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We've already looked at one of Netac's NV7000 Gen 4 SSD series, the NV7000-t (over here) but now it is the turn of the latest to join the lineup, the NV7000-Q. It's the Q designation that sets the new drive apart from the others as it signifies that this drive uses QLC NAND rather than TLC NAND.
At the time of writing the NV7000-Q drive lineup only contains a 1TB model. The drive is built around a Maxiotech MAP1602A-F3C 4-channel DRAM-less design controller and YMTC 232-Layer QLC 3D NAND flash.
Netac quotes Sequential performance figures for the NV7000-Q as up to 7,100MB/s and 6,200MB/s just slightly slower than the 1TB NV7000-t (7,300MB/s reads 6.600MB/s writes) and 1TB NV7000 read performance (7.200MB/s) but with a faster write performance than the NV7000 (5,500MB/s). We couldn't find any random 4K figures on the spec sheet but the Maxiotech controller is rated as up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both reads and writes.
Endurance wise the NV7000-Q is rated at 640TBW and Netac back the drive with a 5-year warranty.
Physical Specifications:
- Usable Capacities: 1TB.
- NAND Components: YMTC 232-Layer QLC 3D NAND.
- NAND Controller: Maxiotech MAP1602A-F3C.
- Cache: None, uses Host-Memory-Buffer (HMB) technology.
- Interface: PCIe Gen 4 x4, NVMe 1.4.
- Form Factor: M.2, 2280.
- Dimensions: 80 x 22 x 2.3mm.
- Drive Weight: 8g.
Firmware Version: SN17195
Netac's NV7000-Q comes in a compact box with a good clear image of the drive on the front. A sticker displaying the drive's capacity is to the right of the image. The rear of the drive is mostly covered by multi-lingual notes about the drive interface and what version of NVMe (1.4) it supports.
The NV7000-Q 1TB drive is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format. The drive has no heatsink, but Netac does provide a heat shield in the shape of a thin metal layer built into the product label.
The drive uses a Maxiotech MAP1602A 4-channel controller, a controller we don't often see. For the 1TB NV7000-Q Netac has used the controller in combination with two 512GB packages of YMTC 232-Layer 3D QLC NAND. The 1602A is a DRAM-less design built on a 12nm TSMC process in a 7.1 x 11mm package with ARM Cortex-R5 architecture. Unlike many other DRAM-less designs, the 1602A uses a 2400 MT/s interface speed for better performance.
The controller supports up to 4TB of TLC 3D MLC/TLC/QLC NAND with Sequential speeds of up to 7,200MB/s and 6,500MB/s for reads and writes respectively. 4K random performance is quoted as up to 1M IOPS for read and writes. Error correction is provided by MAXIO Agile ECC 3 Technology.
Netac's SSD management utility is the SSD ToolBox. Very easy to use and understand it supports most of what you need to do to keep an SSD happy. It also includes a very useful Data Migration tool.
For testing, the drives are all wiped and reset to factory settings by HDDerase V4. We try to use free or easily available programs and some real-world testing so you can compare our findings against your own system.
This is a good way to measure potential upgrade benefits.
Main system:
AMD Ryzen 7 7700X, 32GB DDR5-6000, Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 and a Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme motherboard.
Other drives
Corsair Force MP600 1TB
Crucial P5 Plus 1TB
Kingston NV2 1TB
Kioxia BG5 1TB
Patriot Viper VPN4100 1TB
PNY XLR8 CS3040 1TB
PNY XLR8 CS3140 1TB
Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus 1TB
Samsung SSD980 PRO 1TB
Samsung SSD980 PRO Heatsink 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 520 1TB
Seagate FireCuda 520N 1TB
Solidigm P41 Plus 1TB
Solidigm P44 Pro 1TB
Teamgroup T-Force Cardea Zero Z440 1TB
Teamgroup T-Force Cardea A440 Pro Special Series 1TB
WD Black SN770 1TB
WD Black SN850 1TB
Software:
Atto Disk Benchmark 4.
CrystalMark 8.0.5.
AS SSD 2.0.
UL Solutions PC Mark 10.
