The first consumer SSDs with PCIe 5.0 interface appeared on the market about two years ago. Since then, they have come a long way and gradually turned from a technical curiosity into a recognizable, albeit niche, class of solutions. If at first we were dealing with drives based on the Phison E26 controller, equipped with relatively slow flash memory with an interface frequency of 1600 MHz and a maximum linear speed of 10 GB/s, then gradually the memory frequency increased to 2400 MHz, and the peak speed approached 14 GB/s, which is not far from the theoretical maximum of the interface. During this time, other SSD controllers with PCIe 5.0 support have entered the market, for example, Innogrit IG5666. However, their appearance essentially did not change anything – drives based on them offered approximately the same speeds as products on the Phison E26.
But, as it turned out a couple of months ago, neither Phison E26 nor Innogrit IG5666 drives with fast memory can be considered the pinnacle of PCIe 5.0 solutions. This was proven by the slightly late product of the market leader — Samsung 9100 Pro, which clearly demonstrated that Phison and Innogrit were unable to reveal the full potential of the PCIe 5.0 x4 interface. And although the superiority of the Samsung drive in peak performance indicators is not so expressive, detailed tests showed that the 9100 Pro copes significantly better with real workloads that require the SSD to work with mixed small-block requests.
But the most interesting thing is that the Samsung 9100 Pro does not have the indisputable right to be called the crown of the evolution of consumer PCIe 5.0 SSDs. At least, that’s what Crucial, Sandisk and Kingston say, having released even more advanced (according to specifications) SSD models – Crucial T710, WD Black SN8100 and Kingston Fury Renegade G5. They not only promise another increase in peak speeds, but also promise a significant decrease in operating temperatures. The foundation of all these improvements is the new controller of another independent developer – Silicon Motion SM2508, which claims to push the Samsung 9100 Pro into the background and become the basis of the best PCIe 5.0 SSDs of 2025.
The emergence of such a promising and publicly available controller could not go unnoticed by other manufacturers. It is obvious that it will be widely distributed in the near future, especially since it allows for quite flexible configuration changes of SSDs based on it. For example, the already mentioned WD Black SN8100 and Kingston Fury Renegade G5 are drives with an emphasis on high performance, and therefore they use high-speed TLC memory of the BiCS8 standard, which has an interface frequency of 3600 MHz. But at the same time, some manufacturers who paid attention to SM2508 relied on attracting consumers’ attention due to the price factor and achieved considerable success in this.
For example, the new product from Adata, XPG Mars 980 Вlade, based on the same controller, costs about 13, 18 and 37 thousand rubles for the 1, 2 and 4 TB versions, respectively. This is significantly cheaper than both the Samsung 9100 Pro and any modern drive on the Phison E26 controller. Such a pleasant price is achieved due to the use of the well-known Micron B58R flash memory (232-layer TLC 3D NAND) with a 2400 MHz interface, which is very common on the market, in the XPG Mars 980 Вlade. Thanks to this, the Adata drive promises to become an unattainable leader in at least two areas: in terms of performance and price and in terms of specific performance per watt. Naturally, we could not pass by such a new product. And as soon as the XPG Mars 980 Blade arrived in Russia, a 2 TB sample appeared in our test lab. With its help, we will try to figure out whether the appearance of the SM2508 chip really changes the rules of the game in the PCIe 5.0 SSD segment and whether the new Adata product can be classified as a “must buy”.
⇡#Appearance and internal structure
The Adata XPG Mars 980 comes in three flavors: Blade, Pro, and Storm. In terms of hardware, they are the same model, but with different cooling systems. The Blade is equipped with a simple heat-dissipating aluminum plate, the Pro has a radiator with a fan, and the Storm is equipped with a miniature liquid cooling system with two fans. We got the simplest version of the Blade for testing, and this is even better, because active cooling on an SSD usually spoils the whole impression with its intrusive noise.
