MSI Spatium M480 PLAY 2TB NVMe SSD review - Product Showcase

Product Showcase

The tested unit then; you should easily be able to place the M.2 unit into a compatible NVMe protocol motherboard. Most motherboard chipsets support it. You should, however, check out with the motherboard manufacturer if you have an x4 lane PCIe Gen 3.0 version with NVMe protocol support. Of course, these SSDs are backward compatible thus PCIe Gen 2.0 will work as well, however, the interconnect is halved in bandwidth per generation and that has an extensive effect on performance. The latest Windows 10 iteration has an up-to-date NVMe 1.4 protocol driver natively, so you do not need to install a 3rd party driver.  The 2TB model has 2GB of DRAM (Hynix) as cache, and 2x four NAND chips (96L) (each side). We're quite confident that these SSDs are bought from an OEM somewhere as we recognize the sticker on that NAND chip as well as the design. The compact M.2 2280 form factor ensures compatibility with the next-generation desktop and mobile platforms that support the M.2 PCIe slot and interface. The 80 on 2280 is short for 80mm, aka, that is the length of the card and 2280, you guessed it now .. 22mm for its width. The heatsink does raise a new concern, it's higher and very low PCIe devices could be blocked albeit there was enough clearance for graphics cards that we quickly inserted to check that out.

The Spatium M480 PLAY is supplied in a cardboard exterior package that contains a brushed aluminum heatsink inside. 

Inside the case, you'll spot the NVMe M.2 SSD safely seated into its protection, along with the install Guide. If you have the heatsink SKU of course you get some proper and nice additional colling provided by MSI. The design is tastefully done. 

The color design for the NVMe SSD is black and yellow/gold. 1400 TBW for this 2 TB model, five years warranty; that's should be more than plenty.