UL Solutions 3DMark Storage Benchmark.
Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark.
All our results were achieved by running each test five times with every configuration this ensures that any glitches are removed from the results. Trim is confirmed as running by typing fsutil behavior query disabledeletenotify into the command line. A response of disabledeletenotify =0 confirms TRIM is active.
CrystalDiskMark is a useful benchmark to measure theoretical performance levels of hard drives and SSDs. We are using v8.0.5.
Netac's NV7000-Q read score of 83.97MB/s in CrystalDiskMark 8's 4K QD1 test sees it in the top five of our results chart. However, its write score of 309.59MB/s is the fastest we've seen in this test for a 1TB class Gen 4 drive to date.
A glance at the benchmark result screens confirms the official Sequential read/write performance figures of up to 7,100MB/s and 6,200MB/s respectively with a default read test result of 7,229MB/s with writes at 6,216MB/s. The controller in the drive seems happier dealing with compressible data when it comes to reading 4K data at QD1 as can be seen by the 0 fill result screen for QD1 T1, 205.63MB/s compared to 83.97MB/s.
The NV7000-Q's Sequential read test result of 7,229MB/s puts the drive into third place on our results table with the second-best write score to date (for a 1TB class drive) of 6,216MB/s.
Peak Performance Profile.
We couldn't find an official 4K rating for the drive but the controller is rated up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both reads and writes. When tested with the Peak Performance profile test in CrystalDiskMark8 we could confirm the maximum read figure with a test result of 1,066,698 IOPS. Tested write performance on the other hand came up short with a best result of 896,142 IOPS.
As with the default test, we could confirm the official maximum Sequential read performance figure but not the writes with test results of 7,196MB/s and 6,082MB/s respectively.
Real World Profile.
In the Real World profiles test the drive's Sequential read result of 5,321MB/s sees it top the performance charts. Its write result of 5,844MB/s is also the fastest we've seen to date for a 1TB class Gen. 4 drive
The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Measure your storage systems performance with various transfer sizes and test lengths for reads and writes. Several options are available to customize your performance measurement including queue depth, overlapped I/O and even a comparison mode with the option to run continuously. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturers RAID controllers, storage controllers, host adapters, hard drives and SSD drives and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage. ATTO uses RAW or compressible data.
We are using version 4.1 for our NVMe disk tests with a set length of 256mb and test both the read and write performance.
With the ATTO benchmark results the drive fell short of the official 7,100MB/s and 6,200MB/s for reads and writes respectively, with reads at 6,690MB/s and writes at 5,410MB/s but the drive still made the top10 in our results chart.
AS SSD is a great free tool designed just for benching Solid State Drives. It performs an array of sequential read and write tests, as well as random read and write tests with sequential access times over a portion of the drive. It uses incompressible data samples which many drives struggle with, so results can be viewed as the worst-case scenarios.
AS SSD includes a sub suite of benchmarks with various file pattern algorithms but this is difficult in trying to judge accurate performance figures.
The Netac NV7000-Q's read score of 3341 is good enough to put the drive on top of our results chart. Its write score of 4145 is impressive too.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the Sequential read and write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
128KB Sequential Read / Write.
Transfer Request Size: 128KB, Thread(s): 1,
Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
With our 128KB Sequential tests, we could confirm the official read rating of up to 7,100MB/s with a test result of 7,108MB/s. However, we couldn't confirm the maximum write rating of 6,200MB/s with a test result of 6,012MB/s, so not too far away.
128KB Sequential Read v QD
At QD1, the 1TB NV7000-Q is the fastest 1TB Gen.4 drive we've seen to date with a test result of 3,339.67MB/s. At QDs 2 and 4 the drive slips down to second place behind WD's Black SN850 drive. By QD32 the drive has slipped down to fifth spot.
128KB Sequential Write v QD
The drive is the fastest 1TB model we've seen to date at QDs 1, 2 and 4. At QD32 the drive slips into second place behind Solidigm's P44 Pro drive.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random read performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Officially the Netac NV7000-Q is rated as up to 1,000,000 IOPS for 4K random reads. With our four-threaded tests, we couldn't get close to the official figure with a peak test result of 667,768 IOPS (QD32).
