MSI Spatium M480 HS 2TB SSD Review

Well known for their huge range of motherboards and graphics cards, MSI also have a wide range of other devices and peripherals in their portfolio, which has now been bolstered by a range of M.2 NVMe SSDs using both PCIe Gen 4 & Gen 3 interfaces. The current flagship drive series of this line-up of SSDs is the PCIe Gen 4 Spatium M480.

Coming in three capacities (at the time of writing), 500GB, 1TB and 2TB, the Spatium M480 uses a combination of a Phison PS5018-E18 controller and 96-layer 3D TLC NAND.

Officially the Sequential read speeds for the Spatium M480 series are up to 6,500MB/s for the 500GB drive and 7,000MB/s for both the 1TB and the 2TB flagship drive we are looking at here. Sequential write performance is quoted as up to 2,850MB/s (500GB), 5,500MB/s (1TB) and 6,800MB/s for the 2TB model.

Using the ATTO benchmark, we couldn't meet the official maximums for reads or writes, although a read test result of 6,820MB/s was closer to the official figure than the 6,270MB/s write result. However by using the CrystalDiskMark benchmark we could confirm and even better the read figure with a best test result of 7,457MB/s, but as with the ATTO benchmark, the best write result of 6,731MB/s was short of the official figure.

Random performance is quoted as up to 650,000 IOPS for reads and up to 700,000 IOPS for writes for the 2TB drive. The two other drives in the range are rated as up to 350,000 IOPS and 700,000 IOPS for reads and writes respectively for the 1TB model and up to 170,000 IOPS read and up to 600,000 IOPS writes for the 500GB model. The best 4K random read result we saw came from the CrystalDiskMark 8 Peak Performance test run at 661,885.50 IOPS, slightly faster than the official figure. The best write figure of 604,243.65 IOPs came in the same test but is somewhat short of the official figure.

The HS SKU of the drive offers two choices of how the drive can be used, either plain to be used with a motherboard integrated cooling system or by using the chunky heatsink provided for installing into other situations. To see what difference the heatsink makes we ran a couple of tests without and with the heatsink. Using the ATTO benchmark we saw temperatures rise sharply without the heatsink to peak at 56° C. Running the benchmark again with the heatsink installed saw the temperature peak some twenty degrees lower at 36° C. It was a similar story using the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark at default settings: 41° C and 46° C for reads and writes respectively with the heatsink, against 63° C for reads and 67° C for writes without it.

The standard version of the 2TB Spatium M480 is priced at £329 so expect to pay an extra £10-30 for the heatsink version. We are waiting on MSI to confirm this.

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Pros

• Overall performance.
• Endurance.
• Well designed and effective heatsink.

Cons

• Couldn’t match the maximum official random write 4K figures.
• Runs hot without the heatsink.

KitGuru says: With the flagship Spatium M480, MSI has entered the already competitive Gen 4 NVMe SSD market with serious intent. A very fast performing drive, using Phison's 2nd generation E18 controller, it also offers a very good endurance rating. But it does need either installing under a motherboard cooling system or using the bundled heatsink to prevent any thermal throttling as it does run hot without any cooling.

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