Moreover, the XPG Mars 980 Blade is supplied “stripped”. The cooling plate is included as a separate accessory and is simply inserted into the box with the SSD. That is, if the drive is supposed to be used in a motherboard slot with its own radiator, it can be left unattached. However, being mounted on the drive board, it is unlikely to interfere with anyone, since its thickness is less than 1 mm. This means that the SSD together with the heat spreader will fit perfectly in the motherboard, and in the laptop, and in the PS5.
The absence of pre-installed cooling on the XPG Mars 980 Blade allows us to take a good look at the component base. And the first thing to pay attention to is the controller – the SM2508 microcircuit, which we see on a real retail product for the first time. This is another powerful controller for flagship solutions designed to use the PCIe 5.0 x4 interface, which is designed to compete with the Phison E26 and Innogrit IG5666. In order to fully utilize the bandwidth provided by PCIe 5.0 x4, the SM2508 provides eight channels for the flash memory array, supports the latest TLC 3D NAND with an interface speed of up to 3600 MHz, and also adds a separate interface for the on-board DRAM buffer based on DDR4-3200.
At the same time, Silicon Motion has also pumped up the computing power of its controller, putting four real-time Arm Cortex-R8 cores and an additional, fifth Arm Cortex M0 core at its core. All this together allows Silicon Motion developers to talk about the advantage of SM2508 over competing solutions in terms of performance. The peak linear read and write speed for the controller is declared at 14.5 and 14 GB/s, and the performance of small-block operations is at 2.5 million IOPS. Indeed, if you compare these figures with the specifications of Phison E26, Innogrit IG5666 and Samsung Presto (the controller from Samsung 9100 Pro), SM2508 will look quite advantageous.
But the most important advantage of the SM2508 is not even its performance, but its power consumption and heat generation. Silicon Motion manufactures its controller at TSMC facilities using a fairly progressive 6 nm process technology, which has allowed it to reduce the chip’s appetite to a very modest 3.5 W. As a result, in terms of efficiency, the SM2508 really has no analogues among flagship solutions. The official documentation for this controller even directly states a 70% advantage in efficiency compared to competitors.
Returning to the design of the XPG Mars 980 Blade, we note that the SM2508 controller on the 2 TB drive in question is equipped with two 8 Gbit DDR4 chips at once. Despite this, the total size of the DRAM buffer in this case is typical and has a capacity of 1 GB per 1 TB of SSD volume.
The XPG Mars 980 Blade also features four flash memory chips, arranged in pairs on both sides of the drive’s board. They’re relabeled by Adata, but the new designation matches the chips we saw on the Adata Legend 970 Pro. This leaves no doubt that the XPG Mars 980 Blade once again uses Micron’s widely used 232-layer TLC 3D NAND, which has become a staple of SSDs based on the Phison E26 controller.
There are two sides to using such memory in the XPG Mars 980 Вlade. The good side is that it is quite fast and has proven itself in terms of resource TLC 3D NAND. At the same time, such memory can no longer be called advanced by today’s standards. It uses a 2400 MHz interface, while the most modern types of flash memory, such as 218-layer Kioxia BICS8 or 276-layer TLC 3D NAND from the same Micron, have switched to a faster ONFI/Toggle 5.0 interface with a frequency of 3600 MHz. At the same time, the SM2508 chip can work with 3600 MHz memory, which means that in the XPG Mars 980 Вlade the controller performance is restrained by mature TLC 3D NAND with a relatively slow interface. In other words, you shouldn’t expect the record performance figures that the most advanced SM2508 chip solutions can offer from the XPG Mars 980 Blade. But the Adata drive is significantly cheaper, offering a certain compromise between performance and price.
⇡#Specifications
However, you can only suspect the Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade of insufficiently high performance for a flagship drive if you know what the latest innovations like the Crucial T710 and WD Black SN8100 are capable of. Compared to the widespread solutions on the Phison E26 controller, the new Adata drive looks quite decent. This is easy to see from the specifications.
