchmarks.

Replaced a 1tb drive was easy to clone too.

Excellent M.2 Work on iMac 2017 27”

Every new computer feels fast, but this upgrade really made a difference. Mostly, I wanted the extra size and felt like this particular model had the base price to storage space ratio. The only glitch with install would be trying to figure out how to put the heat spreader on it. That piece is optional and if you just look at the screw notch, its easy to figure out. Getting to the website to download the software needed to clone my old drive was a bit of a pain. Youll have to create an account, add lots of details about your new device, submit a proof of purchase, jump through six hoops of fire and wrestle three bears before you can gain access to this needed piece of software. I had an external case made for M.2 drives, which made things easier for me to clone my C drive to this new disc. However, if you dont have an extra space for an M.2 drive, youre going to have issues. Youll probably need to clone the original drive to something else and then clone it on to your new drive. Also, my old drive was half as big. The original clone used half of my new drive. I needed to watch a couple YouTube videos to figure out how to reclaim the extra space and make it whole. Not hard, but not for the faint of heart, either. Im subtracting one-star because of how many hoops I had to jump through to get the necessary cloning software.

The first one I got was DOA. Would not show up up all no matter how I mounted the drive. Amazon came to the rescue with a replacement that worked completely fine.

Its so good, Im buying another. Ive been using one for a couple years, and Ive had no problems whatsoever. Its getting a little full, and I saw that the price has gone down tremendously on these, so it was a no-brainer to buy another one. Im still on a Gen 3 motherboard, but it has been perfectly fast for my needs, and this drive is an awesome bang for your buck.