XPG Gammix S50 Lite PCIe Gen4x4 Review

Specifications and Features

ADATA’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite is the first offering we have seen in what can be considered the midrange generation 4 x 4 classification using the Silicon Motion SM2267 controller. In terms of speed, it’s rated for 3900 / 3200 (MB/sec) which ranks it as slightly faster than the best PCIe 3.0 drives. As PCIe 4.0 drives go, we’re used to seeing 5000 / 4400 (MB/sec), so the S50 Lite clearly is not competing against the flagship drives. A nice controller alone won’t get the job done, so they paired 3D NAND flash memory and DRAM cache buffer to round out the hardware selection.

Features at a Glance

• Read / Write speed up to 3900 / 3200 (MB/sec) Capacity Model Number EAC Code
• Ultra-fast PCIe Gen 4 x 4 interface
• Capacity up to 2 TB
• SLC Caching and DRAM cache buffer
• 3D NAND Flash for higher capacity and durability
• Advanced LDPC ECC Technology
• AES 256-bit encryption support
• Compact M.2 2280 form factor – ideal for gaming
  and high-end desktops

Full specifications are in the table below:

Packaging/Product Tour

The XPG Gammix S50 Lite ships in a full-color box, with a premium-looking reflective finish to it. On the front, there’s a high-quality image of the actual drive as well as product branding info. On the backside, we see drive details in multiple languages. Although the printing is very tiny and difficult to read, most of the pertinent information is displayed there.

Inside the box, you’ll find just the drive by itself. There’s no printed manual or documentation, however, all of the relevant information can be found on ADATA’s website.

The Gammix S50 Lite Drive

The XPG Gammix S50 Lite purchase qualifies for free downloads of ADATA SSD Toolbox and Migration Utility. SSD Toolbox allows users to monitor and manage the drive status, wear level, and lifespan information. The Migration Utility is especially helpful for users making the move from HDD to SSD, as it’s designed for simple and quick backup and migration of the contents of entire drives, including the operating system.

We found the software quite easy to use and surprisingly feature-rich compared to competitors.

Testing Method and Test System

We know what some of the performance specs are on paper, but how does it actually perform in real-world tests? To answer that we’re going to put both drives through the gamut of benchmark programs to evaluate the relative performance. In between each major benchmark phase, the drive will be sanitized from the motherboard bios and formatted to NTFS with default settings under Windows 10 v1909.

Below are the tests we run with a brief description.

• Crystal Disk Mark v 7.0.0 x64 – Run at Default Settings (5 Passes)
• AS SSD v 2.0.7316 – Run at Default Settings
• ATTO v 3.05 – Run at Default Settings except for the QD Set to 10
• Thermal Testing – 5 passes back-to-back of Crystal Disk Mark.
• DiskBench v2.7.0.1 – Use predefined 120 GB transfer file
• Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Benchmark – Run at Default Settings
• Anvil Storage Utility Benchmark v 1.1.0 – Default Settings

All tests will be performed with the Gammix S50 Lite installed in the top M.2 slot to utilize the direct CPU interface.

Benchmark Results

We’ve lined up an excellent group of NVMe drives to compare the S50 Lite against. The Silicon Power US70 is a prototypical Phison E16 Gen 4 drive. It boasts incredible read/write numbers and is the epitome of the first-wave Gen 4. The next drive we’re going to use for comparison is the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, which is considered to be the very best of Gen 3. To round things out we’ll throw in a few other Gen 3 drives of varying speeds.

CrystalDiskMark

As we expected, the S50 Lite performs exceptionally well. It edged out the top Gen 3 drives for sequential read and was about tied with them for the sequential write. Looking at the speed compared to the US70, we get a good idea that this drive is intended to be a mid-range offering and not equipped to compete with the first-wave Gen 4 drives.

Although it’s clearly a step down from the US70, our results show that the S50 lite took the overall win for the CDM SEQ1M-Q1T1 read test.

AS SSD

Our AS SSD sequential read and write results pair nicely with Crystal Disk Mark. We see that the S50 Lite is a good margin ahead of top Gen 3 read performance, but closer inline to the others for write performance. Looking at the performance as a whole, it fits in nicely with other top-tier Gen 3, but it’s still a good margin behind older Gen 4.

ATTO

Our ATTO tests confirm what we’ve been suspecting up to this point. The SM2267 controller is showing performance numbers very similar to top-tier generation 3 drives, such as the 970 EVO Plus or Cardea Zero Z340. Similar to what we saw with the CDM read numbers, the read performance is slightly ahead of the Samsung 970 EVO Plus but a far cry from the Silicon Power US70.

Thermal Testing

In an effort to be as thorough as possible we will use a K-Type thermal probe and a Fluke F51-II digital thermometer for temperature readings. The thermal probe has been taped to the actual drive with Kapton tape and we tried to center the probe as close to the controller as possible.

With no airflow whatsoever, the S50 Lite performed the best out of all our test drives with an impressively cool 66°C. With one of the warmest idle temperatures and the coolest load temperature, this drive also had the smallest delta change in temperature.

The K-Type thermal results above paint a nice picture, but there’s more to this story. We noticed after the first run that the drive’s performance started to drop, and by the 5th run, it scored dramatically less in CDM. Below you can see the result on the right is the very first run and the result on the left is the 5th consecutive run. The highest temperature we observed on the heatsink was 66°C, but the drive started to throttle at about 60°C. Therefore the low temperatures are clearly a factor of the drive throttling at such a low temperature compared to the competition.

With a fan blowing directly on the drive, it does not throttle and scores relatively the same even after 10 consecutive runs, so the effect we see here is without a doubt temperature throttling.

DiskBench

Performance benchmarks are great, and they give us a good understanding of drive speeds, but they don’t give us much of an insight into daily usage. DiskBench allows us to specify a file and it will transfer from one directory to another while keeping a record of speed and time.

We used a 120 GB file composed of random data and specified that it be moved from drive to drive.

Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers Game Load Test

Square Enix added scene loading metrics to the Final Fantasy XIV: Shadowbringers benchmark. The program renders simulated 3D game scenes and evaluates the overall system performance. One of the aspects of the benchmark is that it records the time it takes to load each scene. If the game is launched from the SSD drive in question, then it gives us an indication of how game performance can be affected by hard drive speed.

Anvil Storage Utility

Anvil’s storage utility can monitor and test read and write speeds on hard drives and also produces an output performance score for comparison. It’s a great utility that also provides further information such as partition and volume information.

We pay close attention to the Anvil’s Storage Utility results because it runs a multitude of tests and produces one final score, which can be considered the drive’s bottom-line performance. Here we can see that the Gammix S50 Lite scores right about where we expected it to.

Conclusion

Overall we are very pleased with ADATA’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite. It’s the first budget-oriented option we have seen for PCIe 4.0 and the promising results give us high hopes for this new category. The integration of a stylish and functional heat sink is definitely an advantage for this drive. While it may not be an extravagant cooler like we see on the high-end models, it did perform exceptionally well. Temperature throttling was a mild concern, but we can only imagine the situation would be much worse without any heat sink. However, throttling is nothing new and NVMe drives are notorious for running warm with some overheating.

David Miller – mllrkllr88

Related Reading:

• Team Group Cardea Zero Z340 NVMe Review
• Silicon Power US70 PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD Review
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• Team Group T-Force Cardea Liquid M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD Review
• Team Group T-Force Delta MAX RGB SSD Review