Judging by the passport characteristics, the XPG Mars 980 Blade should cope better than its competitors with small-block reading operations, which is quite capable of manifesting itself in real work. Plus, another important point: when checking the speed specifications with the CrystalDiskMark test, the Adata drive shows even better results than those declared by the manufacturer.
The 2 TB version of the XPG Mars 980 Blade turns out to be capable of delivering 2 million IOPS not only in small-block reading, but also in writing, and no one promised this. And based on this, it turns out that in terms of peak performance values measured by synthetic tests, the new Adata product surpasses not only alternatives on the Phison E26 controller, but also, for example, the Samsung 9100 Pro.
At the same time, the XPG Mars 980 Blade has other advantages in the specifications, such as an increased resource. Before the expiration of the warranty, it can be rewritten not 600, but 740 times, that is, Adata allows more intensive than usual use of its SSD. At the same time, the duration of the warranty period is 5 years, and this warranty works in Russian conditions, unlike, for example, Samsung drives, which are usually sold in domestic stores with a one-year warranty.
Unfortunately, Adata did not specify the power consumption of its SSD in the specifications, but this is another key feature of solutions based on the SM2508 controller that is worth mentioning. The fact is that, according to the developers of this chip, drives based on it should not consume more than 7 W, which is very little for a flagship PCIe 5.0 SSD. For comparison: products based on the Phison E26 chip have a consumption of up to 11 W, and Samsung 9100 Pro – up to 9 W.
⇡#Software
For its own drives, Adata offers the SSD Toolbox utility. Its set of functions is fairly standard and includes displaying general information about the drive, flash memory diagnostics, managing the TRIM command, and automatically adjusting operating system parameters (disabling Superfetch, Prefetch, and defragmentation).
In addition, SSD Toolbox can be used to update firmware and perform Secure Erase, as well as quickly measure SSD performance and transfer partitions between storage media installed in the system.
In addition to SSD Toolbox, Adata also offers its SSD buyers to download an additional third-party utility, FNet Backup ToGo2, from its website. It is designed to create backups and automate scheduled backups.
⇡#Description of the test system and testing methodology
Adata XPG Mars 980 Вlade claims to be an alternative to flagships with PCIe 5.0 interface. Therefore, it is logical to compare it with both common drives on the Phison E26 controller (Crucial T705 and MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr), and with the recently appeared Samsung 9100 Pro. It will also be interesting to compare XPG Mars 980 Вlade with PCIe 5.0-drive Adata 970-series – Legend 970 Pro, which is based on the Innogrit IG5666 controller. This is exactly the list of participants that we have collected for testing, diluting it with several popular mid-range solutions.
Detailed information about all test participants is summarized in the table.
The test system configuration was as follows:
- Processor: Intel Core i9-14900K (Raptor Lake Refresh, 8p+16e-yader, 3.2-6.0/2.4-4.4 GHz, 36 MB L3).
- CPU cooler: Noctua NH-D15.
- Motherboard: Asus ROG Maximus Z790 Apex (LGA1700, Intel Z790).
- Memory: 2 × 16 GB DDR5-6400 SDRAM (G.Skill Ripjaws S5 F5-6400J3239G16GX2-RS5K).
- Video card: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 4090 Gaming OC (AD102 2235/2535 MHz, 24 GB GDDR6X 21 Gbps).
Test drives during tests are installed on the motherboard in the second slot PCIe 5.0 X16 (through the ASUS PCIe 5.0 M.2 Card adapter), to which the PCI Express lines are brought directly from the processor.
Testing was performed in the Microsoft Windows 11 Pro (24H2) Build 26100.2605 operating system. The system used the Microsoft Standard Nvme Express Controller 10.0.26100.2454.
⇡#SSD Caching: Writing, Reading and Deleting Files
SLC caching is the most important algorithm that is responsible for accelerating write operations in modern drives. Its essence is that information on an SSD with TLC or QLC memory is first written in a fast single-bit mode, and its compaction occurs later, during drive idle times. This means that modern drives can demonstrate high speeds only on limited amounts of data, the size of which depends on the specific implementation of the SLC caching algorithm.
