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

I purchased the 3500mb/s version of the 2TB model and I think that 3500 must be an average of the read and write speeds. (Please refer to the attached screenshot from Blackmagics diskspeed test tool.) The drive is installed into a PCIe4 slot on an x570mobo with a 3900x. Note that this test is performed after having the drive for a year and using it as my frequently played Steam games drive. It has about 300gigs of tv shows and a terabyte of games like GTA5, some Bioshocks, Monster Hunter World. So the drive has seen fair use over time both in sequential reading as well as random access. I *FEEL* like Monster Hunter loads more quickly off of the NVME versus the SATA3 SSD I had it on before this, but MHW on PC is so much better than PS4 I cant be sure (nor bothered to move the install back to check). This doesnt do a damned thing for GTA5 (or online) load times. GTA5 is bad and nothing helps it perform well. Shame upon Rockstar and all their managers. The poor performance here is nothing to do with the drive, though. Watching shows requires almost no speed, so if you wanted to waste your money on this instead of a rust drive for storing video, the experience would be fine. Ive done a little video editing off of this (720p60 prores) and it feels good. While I wouldnt dare use this as a capture destination, storing proxies here has, in my experience, been good. I dont believe that reading off of it affects drive life, but I dont know enough about that to talk about it beyond how it felt. The proxies I made were done overnight, so I dont know what effect the drive speed might have had. Im content with the drive, and am content with the price I paid (270usd) but I wouldnt blindly buy a second one and will definitely do research on competition in the future. I have no opinion about the manufacturer or its support structure, as the drive still works fine a year in.

Ive installed a bunch of m.2 drives in the past, and the ease of installation and compact size is always a plus. This drive was no different in those aspects. What was exceptionally nice, is the thermal sink included with thermal adhesive pads already applied. It is slim enough to be used in a laptop (like I did) and good looking enough to fit into just about any build authentically as well. The other impressive aspect is the fact that this is an actual m.2 2280 nvme drive and not an m.2 ssd. It also is a cached m.2 which means the speeds can remain high without massive drops. All that is pretty standard for a good m.2 2280 nvme drive, however not usually at this price point. I am beyond thrilled with the drive so far and will most likely be buying at least 1 or 2 more for even more laptop storage, and even to upgrade the already existing smaller capacity one in my main desktop rig.

This review is for the 1TB drive. This is important to note, because most of the negative reviews are from people who dont understand how these things work, or how they are listed on Amazon. That being said, lets move on. Installed this into a new build system, on a B450 Gaming Plus Max board, with a Ryzen 3600 chip. Drive came with the m.2 screw to properly mount to the motherboard. Installed Windows to the drive via USB, and the motherboard automatically selected it as the boot drive once that was done. I want to say that again. The drive 100% works as a boot drive, and once Windows is installed, any decent motherboard will automatically select it as the boot drive. Speeds are essentially as advertised on the read side, and about 10% better than advertised on the write side. In addition, it stays quite cool. Drive did not exceed 48c during testing via CrystalDiskMark. It DOES include a very thin heat spreader, which I did put on the drive. Not sure what impact it has, but hey, every degree matters! Currently idling at 36c.

At the time of writing this. This is one of the fastest SSDs on the market, and at the time I bought it was one of the cheapest high performance 1TB NVMe SSDs. I am super happy with it. But there is one potential issue. Its a Double Sided board. - Meaning chips are on both sides of the PCB. In a standard ATX/mATX desktop, I doubt this would ever be a problem, and the SSD will work beautifully. But on Thin and light laptops and maybe ITX motherboards depending on where the M.2 slot, you might have potential issues. Some laptops have chips, capacitors exc, under where the SSD will sit, and others (Like the Thinkpad T495 I have pictured) have a slot that is thin and a very close to the motherboard. Which as you might be able to see, has caused the drive to start bending. - I mentioned ITX motherboards as I have seen some that have their M.2 slot on the backside of the board, and for space reasons may also include these thin slots, but I am unsure. I have personally only seen 1 laptop I would be unable to install this due to chips near the M.2 slot, but plenty of other laptops where there would be no problem what so ever. I havent experienced any issues, but I am swapping this drive out to go into my desktop, and installing a single sided board SSD in my Thinkpad just in case.

I have had a open NVME M.2 2280 slot open on my Lenovo 330s 15IKB GTX 1050 since August 2018 and was waiting to slap a drive in it to expand on the Mushkin Reactor SSD SATA 1TB I already had from my previously dead laptop. I did some research and got this drive. I decided to drop an extra $25 on this one vs some of the slightly cheaper NVME 1tb drives based on various reviews. It installed fine and I used the included heat sink as the secondary one I purchased with a screw kit would not fit in the laptop. Here is my computer info System SKU LENOVO_MT_81GC_BU_idea_FM_ideapad 330S-15IKB GTX1050 Processor Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-8250U CPU @ 1.60GHz, 1801 Mhz, 4 Core(s), 8 Logical Processor(s) Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 8.00 GB The benchmark with the drive empty as my secondary drive is impressive and came in a lot higher than others i had seen on the Amazon reviews. Benchmarks are just simulated results but i expect this drive to perform well. During the benchmark the temp rose to 64 deg which is a high load test and it idles at 46 deg with the included heat sink. If I remember I will update the review with some real world data after it run it with games and full of files. I intend to load the OS and programs on the NVME and if I see any changes or issues with the performance I will update the review with temperatures and performance. If the drive ends up running 2 hot I will look at installing one of the flat copper heat-sinks I have seen on amazon. The drive installed fine and was recognized automatically. I did a quick format using disk manager in windows 10 and was able to run the benchmarks on it quickly. This upgrade makes this a pretty decent budget gaming laptop even now with it 2 years old.