Random read performance v QD
Although we couldn't get close to the official 4K random read figure, the test results we did get make the Netac NV7000-Q the fastest 1TB Gen 4 drive we've seen to date at every tested queue depth.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8‘s custom settings to test the 4K random write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths. The setup for the tests is listed below.
Transfer Request Size: 4KB, Outstanding I/O: 1-32.
Netac rates the 4K random write performance of the NV7000-Q as up to 100,000,000 IOPS. With our four threaded tests, we couldn't get close to this, the best we saw from the drive was 483,009 IOPS (QD32).
Random write performance v QD
At all the tested queue depths, the 1TB Netac NV7000-Q is the fastest 1TB Gen.4 drive we've tested to date.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8’s custom settings to test the 4K 70/30 mixed read/write performance of the drive through a range of queue depths using a single thread and four threads.
Using a single thread the 1TB Netac NV7000-Q produced results that ranged from 23,577 IOPS (96.57MB/s) at QD1 up to 214,072 IOPS (876.83MB/s) at QD32. Switching to four threads the performance goes from 92,022 IOPS (376.92MB/s) at QD1 up to 397,707 IOPS (1,629.01MB/s) at QD32.
We used CrystalDiskMark 8 to test the random performance of the drive at lower queue depths (QD1 – QD8 where most of the everyday workloads occur) using 1 to 4 threads.
Random Reads
In the QD1-QD8 random read tests the drive produced smooth increases in performance as the queue depth deepened without any noticeable dramas. At QD1 the drive speed ranges from 20,360 IOPS (83.39MB/s) using a single thread up to 88,901 IOPS (364.13MB/s) using four threads. At a QD of 8, the single-thread performance had increased to 160,849 IOPS (658.83MB/s) while the four-threaded test reached 491,572 IOPS (2,013MB/s).
Random Writes
In the 4K write tests, the performance rose quickly from QD1 to QD2 for all four tested threads with the fastest rise seen in the three and four-threaded tests. All four threads see the rate of increase in performance start slowing from QD2 onwards up to the end of the test run at QD8.
In our read-throughput test, the drive peaked at the 8MB block mark at 5,993.94MB/s, some 1,106MB/s short of the official maximum figure of 7,100MB/s before falling back to 5,985MB/s at the end of the test run.
Even though the peak test result figure of 5,993MB/s is well short of the official maximum for the drive, that peak result is good enough to stick the drive into the top spot on the results chart.
In the write throughput tests, the drive peaked at the end of the test run (16MB block) at 6,202MB/s, bang on the official maximum for the drive.
With a test result of 6,202MB/s, the Netac NV7000-Q is the fastest Gen.4 1TB drive we've seen to date in this test.
The PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The benchmark is designed to measure performance of fast system drives using the SATA bus at the low end and devices connected via PCI Express at the high end.
The goal of the benchmark is to show meaningful real-world performance differences between fast storage technologies such as SATA, NVMe, and Intel’s Optane. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses 23 traces, running 3 passes with each trace. It typically takes an hour to run.
Traces used:
Booting Windows 10.
Adobe Acrobat – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Illustrator – starting the application until usable Adobe Premiere Pro – starting the application until usable.
Adobe Photoshop – starting the application until usable.
Battlefield V – starting the game until the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4 – starting the game until the main menu.
Overwatch – starting the game until main menu.
Using Adobe After Effects.
Using Microsoft Excel.
Using Adobe Illustrator.
Using Adobe InDesign.
Using Microsoft PowerPoint.
Using Adobe Photoshop (heavy use).
Using Adobe Photoshop (light use).
cp1 Copying 4 ISO image files, 20 GB in total, from a secondary drive to the target drive (write test).
cp2 Making a copy of the ISO files (read-write test).
cp3 Copying the ISO to a secondary drive (read test).
cps1Copying 339 JPEG files, 2.37 GB in total, to the target drive (write test).
cps2 Making a copy of the JPEG files (read-write test).
cps3 Copying the JPEG files to another drive (read test).