To find out how this works in practice and what the speeds of the flash memory array of specific drives are when operating in various modes, we conduct a test of continuous file writing on the SSD until its capacity is completely exhausted while simultaneously measuring performance. This test uses standard Windows OS operations of single-threaded file copying to the SSD being tested (from a RAM disk), and the test is carried out in three passes: for a completely clean SSD; for an SSD half full of data; and for an SSD that is initially three-quarters full.
In general, the caching algorithms implemented in the XPG Mars 980 Вlade are similar to how the SLC cache works in drives with the Phison E26 controller, for example, in the Crucial T705. This is partly due to the fact that both cases use the same Micron B58R flash memory. And partly due to the fact that the SM2508 controller uses not the single-bit SLC mode of flash memory cells for accelerated writing, but the two-bit MLC. Due to this, a significant increase in the amount of data that can be written at an increased speed is achieved – for example, a pure two-terabyte XPG Mars 980 Вlade can accept up to 1.4 TB of data in accelerated mode, which is about two-thirds of its full capacity.
The performance figures for copying files to the XPG Mars 980 Blade using Windows are also quite typical. Before the SLC cache (or MLC cache in this case) is exhausted, the write speed is about 3.4 GB/s, but if the write is done in TLC mode, this value drops by half to 1.7 GB/s.
The average write speed on a clean 2 TB XPG Mars 980 Вlade from the beginning to the end of free space is 2.6 GB/s, and in this indicator this drive lags somewhat behind solutions based on the Phison E26 controller.
But the minimum and maximum speeds observed during the process of filling the SSD with files look pretty good. In any case, in terms of write speeds, the XPG Mars 980 Blade falls into the category of flagship SSDs and holds up, for example, noticeably better than the Samsung 9100 Pro.
Some problems only appear when reading files using Windows. Copying from the XPG Mars 980 Blade is a bit slower than from most other PCIe 5.0 SSDs. In this test, the drive on the SM2508 controller falls back in speed to the Samsung 990 Pro and Adata Legend 970 Pro.
The XPG Mars 980 Blade also lacks the ability to handle file deletions in a way that is unnoticeable to the user. After erasing significant amounts of data, the drive’s performance drops and response times increase significantly, lasting several seconds. The graph below shows the small-block read performance immediately after freeing up 64 GB of data on the SSD, and in this case, the XPG Mars 980 Blade “goes into itself” for two seconds – usually, flagship drives do not suffer from such speed drops.
⇡#Performance of complex file operations
Another Windows file handling scenario we check when getting to know new SSDs is copying, archiving, and unarchiving files within the drive’s space. These scenarios are more complex than simply copying from or to the drive, because they require the drive to deal with two data streams in different directions, and the power of the controller and its algorithms play a significant role in this case.
File activity doesn’t seem to be the most favorable workload scenario for highlighting the XPG Mars 980 Blade’s strengths. It’s noticeably slower than the Crucial T705 and Samsung 9100 Pro in these tests. However, to be fair, the XPG Mars 980 Blade does show a significant performance improvement over Adata’s previous PCIe 5.0 SSD, the Legend 970 Pro, which is especially noticeable when archiving and unarchiving data.
⇡#Application Performance
So far, we have had no reason to call the XPG Mars 980 Blade a revolutionary new product. Although the SM2508 chip itself looks very promising, the 232-layer Micron flash memory with an interface frequency of 2400 MHz seems to limit it somewhat. This conclusion can be made, among other things, based on the results of tests with the modeling of disk activity, typical for working with applications.
We use two different tests to evaluate this aspect of performance. The first is PCMark 10. It is designed to measure performance in common PC scenarios typical for home and office use. The second is SPECworstation 4.0. This benchmark is professional in nature and simulates a much more intensive workload typical for workstations used in engineering or scientific work.
