ADATA Falcon 1 TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review - Specifications & Features

Specifications & Features

For endurance, our tested 1TB model has been rated at 600 TBW, so it'll last you 33 years at 50 GB per day writes. The series will be fitted with TLC written 3D NAND flash memory (vertically stacked). This allows the company to offer the proper storage volumes. So instead of using Planar NAND, 3D NAND is used. 3D TLC NAND is physical vertical NAND cell stacking not to be confused with chip stacking in a multi-chip package. In 3D NAND, NAND layers, not chips, are stacked in a single IC. The good news is continued cost reduction, smaller die sizes and more capacity per NAND chip. Also, installed NAND toolsets in the wafer fabs can, for the most part, be reused, thereby extending the useful life of fab equipment.  256 GB ($55), 512 GB ($70), 1 TB ($130), and 2 TB ($240). Endurance for these models is set at 150 TBW, 300 TBW, 600 TBW, and 1200 TBW respectively. ADATA includes a five-year limited warranty. The SSD is HMB based ()no DRAM cache on the SSD), and uses a pSLC buffer, overprovisioning is set at 7% of the NAND.  The NAND is tagged with an ADATA label, but it is rebadged Micron FLash NAND.

Realtek controller

The SSD makes use of a relatively new RTS5762DL NAND controller from Realtek for scuffing data in and out of the 96-layer stacked/layered/3D TLC (Triple-Level Cell/3-bit) NAND. The controller has two CPU cores, both ARM-based. Unit is a DRAM-less solution, meaning SSD will utilize the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) feature in Windows 10 to obtain a relatively small amount of your system memory, 65.5 MB of it which is used for SSDs translation tables. It's a popular feature we see a lot these days as it saves the manufacturer the cost of DRAM as ache ion the SSD. The obvious downside is that it is slower than having dedicated DRAM embedded on the SSD.  The controller with the DL suffix uses four NAND channels, whereas the RTS5762 (without DL) gets eight flash channels.