The 1TB Netac NV7000-Q performed pretty well in PCMark10's Full System Drive Benchmark. It averaged 252MB/s for the six Adobe startup traces, the fastest being 353MB/s for the startup test trace of Premiere Pro, the slowest being the Lightroom startup trace. For the Adobe usage traces it averaged 532MB/s for the five tests, with the fastest being the 1,202MB/s for the Adobe Photoshop heavy usage trace.
The drive averaged 809MB/s for the three gaming test traces, the fastest being Battlefield V at 1,080MB/s with Call Of Duty Black Ops 4 the next fastest at 848MB/s and finally Overwatch at 500MB/s. When it came to the file transfers, the fastest was the cp3 Read test at 3,075MB/s with the drive averaging 2,090MB/s for the six file transfer tests.
With an overall bandwidth figure of 554.88MB/s, the 1TB Netac NV7000-Q slots into the second spot on the results chart behind Solidigm's P44 Pro drive.
The 3DMark Storage Benchmark uses traces recorded from popular games and gaming-related activities to measure real-world gaming performance.
Traces used:
Battlefield V
Loading Battlefield™ V from launch to the main menu.
Call of Duty Black Ops 4
Loading Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 from launch to the main menu.
Overwatch
Loading Overwatch® from launch to the main menu.
Game Move
Copying the Steam folder for Counter-Strike®: Global Offensive from an external SSD to the system drive.
Game Recording
Recording a 1080p gameplay video at 60 FPS with OBS (Open Broadcaster Software) while playing Overwatch®.
Installing Game
Installing The Outer Worlds® from the Epic Games Launcher.
Game Saving
Saving progress in The Outer Worlds game.
In 3DMark’s Storage Test, the NV7000-Q had an average game loading bandwidth figure for the three games of 1,044.82MB/s which is the second fastest average for a 1TB Gen4 drive with an average access time of 60µs.
In the game moving, recording, installing and saving test traces the drive averaged 1,013.64MB/s with an average access time of 50.5µs for the four tests.
The average bandwidth figure for the 1TB Netac NV7000-Q for the complete benchmark run was 597.72MB/s which puts the drive into second position in the results chart but a fair distance back from the leading Solidigm drive.
The Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark uses actual maps and playable characters to assign a score to your PC and rate its performance including scene loading times.
The benchmark gives an overall load time as well as loading times by scene.
Netac's NV7000-Q storms the Final Fantasy XIV Endwalker Official Benchmark. Its the fastest drive to date (1GB Gen.4 drive that is) in all five scene loads as well as the overall leader.
We took note of the drive’s temperature during some of our benchmarking runs.
The Netac NV7000-Q doesn't come with a heatsink but does have a thin thermal pad built into the top product label. Netac relies on this together with intelligent temperature control technology to keep the drive cool in operation. To see how well this works we used the drive as is, without using the hefty built-in heatsink on our Gigabyte AORUS X670E Xtreme test rig motherboard.
The drive is remarkably consistent in its thermal performance. It didn't go above 54° C in any of the tests, which is a comfortable 31° C below the stated maximum operating temperature of 85°C. The drive averaged 54°C for both the 4K and non-4K based tests.
To test the real-life performance of a drive we use a mix of folder/file types and by using the FastCopy utility (which gives a time as well as MB/s result) we record the performance of drive reading from & writing to a 2TB Kingston KC3000.
Transfer Details
Windows 10 backup – 118GB.
Data file – 100GB.
BluRay Movie – 42GB.
Windows 11 iso – 5.4GB.
File folder – 50GB – 28,523 files.
Steam folder – 222GB (8 games: Alien Isolation, Battlefield 4, BioShock Infinite, Crysis 3, Grand Theft Auto V, Shadow Of Mordor, Skyrim, The Witcher3 Wild Hunt).
Movie demos 8K – 21GB – (11 demos).
Raw Movie Clips 4K – 16GB – (9 MP4V files).
Movie folder – 12GB – 15 files – (8 @ .MKV, 4 @ .MOV, 3 @ MP4).
