MSI Spatium M480, M.2

Die MSI SPATIUM M480 mit 2TB Kapazität hatte ich ja bereits getestet, genenauso wie die mit dem „Play“ im Namen. Jetzt hat MSI diese SSD noch einmal neu aufgelegt – mit einem trendigen „Pro“ Kürzel im Namen, dafür ohne Kühler und 5 Jahren Garantie. Mit der SPATIUM M480 und M480 Play lässt man es zudem auch noch richtig krachen, denn zum Einsatz kommt mit dem Phison PS5018-E18 ein recht neuer und schneller Controller für die 2 TB NAND-Speicher, bestehend aus 512 GB Modulen. War es bei der Erstauflage noch der ältere 96-Layer TLC NAND von Micron, kommt hier bereits der 176-Layer TLC zum Einsatz, was der SSD bisher auch in der „Play“ Varianate sichtbar gut getan hat.

We have broken down MSI’s Spatium M480 Pro and run it through some rigorous testing, and there is a lot to like about it. It not only performs as well or better than the other drives in its category, it even competes with the most recent generation of NVMe drives. Moreover, it features an excellent endurance rating, Mean Time Between Failures, and up to a five-year warranty. With capacities of 1 TB, 2TB, and 4TB available, MSI has provided plenty of options to fit your needs and budget. The lack of a heatsink could be considered a negative, though there are many applications where the user will choose to use the motherboard heatsink instead. Also, there are models with a heatsink included, so this is really not an issue worth worrying about. Just buy the one you need.

I had already tested the MSI SPATIUM M480 with 2TB capacity, just like the one with the “Play” in the name. Now MSI has relaunched this SSD – with a trendy “Pro” abbreviation in the name, but without a cooler and a 5-year warranty. The SPATIUM M480 and M480 Play are also a real head-turner, because the Phison PS5018-E18, a quite new and fast controller for the 2 TB NAND memory, consisting of 512 GB modules, is used. While the older 96-layer TLC NAND from Micron was used in the first edition, the 176-layer TLC is already used here, which has visibly benefited the SSD in the “Play” version so far.

The MSI Spatium M480 Pro is the company's third iteration on a Phison E18-based high-performance SSD—which are all grouped under the "Spatium M480" model line. The "Pro" version in this review is based on Micron's 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, paired with 2 GB of Hynix DRAM cache and Phison's fastest Gen 4 controller. Unlike the original MSI M480 and M480 Play, there is no heatsink included, which is a reasonable cost-optimization, especially in less demanding scenarios.

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.

There is nothing revelatory with MSI arriving on the SSD scene. Complementing its wide range of components and peripherals, it makes a lot of sense for the Taiwanese giant to cosy on up to an established provider. A Phison E18 controller and 96-layer Micron NAND is a great starting point for a high-end consumer SSD. Our numbers reinforce the top-tier nature of the Spatium M480 and the inclusion of the heatsink is an attractive and necessary value-add. MSI adds to the growing arsenal of high-performance PC storage drives. As a new entry into a congested field, the Spatium M480 1TB needs to undercut the established competition and come in at £150.

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.

Ohne Frage ist bereits der neue, flache Kühlkörper und damit die Möglichkeit die SPATIUM M480 Play auch in die Sony PS5 schieben zu können, für manche schon Grund genug für einen Kauf. Für alle anderen veredelt MSI die neue Variante mit schnellem 176-Layer-NAND, der auch ein Geschwindigkeit-Update bedeutet.

