MSI Spatium M470 1TB NVMe SSD review - Introduction

MSI Spatium M470 NVMe 1TB M2 SSD (PCIe Gen 4.0)
An outstanding performing SSD with high endurance

MSI has entered the NVMe SSD storage market with the MSI Spatium M.2 NVMe SSD series. Positioned one notch under the flagship M480 comes the M470, and with performance numbers reaching 5GB/sec and is rated at a massive 1600 TBW of endurance for the 1 TB SSD, this NVMe 1.3 compatible SSD from MSI might be just what the doctor ordered.

Today, the 1TB model of the tested product is available for 189 USD/EUR (street pricing). This corresponds to 18.5 cents per GB for that model. And, while it may seem high for NAND storage these days, keep in mind that this is a TLC-written NVMe SSD equipped with Phison's E16 controller, which is capable of reaping some benefits within your storage array.

The Spatium series from MSI is based on PCI-Express 4.0. There are presently two available drives: the Spatium M470 (reviewed here) and the Spatium M480 (review). These will be joined by a third PCIe Gen 3-based drive in the coming weeks. The Spatium M470 is equipped with a Phison E16 controller and 96-layer TLC NAND flash memory from Toshiba/Kioxia. You've probably already concluded from the "4" in "M470" that the SSD leverages the PCI-Express 4.0 interface, which doubles the possible bandwidth over PCI-Express Gen 3. Two DDR4-2400 DRAM chips provide a combined memory capacity of 1 GB for the SSD's mapping tables. MSI offers the Spatium M470 in 1 TB ($189) and 2 TB capacities (pricing unknown). These variants include a 1600 TBW and 3300 TBW endurance rating, respectively. MSI provides a five-year warranty on the MSI Spatium M470 SSD. Anyway, wanna see how fast it really is? Will this be a proper Samsung 980 PRO competitor (heck yes). Next page and onwards into the review then.