ADATA AXNS360E 128GB M.2 SSD Review – M.2 Promises Smaller Size & Larger Performance

TSSDR TEST BENCH AND TEST PROTOCOL

 Analysis of the ADATA AXNS360E M.2 SSD mandated a different protocol as a new test build was necessary and this SSD had just under 200GB of host writes on it, verifying that it wasn’t a new sample.  The purchase of an ASUS Maximus VI Extreme Z87 platform suited our needs as the SSD uses the SATA 3 signal, however, anyone expecting to get performance above 500MB/s from the PCIe side of things needs to wait a bit.

The ASUS Maximus VI actually has a MPCIe/802.11ac adapter that must be connected and disconnected from the drive whenever a SSD is to be changed.  In addition, there is no clearance to remove and replace without removing the entire adapter itself.  Add to that the fact that the interface is only capable of PCIe 2.0 x1 speeds (500MB/s) and that it takes up SATA port 5; ASUS could have thought this design through just a bit better.

SYSTEM COMPONENTS

This new PCIe Test Bench build was the result of some great relationships and purchase; our appreciation goes to be quiet, Corsair, Crucial, Intel and InWin for their support in our project.  Our choice of components is very narrow, in that, we choose only what we believe to be among the best available and links are provided to each that will assist in hardware pricing and availability, should the reader be interested in purchase.

PC CHASSIS:	InWin D-Frame Open Air Chassis
MOTHERBOARD:	ASUS Maximus VI Z87 MotherBoard
CPU:	Intel Core i7-4770K CPU
CPU COOLER:	Corsair H100i CPU Cooler
POWER SUPPLY:	be quiet Dark Power Pro 10 1000W PSU
SYSTEM COOLING:	be quiet Silent Wings 2 PC Fans
GRAPHICS CARD:	MSI Radeon HD 7870 Hawk Gfx Card
MEMORY:	Crucial Ballistix Tactical Tracer 1600Mhz Memory
KEYBOARD:	Corsair Vengeance K95 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard
MOUSE:	Corsair Vengeance M95 MMO/RTS Laser Mouse
ROUTER:	NetGear R6300 AC1750 Dual Band Gigabit WiFi Router
HBA	HighPoint RocketU 1144C 4 x USB 3.0 20Gb/s HBA

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BENCHMARK SOFTWARE

The software we will be using for today’s analysis is typical of many of our reviews and consists of ATTO Disk Benchmark, Crystal DiskMark, AS SSD, Anvil Storage Utilities and PCMark Vantage. We rely on these as they each have a way of supporting one another yet, at the same time, adding a new performance benchmark to the total picture. Much of the software is free and can be downloaded simply by clicking on the linked title.

CRYSTAL DISK INFO VER 5.5.0

Crystal Disk Info provides some excellent information about the SSD itself to include its health, product information, ‘power on’ information as well as the characteristics of the SSD. We can see that the SSD is capable of TRIM as it is not greyed out as with AAM.

This CDI check was conducted on receipt of the SSD.  As we can see, even before testing, there were 218GB host reads and 192 host writes prior to our testing.