Photo Folder – 10GB – 304 files – (171 @ .RAW, 105 @ JPG, 21 @ .CR2, 5 @ .DNG).
Audio Folder – 10GB – 1,483 files – (1479 @ MP3, 4 @ .FLAC files).
Single large image – 5GB – 1.5bn pixel photo.
3D Printer File Folder – 4.25GB – (166 files – 105 @ .STL, 38 @ .FBX, 11 @ .blend, 5 @ .lwo, 4 @ .OBJ, 3@ .3ds).
AutoCAD File Folder – 1.5GB (80 files – 60 @ .DWG and 20 @.DXF).
The drive averaged 2,281MB/s when writing the 13 transfer tests, with the fastest being 5,504MB/s for the 4K Movie Clip folder. The drive seemed to have problems when writing the contents of the 12GB Movie, BluRay and 10GB Photo folders as these were very slow. The drive was much more efficient reading back the data with the average for the 13 tests being 4,819MB/s. The fastest read performance came from the Windows 10 backup while the slowest was the 50GB File Transfer.
Netac has a huge number of flash-based storage products including a range of SSDs. The flagship drive family of the range is the NV7000 and the latest addition to the range is the NV7000-Q. The new drive stands out from the rest of the family not only because it is only available at launch as a 1TB unit, but it also uses Quad-level cell (QLC) NAND as opposed to the TLC NAND that the others in the NV7000 family use.
At the heart of the NV700-Q is a Maxiotech MAP1602A 4-channel controller. A DRAM-less design, the MAP1602A uses Host Memory Buffer (HMB) 3.0 technology, which uses system memory instead of a dedicated cache chip and uses Dynamic SLC cache writing technology. Built on a 12nm process, the MAP1602A uses ARM Cortex-R5 architecture with a fast 2400 MT/s flash interface which helps performance, the controller supports Sequential performance speeds of up to 7,400MB/s and up to 6,500MB/s for read and writes respectively. Random 4K performance is rated as up to 1,000,000 IOPS for both reads and writes.
For the NV7000-Q, Netac has paired the controller with two 512GB NAND packages of YMTC 232-Layer 3D QLC NAND.
Netac rates the Sequential performance for the NV7000-Q as up to 7,100MB/s for reads and 6,200MB/s for writes. Using the default CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we could confirm the official figures with a best default test results of 7,229MB/s and 6,216MB/s for reads and writes respectively. Switching over to the compressible data test saw the read performance rise to 7,443MB/s but the writes falling to 5,872MB/s.
As for 4K random performance, we couldn't find an official rating for the drive but the Maxiotech controller is rated up to 1,000,000 IOPS for reads and writes. With our four-threaded testing, the best-read figure we saw was 667,768 IOPS (QD32), so it's way short of the official 1,000K maximum. However, even though the drive was short of the official figure, the drive still is the fastest 1TB Gen 4 drive we've seen to date through all the featured queue depths – 1, 2, 4 and 32. Using the default Peak Performance Profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 we could confirm the official read figure with a test result of 1,066,698 IOPS.
The best random write figure we saw from our four-threaded testing was 483,009 IOPS (QD32). Again, it's well short of the official figure but as with the random read performance, the Netac NV7000-Q it still is the fastest 1TB Gen 4 consumer drive we've seen to date. Using the default Peak Performance Profile in CrystalDiskMark 8 we came up short of the official maximum at 896,142 IOPS.
The NV7000-Q is supported by Netac's SSD management utility called SSD ToolBox. It might not have the funky GUI of some of its competitors' utilities but does have all the basics to help you maintain the drive including the ability to perform firmware updates, Secure Erase and data migration.
We haven't yet found the NV7000-Q on sale but we are told it should land around the £102.99 mark.
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Pros
- Very fast drive.
- Endurance.
Cons
- Write speeds in some benchmark tests.
KitGuru says: Netac's NV7000 family have all been fast Gen. 4 drives and up to now have all have been 3D TLC NAND equipped. The NV7000-Q changes the NAND type, switching over to QLC NAND but still retaining the fast performance of the rest of the product line.