The MSI Spatium M480 Play isn’t a bad first look at MSI’s jump into SSDs. Like with the rest of their components, MSI has jumped right into the higher-end SSD market with gaming in mind and the Spatium M480 Play fits with that perfectly. I like the styling that they went with, the black and grey finish on the heatsink, and slipping in the MSI Gaming logo as well. The built-in heatsink has both its upsides and downsides. For cooling, it made a huge difference. I wasn’t able to heat it up at all really. It also is what gives the M480 its PS5 compatibility but if you are planning on using it for PC use it could also give issues with some higher-end motherboards which often have their own heatsink designs built-in. The drive itself was surprisingly hot and cold for its performance testing. In almost all of our tests, it topped the charts, especially with its nearly 7000 MB/s read and 6800+MB/s write performance. It was also great in our IOPS tests. But it struggled in some of our real-world tests with performance drop off part of the way into the tests and in AS SSD’s file transfer test as well. This doesn’t hurt its potential as a gaming drive though, but I wouldn’t really look to use it for storage that you would access a lot. Something else I should point out is that the Spatium M480 Play is just one of three different Spatium M480 designs. MSI has had a design with a larger heatsink out for PCs as well as one without a heatsink at all. So the Play model is focused more on PS5 use with the option to use on a PC as well. Its pricing is unknown right now as well, the two other M480 designs are available to buy but the Spatium M480 Play isn’t for sale yet so we don’t know if the pricing is going to be reasonable or not just yet. I would guess that it will fall in between the two other M480 models which for the 2TB model like tested today is $329.99 for the non-heatsink version and $359.99 for the large heatsink version. For comparison, the FURY Renegade that the Spatium M480 Play performed similarly to is $356 right now without a heatsink so it looks like MSI will be close to the mark assuming the Spatium M480 Play comes out in that range.

With the Spatium M480 Play, MSI is going specifically after the large PlayStation gamer crowd. Sony has opened the internal storage of their PS5 console up for upgrades, allowing standard M.2 NVMe drives to be installed. MSI seized this opportunity and created a drive that is optimized for the requirements of the PS5, but such a drive will of course work really well in a PC, too.

The Spatium M480 Play is a modified version of the original Spatium M480. It is an M.2 2280 NVMe SSD that utilizes Phison's E18 controller with newer firmware and 176-Layer TLC 3D NAND flash to support capacities of up to 4TB. The SSD is 80.4 x 24 x 10.7mm in size and features a PCIe Gen 4 NVMe interface for compatibility with both PS5 and PCs. There are four storage capacities available: 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. The first two drive models come with 512MB and 1GB of cache, respectively, while the bigger drives come with 2GB of cache. Realistically the biggest performance benefit is deriving from the new Phison firmware, but small file performance has greatly increased with the latest updates. We do believe you will not notice the real-world effect and difference between even a 3GB/sec and a 7GB/sec SSD anytime soon, but DirectStorage is getting supported, and that's where it's going to matter. If an application loads in a fraction of a second, it will be quicker in that fraction of a second. Other than that somewhat personal remark, all lights are green, TLC, high endurance and warranty. Please do seat the SSD under a mobo-supplied heatsink. It's running extremely hot without it, with a heatsink which prevents thermal throttling. Of course, to get the best out of it, you'll need a PCIe Gen 4 infrastructure, and at the time of writing, that means a compatible Ryzen processor on, say, a B550 or X570 chipset-based platform. In March 2021, Intel will start with PCIe gen 4.0 support as well. The Spatium M480 PLAY has been sufficiently buffered by a pseudo-SLC write cache and 1 GB of DRAM buffer for the 1TB model and 2GB for the 2+ TB models. The unit makes you shiver in performance given the right conditions, and for the rest of them, you are down to high-end class NVMe performance on some workloads. NVMe protocol v1.4; this SSD is among the first to utilize the new NVMe 1.4 protocol. You do not need to install any new drivers; just make sure your OS is updated. Then install and format the SSD, and you're ready to go full throttle. We'll say it again: MSI warrants the storage unit for five years / or the claimed TBW value. MSI's SSD enthusiast product line is attractive at 18/19 cents per GB (street pricing). Whether or not you will ever require this degree of performance or notice a real-life difference between gen 3.0 and gen 4.0 devices remains debatable. The good news is that as performance improves, things will accelerate in both the low-end and mainstream markets. Examine this: 3 GB/sec NVMe SSDs are rapidly becoming the industry standard and are currently widely available; consider this for a second. If you want it, this is an attractive offer backed by a reputable name; with excellent performance, warranty, and quality with a proper cooler as well.

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.