ADATA XPG Gammix S70 PCIe 4.0 2TB Review

Conclusion

The XPG Gammix S70 is treading a different path to a lot of the PCIe 4.0 drives we’ve reviewed recently. The majority of high speed drives have adopted the Phison controllers to bring us the blazing speeds that have dropped the jaw of everyone who has seen them. ADATA on the other hand have replaced their Gammix S50 as the flagship of their range – which is equipped with the Phison E16 controller – with the S70. The S70 is instead based upon the InnoGrit IG5236 controller. InnoGrit are a new company on the scene built from people who largely worked for the famous Marvell company, who have been part of the storage scene for decades.

The IG5236 is a 12nm PCIe Gen4 x4 controller that can support drives up to 16TB (!) in size, and is flexible enough to be able to work with MLC, TLC or QLC NAND. It has peak speeds of 7.4 GB/s read and 6.4 GB/s write. In our testing we actually got peak write speeds of 6.7 GB/s, so InnoGrit might be the first company to understate the potential of their product.

Speaking of many NAND types the XPG Gammix S70 utilises the Micron 96L TLC which we’ve seen on many drives, primarily those from Crucial. The combination of the first IG5236 controller we’ve seen in the wild and the Micron NAND allows the Gammix S70 to hit some seriously high heights. In all of our benchmarks it was up amongst the fastest drives we’ve tested in the sequential speed test. Sequential ones are always the primary focus for manufacturers as they are the quickest and thus easiest to use as a headline figure. However, the ADATA XPG drive is very good at smaller block sizes too and would make a perfect choice for an OS drive, or one that you access on a regular basis.

PCI Express 4.0 drives are famously warmer than their PCIe 3.0 counterparts and the heatsink on the Gammix S70 is clearly designed to alleviate this thermal build up. It is designed largely to take advantage of good airflow rather than simply spread the heat widely enough that it naturally gets expelled away. In our regular test system we saw it hit 73°C. Not hot enough to impact the performance but warm enough that you need to be careful when building your system to ensure it gets as much airflow as possible to keep your transfer speeds consistent instead of being thermally throttled.

The price of £369 makes the 2TB XPG Gammix S70 is a tiny expensive when compared to the Sabrent drives on the market, although cheaper than some of the more famous brands around. However, the blazing speed and consistent performance in a number of block sizes across our range of tests are enough to win it our OC3D Performance Award.

  

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