MSI Spatium M480 2TB, M.2 2280 / M-Key / PCIe 4.0 x4, Kühlkörper

Mit seinem Einstieg in den SSD-Markt erlaubt sich MSI glücklicherweise keine Fehler. Die SPATIUM M480 ist ein schnelles und solide gefertigtes Solid State Module. Hohe Transferraten in jeder Disziplin und eine hohe Schreibgeschwindigkeit auch nach Füllung des SLC-Caches hinterlassen ein positives Gesamtbild.

Für einen Platz an der Sonne reicht es bei der SPATIUM M480 am Ende nicht, auch wenn das Debut von MSI im Bereich HighEnd-Massenspeicher durchaus respektabel ist. Mit Phison E18, viel DRAM und modernem NAND gehen die Taiwanesen auch kaum ein Risiko ein, im Bundle mit einem optisch attraktiven Kühlkörper weiß das Gesamtprodukt zu gefallen.

MSI has finally entered the Gen4 NVMe SSD market, and today we are reviewing the new MSI Spatium M480 Gen4 NVMe SSD. We have the 2TB capacity here and this one is the “with heatsink” variant. Powered with a Phison E18 controller, the MSI Spatium M480 is currently the company’s fastest SSD. This isn’t the first Phison E18-powered SSD we have tested. So, let’s check out how it compares with the other E18-powered SSDs and other Gen4 NVMe SSDs as well. If you’re in the market for a fast M.2 SSD, please continue reading our MSI Spatium M480 review below.

Such is the nature of modern drives, with manufacturers buying off-the-shelf controllers and NAND, it's no surprise to see how many people are leaping on to the storage bandwagon, nor how amazingly similar the performances across drives can be. The MSI Spatium M480 utilises 96 layer 3D NAND attached to the excellent Phison E18 controller to deliver high levels of performance across the board, whether you're writing tiny blocks or reading enormous sequential files. We liked how consistent the results were across our wide range of tests, and particular praise needs to be given to the performance of the drive even when the cache and its capacity were near bursting. Many of the drives we've tested have the same initial drop off as the Spatium, but they continue to fall until the drive is full. With the MSI M480 though they level off fairly quickly and remain consistent until it has no room left. Impressive. Temperatures are quite high considering the size of the supplied heatsink. This is one of those situations that you'll have to be aware of prior to purchase. The fact it's gold rather than silver is very much a matter of personal preference, but as you saw from our pictures it's also quite a large heatsink. Given the temperature peak we obtained we wouldn't recommend running it without a heatsink, but if you have to take the cover off your motherboard to install it you need to make sure it is possible to remove the cover and leave the rest in place. Thankfully the sub 80°C temperatures didn't affect the performance, but we'd be loath to trust it to a heatspreader. Underneath that heatsink is the same 96-layer 3D NAND and Phison E18 controller that we saw on the Corsair MP600, and the price is identical too with the reviewed 2TB example retailing around the £340 mark. For that you're getting a lot of performance in a host of scenarios and looks which you might take to, although are hard to ignore if you don't. For such blistering speed across the board the MSI Spatium M480 2TB wins our OC3D Performance Award.

Whether you are a gamer, content creator, or other power user, MSI has put together a competitive line-up of fast NVMe SSDs at a reasonable price point. Therefore, the MSI Spatium M480 and M470 easily receive the Overclockers.com stamp of approval.

MSI Most certainly has a winner at hand with the new Spatium M480. The numbers are breathtaking. I do want to quickly point out that the 2 TB model as tested is the fastest, as when we look at writes, the 1 TB model tumbles from 6800 MB/sec towards 5500 MB/sec and the 500GB model even drops to 2850 MB/sec. Keep that in mind as these are serious differences. Reads however all remain above 6500~7500 MB/sec with linear en sequential activity. But yeah, Holy Mozes, each time we test a new generation controller on an NVMe SSD, we get a little shocked and awed more. This Phison controller PS5018-E18 based product just offers a stupendous amount of performance. That said, in this conclusion, we are going to talk a little about relativity, though, as breaking that 7 GB/sec marker isn't necessarily going to make your gaming PC a lot faster, and that is a simple truth. The good news, MSI is making this very extraordinary product not super expensive either. Yes, you pay a premium for this 7 GB/sec NVMe SSD, but at 18~19 cents per GB I am not disappointed. This is a super-fast SSD, TLC written, plenty of endurance, and a 5-year warranty. At that money, you'd be hard-pressed to not like this product, eh?

The Spatium M480 is based on the Phison E18 controller, the fastest currently available controller from Phison. MSI has paired it with 96-layer TLC NAND flash from Micron. Going by the number "4" in "M470," you probably already guessed right that the SSD uses the PCI-Express 4.0 interface, which doubles the theoretical bandwidth over PCI-Express Gen 3. Two DDR4-2666 DRAM chips provide 2 GB of memory for the mapping tables of the SSD. Exactly the same hardware configuration is used by the Corsair MP600 Pro and Addlink S95.