Final Words & Conclusion

Final Words & Conclusion

The Spatium M390 achieves its performance through the combination of the Phison E15 controller and Micron's latest 172-layer TLC NAND memory. In every regard, this is a mid-range NVMe SSD, and that is something we acknowledge. In contrast, the performance you have seen today was easily comparable to an enthusiast-level performance level two years ago. That demonstrates how quickly technology is advancing. The welcome trade-off is its price of 11 cents per GB, which makes this NVMe 1.4 SSD an extremely affordable option.

Endurance

Average  - Let's consider the submitted and reviewed 1 TB version, which has a rated 400TBW. We need to totally write the SSD 400 times x 1TB before the NAND cells begin to fail. If you write 50 GB each day, every day of the year (which is a lot!) mathed that is 50 x 365 / 1000 = 18.25 TB written per year, we have a more manageable amount of data to work with. That means that the 1TB model will have a lifespan of nearly 22 years in that case. Those are the types of metrics we're referring to. Consequently, in terms of longevity and durability, I would not be overly concerned for a regular PC gamer or user (at all).

Performance

The M370's overall performance throughout the book is good, but it is not a very enthusiastic class, particularly when it comes to random writes in heavy workloads, which are just mediocre. Sequential performance, on the other hand, is excellent, with read and write rates of more than 3 GB/s and more than 2 GB/s, respectively you also need to wonder if you really need more perf at a higher cost price. Trace tests, and consequently real-world usage benchmarks, are notoriously difficult to optimize for in most cases. This is why we employ complicated trace tests to verify our assumptions. The Spatium M390 does a good enough job in this area as well. The sequential write performance of the Spatium M390 (copying, creating an ISO image, or creating a movie) is good. The pSLC cache on the other hand appears to be relatively little in comparison.

Heat

Thermal throttling will occur under heavy load situations, but only to a little degree; we noted the transfer rate decrease to 1.5  GB/s from 3 GB/s after a few minutes of operation. Although the SSD, and notably its NAND, gets ill-tempered during such testing, the components are engineered to perform at such temperatures. We always recommend that you either mount an M2 SSD under your motherboard's heatsink or manually apply one to your system. This will be quite beneficial.

Concluding

Initially, when I began evaluating this product, the SSD appeared to be average (by today's standards) throughout the testing process, and indeed, by today's standards, everything appears to be ordinary. However, with read/write speeds easily exceeding 2 GB/sec and even closing in at 3GB/sec, we shouldn't rule out the possibility of significant value here. In this case, the 1TB SSD costs 110 USD, which works out to 11 cents per GB, making it one of the most affordable and well-performing PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSDs currently available on the market. The endurance levels are actually rather dim yet good enough; for example, if you write 50GB each day, every day of the year, you'll have 20 years before discontinuing cells become a problem. The most serious issue that MSI is dealing with is that while 1 TB is wonderful, what the current PC gaming population actually needs are cheap 2TB or 4TB models, which are not yet available for the M390 series. Let's hope that larger versions of this product will be released in the future because, while performance is adequate, for 11 cents per GB, this product represents excellent value. Furthermore, your warranty is valid for five years, or until the TBW value is achieved, whichever occurs first. The M390 is unquestionably recommended as a good value for money product. In the event that you do not have a PC that handles exceptionally difficult workloads, it will serve you well.

Recommended  Downloads