«Civil» PCMark 10 places the XPG Mars 980 Вlade slightly behind the leaders in the form of the Crucial T705 and Samsung 9100 Pro. However, the new Adata product turns out to be noticeably faster than the MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr drive on the Phison E26 controller with 2000 MHz flash memory. In addition, it significantly surpasses the Adata Legend 970 Pro – a PCIe 5.0 drive on the Innogrit IG5666 controller.
This picture is typical for any user scenarios. Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade copes slightly better than the usual only with software launching – in the corresponding subtest it outperforms any alternatives on the Phison E26 controller.
Interestingly, in more complex workloads, which are recreated in the SPECworstation 4.0 test, the XPG Mars 980 Blade performs slightly better than in PCMark 10. In it, it is very close in performance to the Crucial T705, the fastest drive on the Phison E26. However, the new Adata product cannot reach the Samsung solutions, which remain the best choice for workstations.
The chart gallery below shows that the XPG Mars 980 Blade is not the best choice for high-performance PCs aimed at professional work. For example, it is definitely not suitable for systems designed to run engineering design packages. In addition, in some scenarios, the XPG Mars 980 Blade lags even behind the Samsung 990 Pro with its slower PCIe 4.0 interface.
⇡#Gaming performance
Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade scores about equally in various tests. This drive cannot claim the title of PCIe 5.0 leader, but still offers quite high operating speed, beating both the Adata Legend 970 Pro on the Innogrit IG5666 controller and the MSI Spatium M570 Pro Frozr on the Phison E26 controller with 2000 MHz memory. Approximately the same balance of power can be observed in 3DMark Storage, a test that evaluates the performance of SSDs in gaming systems.
At the same time, in relative terms, the XPG Mars 980 Вlade’s lag behind the most advanced PCIe 5.0 SSDs is not that noticeable. Moreover, if you pay attention to the results obtained in individual scenarios, you can find that, for example, when capturing game video in OBS or installing game applications, the performance of the new Adata drive exceeds the Samsung 9100 Pro. In other words, although the XPG Mars 980 Вlade does not become a champion in tests, its lag behind the leaders is quite small, and it clearly deserves attention.
⇡#Synthetic tests
When measuring performance with synthetic tests, you rarely come across any surprises. But this time, the picture in CrystalDiskMark is somewhat different from what we saw when using complex tests that generate real-world loads.
In particular, when measuring the speeds of sequential reading and writing, the Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade looks like the best solution among all the test participants. It seems that the SM2508 controller uses some particularly effective approaches to working with an eight-channel flash memory array.
However, in the case of a small-block load without a queue of requests, the XPG Mars 980 Вlade does not look so confident. In reading and writing, it is inferior not only to the previous Adata Legend 970 Pro, but also, for example, to the Digma Meta✴ P31 drive, based on the four-channel Phison E31T controller. And with a mixed load, even the PCIe 4.0 drive Samsung 990 Pro turns out to be more productive than the XPG Mars 980 Вlade. Thus, when measuring the speed of unbuffered random operations, the new Adata product does not confirm its flagship status at all.
⇡#Temperature regime
Energy efficiency and moderate heating are the qualities that Adata particularly emphasizes. The description of the XPG Mars 980 Вlade on the official website promises “an excellent balance between performance and energy efficiency,” “no need for bulky cooling,” and “the ability to use the drive in laptops.” Thus, according to the manufacturer, the XPG Mars 980 Вlade should become one of the few PCIe 5.0 SSDs with moderate temperatures, which should be facilitated by the low power consumption of the SM2508 controller manufactured using the 6-nm process technology.
In fact, we have already seen PCIe 5.0 SSDs that work without additional cooling, without endless temperature throttling. For example, unbuffered PCIe 5.0 drives on the Phison E31T controller have such properties, but they cannot boast a performance level close to flagships. But there is a better example – Samsung 9100 Pro. It also does not reduce speeds due to overheating, but, however, its controller can heat up to 105 degrees during operation.
As for the XPG Mars 980 Blade, its operating temperatures are indeed lower. The maximum controller heating that we recorded during practical testing without any radiator or heat spreader was 95 degrees. However, the drive still cannot completely avoid temperature throttling.
