MSI Spatium M480 2TB NVMe SSD review - Introduction

MSI Spatium M480 NVMe 2TB M2 SSD (PCIe Gen 4.0)
Breaching 6~7 GB/sec M.2.Class SSD performance for a mainstream price

MSI has entered the NVMe SSD storage market with the MSI Spatium M.2 NVMe SSD series. We test the M480, powered by a blazingly fast PS5018-E18 controller, this Phison-controlled unit has the potential to become one of the most appealing SSDs we've tested in a long time. Of course, if you prefer durability and PCIe 4.0 performance levels above 7 GB/sec. If you like endurance and brutal PCIe 4.0 performance levels, of course.

The tested product today is available for 379 USD/EUR (street pricing) for the 2TB model and 189 USD/EUR for the 1TB variant. If you are unable to tuck away and cool the storage unit within your motherboard, you can purchase SKUs with an additional heatsink. For that 2 TB model, that equates to 18.5 cents per GB. And, although that may sound a little pricey for NAND storage these days, keep in mind that this is a TLC-written NVMe SSD outfitted with Phison's fastest Phison E18 controller, capable of some reaping benefits inside your storage array.

Yeah, PCIe Gen 4.0 for those that want top-notch high-performance at a fair price, this PCIe Gen 4 x4 M2 unit might be what you are after. The Spatium M480  is available in multiple volumes sizes. There's the 2TB version we test, a 1 GB model, and a 500GB model. MSI is claiming numbers that run into the 7000 MB/s, Write Speeds, and up to 6800 MB/s for the fastest 2 TB M2 SSD. They a offer proper 5 years warranty. The TBW (TeraBytes Written—the total amount of data that a company is willing to guarantee can be written to the drive) rated 700 TBW for the 1 TB model and a proper 1400 TBW for the tested 2 TB model. 

The specs are outstanding but will this unit deliver what it claims? SSD is based on this year's trendy 8-channel Phison's PS5018-E18 controller and, of course, has been fitted with TLC written NAND. The performance will vary slightly depending on volume size; the more significant, the faster, though. The SSD is a Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe 1.4) M.2 2280 form factor SSD. The performance numbers of a proper SATA3 SSD offers these days are simply excellent, but with the more niche NVMe SSDs you can multiply performance 14x, and that offers serious numbers. The unit follows a smaller M.2 2280 form factor (8cm), so it will fit on most ATX motherboards capable of M.2 just fine. 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.