Easy install and fast speeds, so far so good

Bought it in March to add some extra storage to my gaming tower, the price was nice for the 2Tb, and it was an easy install. Around August I noticed drive issues when installing a game on Steam, and when I tried to access the drive my PC wasn’t able to read it. I rebooted and it was completely gone. Bought a new PCI-E adapter for it, worked a little more reliably until late October and then started becoming unreadable again. Thought maybe it was the $20 PCI-E adapter, bought a nicer one, worked again until last night and now it’s completely dead. PC sees the adapter but shows it’s empty, chip smells burnt. If you’re looking for about 6months of use, it’s not bad, but long term it’s no prize winner. It got me through a time where spending money on a more known brand wasn’t an option, and for that I give it 3-stars.

Was shopping around for the cheapest NVME m.2 SSD I could get my hands on, that had at least 256GB of storage. Thankfully I found this 512GB unit, which (at the time of buying) about 5 dollars more than the 256. So I bought it, and Ive never used a M.2 SSD before, but hot dang I am impressed with its speed. My PC boots in about 10 seconds, fully into windows, and everything is available instantly. It really is true that Win10 is better with SSD. Ive used this PC almost daily, multiple hours a day, for the past couple of months, and I havent ran into any problems with it. I did a lot of research before picking which SSD to buy, and I landed on this one for best performance/dollar. There may be a better deal out there now, so its worth looking into competitors, bit this was the best value at the time that I could find. a few months ago, I looked at a bunch, including some that are SATA 2.5 inch drives, and those didnt appeal to me because they had the data bandwidth limitations of SATA If youve made it this far in my review, buy it, you wont be disappointed

My review of the XPG SX8200 Pro 2TB 3D NAND NVMe Gen3x4 PCIe M.2 2280 Solid State Drive R/W 3500/3000MB/s SSD (ASX8200PNP-2TT-C) (SM2262EN Controller Version) Previous purchases include: Crucial P1 1TB 3D NAND NVMe PCIe Internal SSD, up to 2000MB/s - CT1000P1SSD8 Crucial MX500 1TB 3D NAND SATA 2.5 Inch Internal SSD, up to 560MB/s - CT1000MX500SSD1(Z) and I use the former in a Plugable USB-C NVMe enclosure (USB 3.1 Gen 2) and the latter in an OWC Mercury On-The-Go (USB 3.0) enclosure. Both were attached to a CalDigit TSI3+ Dock respectively. The first was used for media files (ripped CDs, downloads and home video projects) were the second was used for audio content related to DAW projects and accompanying software library content. While pushing upwards on the capacity of both 1TB SSD I opted to increase my available capacity and chose the XPG SX8200. My purchase decision was influenced by a YouTube review on Tech Deals SSD Review — 8 NVMe M.2 Drives Tested — Which Should You Buy? — 2019 Edition Truthfully, I imagine I would have pleased with any of the competing devices. Using the XPG SX8200 in an OWC Envoy Express TB3 enclosure. In real world use I perceive the speed advantage over USB 3.x as a noticeable lack of latency when accessing files in Apple Music or Logic Pro. Black Magic Speed Test demonstrates a clear advantage. Note, none of my home projects tax the bandwidth of these bus speeds - capacity is the issue I addressed. This device is run off the TB3 port on a 16 15-inch MBP (bring on the M1 processor!) Ive recently purchased a second XPG SX8200/Envoy Express combo with an eye towards repurposing the older devices within the household. Went to register the new device on the ADATA web page today and they appear to be having issues - didnt experience this when I registered the 1st XPG. I hope you are as pleased with the XPG SX8200 as I am.

Using a RIITOP passive adapter with no controller chip for the SX8200 Pro 1TB NVME drive, I could boot up my 2012 MacPro5,1, format the SX8200, and clone MACOS 10.14.6 Mojave to it. I put it in PCIe slot 2 but got only 750 read speed, despite that my system report shows the NVME connected to 4 lanes at 5.0 GT/s. People online mentioned that slots 3 and 4 share an onboard controller chip and would increase NVME speed there, so I moved it to slot 4. Read speed increased to 937, but still not quite the expected 1,500 which the PCIe 2.0 slot should provide. Maybe thats why the SX8200 was 30% cheaper than the 970 EVO... By the way, my SX8200 has the SM2262G chip, not the better SM2262EN chip.