The graph below shows how temperatures change with a five-minute mixed load of reading and writing (80 to 20). The XPG Mars 980 Blade has three temperature sensors, and sensor number two shows the controller temperature.
As you can clearly see, in the first 120 seconds of the test, the XPG Mars 980 Blade heats up so much that its controller has to emergency reset its performance. So some cooling wouldn’t hurt this drive after all. However, its heat dissipation is indeed significantly lower than that of common products with the Phison E26 controller, which can’t work for even ten seconds without a heatsink.
Unfortunately, as practice shows, the heat-dissipating plate included with the XPG Mars 980 Blade cannot serve as sufficient cooling for it. With it, the SSD also goes into throttling, just a little later – not after 120, but after 135 seconds of active mixed load.
But in normal use, the Adata drive in question does not look insanely hot, like other flagship PCIe 5.0 SSDs. The thermograms below, taken both with and without the standard heat-dissipating plate, show that the outer surface of the XPG Mars 980 Blade heats up to only 70-80 degrees. Against the background of the 100-degree heating typical of the Samsung 9100 Pro and drives on the Phison E26 chip, this looks like a serious advantage.
Of course, the XPG Mars 980 Blade is best used under motherboard radiators – in this case, it will obviously not experience problems with the temperature regime and will not drop performance due to overheating. However, the fact that without any cooling it manages to serve a high density of requests for quite a long time without signs of throttling makes it quite a suitable solution for both laptops and game consoles. In scenarios with moderate loads, no problems with the thermal regime should really arise.
⇡#Conclusions
The Silicon Motion SM2508 controller is certainly worth the close attention of enthusiasts. Its appearance was a bright event in the world of solid-state drives with the PCIe 5.0 interface, as it offered an advanced architecture, support for ultra-fast NAND and a noticeable improvement in energy efficiency. Based on it, promising solutions have already appeared from leading manufacturers such as Crucial, Kingston, Sandisk, and it can be argued that the SM2508 has a good chance of becoming the main platform for flagship SSDs of 2025.
Although the Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade drive reviewed in this review is also based on this chip, its potential is not 100% revealed in it. The fact is that Adata did not use the latest TLC 3D NAND with a 3600 MHz interface, and the XPG Mars 980 Blade got 232-layer Micron memory, which is inferior in speed to the latest generations of NAND devices. This limits the peak performance of the Adata solution.
In the end, the XPG Mars 980 Blade isn’t the fastest PCIe 5.0 SSD on the market today. It’s inferior to both more advanced SM2508-based drives and the Samsung 9100 Pro or Phison E26-based solutions (like the Crucial T705). However, this lag, which falls within the 5–15% range, instantly ceases to seem significant when you look at the price of the XPG Mars 980 Blade. After all, this is one of the most affordable PCIe 5.0 SSDs available today, and this is where its main advantage lies. Considering that it costs about a third less than other flagship PCIe 5.0 SSDs, the price-to-performance ratio of the new Adata product looks stunningly advantageous.
In other words, if your system supports PCIe 5.0 in M.2 slots and you want to use the full potential of this interface without overpaying for record-breaking performance, the XPG Mars 980 Blade is a great choice. This SSD will give you all the benefits of a high-speed interface without hurting your wallet.
An additional argument in favor of the new Adata product is its relatively restrained power consumption and low temperatures. Thanks to the energy-efficient architecture of the SM2508 controller and not the hottest NAND, the XPG Mars 980 Blade is able to withstand long loads, even without a radiator. Among the high-performance PCIe 5.0 SSDs on the market, this drive is one of the coolest.
Ultimately, the Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade is a very successful example of how a smart choice of components has resulted in a balanced and attractive product. It doesn’t strive to be the fastest at any cost, but it offers performance that is more than enough for many user tasks, from gaming and streaming media to professional workloads. At the same time, the new product under review costs significantly less than flagships, while almost matching them in real speed.
