ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Solid State Drive

Model: ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: ADATA Technology
Provided By: ADATA Technology (USA)

ADATA Technology is one of the world's leading manufacturers of high performance memory modules and data storage solutions. Founded in 2001 with a staff of 20, this Taiwanese company set itself apart from the competition early on thanks to its professionalism, industry know-how and eye-catching product designs. Today, ADATA continues to lead the way through constant innovation and development of products that exceed customer expectations. Backed by technical expertise, state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities and premium customer service, ADATA currently offers a variety of products including DRAM modules, USB flash drives, memory cards, solid state drives and portable hard drives.

This past fall, ADATA launched its XPG ATOM series SSDs. In addition to two new PCIe 3.0 drives, the ATOM 30 and 40, the company unveiled its latest PCIe 4.0 SSD, the ATOM 50. Designed for use in high-end desktops and Sony's PS5 gaming console, this M.2 form factor drive is powered by Innogrit's RainierQX (IG5220) controller and is available with 1TB of 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. The ATOM 50 also utilizes SLC Caching and HMB (Host Memory Buffer) to accelerate read and write performance as well as Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) code technology and AES 256-bit encryption to ensure data security and integrity. To top it all off, the drive is equipped with a slim, aluminum heatsink as well as an ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4 interface.

The ATOM 50 is currently available in a 1TB capacity and is capable of delivering up to 5,000 MB/s sequential read and 4,500 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 650,000 random read and 600,000 random write IOPS.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the ATOM 50 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at ADATA's new PCIe 4.0 SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the ATOM 50 have what it takes? Can it deliver the value and performance we've come to expect from ADATA? Keep reading as we find out.

The ATOM 50 comes in a small black box. Along with a picture of the drive, the front advertises a number of its key features including its 1TB capacity, PCIe 4.0 interface and maximum read speed. The back of the box provides a bit more information regarding the ATOM 50's features and performance. Inside, you'll find the SSD as well as a black, aluminum heatsink that can be attached to the drive.

Physical Features:

The ATOM 50 uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 80 x 22 x 3.3 mm and weighs in at 9g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.

Like the LEGEND 840, the ATOM 50 uses Innogrit's RainierQX (IG5220) controller. Designed for low-cost client solutions, this DRAM-less, PCIe Gen 4 x4 NVMe 1.4 controller has 4 NAND channels and supports SLC, MLC, TLC and QLC NAND flash with either ONFI or Toggle Mode interface. The RainierQX also features multiple data encryption and protection schemes as well as InnoGrit’s proprietary Gen3 LDPC ECC technology

For the 1TB version of the ATOM 50, ADATA has opted to use its own Micron manufactured 176-layer (B47R) 3D TLC NAND flash. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are two 512GB NAND flash packages on top of the PCB. There is also no DRAM cache chip as the ATOM 50's RainierQX controller takes full advantage of NVMe's Host Memory Buffer feature by using a small portion of the computer's memory to cache the mapping tables.

The aluminum heatsink included with the ATOM 50 is simple, yet functional. It attaches to the top of the drive using thermal adhesive and does have a small, yet measurable, impact on temperature. I found that with the heatsink installed, the ATOM 50's temps dropped by a few degrees during idle periods and heavy workloads.

Like ADATA's other SSDs, the XPG ATOM 50 works with their SSD Toolbox. This free downloadable utility is an easy way for users to obtain information about their drives and change various system settings. Additionally, it can be used to speed up your SSD and even improve the endurance of a drive.

When you run ADATA SSD Toolbox, the main screen displays information about your drives. From here, users can view information like the capacity, used space, temperature, health and lifespan of each drive. By clicking on the tabs, you'll also find information like the model name, firmware version and serial number and connection speed.

The SSD Toolbox offers two different diagnostic scans. The quick diagnostics scan runs a basic test on free space and is usually completed in under two minutes. The full diagnostics scan runs a read test on all used space and a write test on all free space of the selected drive. Needless to say, the full scan takes much longer to complete.

ADATA's SSD Toolbox also includes a number of utilities. Along with the ability to do a secure erase, users can update a drive's firmware, upgrade the software and export a log file containing information about your system and drives.

The System Optimization option gives users the ability to run a TRIM command on a selected SSD. Users also have the ability optimize their OS by enabling features like superfetch, prefetch and automatic defragmentation.

SSD Toolbox can also be used to view information about your system. The utility displays a number of things including the operating system, CPU, amount of usable RAM and the model and BIOS version of your motherboard. There are also links to get help, download a user manual and register your SSD.

The test system used in this review is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 5 3700x CPU, MSI B550 GAMING PLUS motherboard, 16GB (8GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix 3200 MHz DDR4 memory, Crucial P5 1TB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I used the latest version of Windows 10 Pro.

To test the performance of ADATA's XPG ATOM 50 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark. For comparison, I've also included test results from the ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70 Blade, Crucial P5 Plus, Plextor M10PY, ADATA XPG GAMMIX S70, Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus, WD_BLACK SN850, Silicon Power US70, ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite, Samsung 980, Silicon-Power UD70, Crucial P2, SK hynix Gold P31, Crucial P5, ADATA SWORDFISH, ADATA FALCON, Lexar NM610, Silicon Power P34A60, Patriot P300, Plextor M9PG Plus, Plextor M9PY Plus, ADATA XPG SX6000 Pro, Western Digital WD_BLACK SN750, Lexar NQ100, Samsung 970 EVO Plus, ADATA XPG SX8200 Pro, Crucial P1, ADATA XPG SX8200, Western Digital WD_BLACK NVMe, Samsung 970 EVO, Samsung 970 PRO, Plextor M9Pe, Plextor M8Se, Patriot Hellfire, ADATA XPG SX8000, Samsung 960 PRO, Toshiba OCZ RD400, Samsung 950 PRO, Samsung 870 EVO, Samsung 870 QVO, Silicon Power PC60 and SK hynix Gold S31.

As I mentioned earlier, the ATOM 50 uses Innogrit's RainierQX (IG5220) controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.

CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4:

First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential and random read and write speeds. For this test, we're using the peak and real world profiles.

According to ADATA, the 1TB ATOM 50 is capable of reading at 5,000 MB/s and writing at 4,500 MB/s. As you can see, the drive had no problems reaching these speeds in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write tests.

As you'd expect, the ATOM 50 wasn't as fast when tested with the "real world" profile which uses a single thread and a much lower queue depth. Nevertheless, it was still able to read at 3,612 MB/s and write at more than 4,800 MB/s.

HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:

Next, I used HD Tach to test the ATOM 50's read, write and burst speeds as well as its random access time and CPU usage.

Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the ATOM 50 had average read and write speeds of 2837.5 MB/s and 1450.6 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 3395.6 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that, like most other TLC-based SSDs, the ATOM 50 uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 2,700 MB/s and then drops to about 1,900 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache. The ATOM 50 is able to maintain this speed for a short time before its write speed drops again, down to 500 MB/s.

ATTO Disk Benchmark 4.01:

I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the ATOM 50's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 512B to 64 MB and the total length set to 256MB.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB

Silicon Power US70 1TB

When tested with ATTO, the ATOM 50's read speeds topped out at about 4.70 GB/s and its write speeds at 4.57 GB/s.

AS SSD:

AS SSD is a benchmark designed specifically for solid state drives. The application contains five synthetic tests which are used to determine the sequential and random read and write performance of a drive.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB

Silicon Power US70 1TB

AS SSD also includes a copy benchmark. This test copies an ISO (two large files), program (many small files) and game (small and large files), returning the speed and duration of each.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB

Silicon Power US70 1TB

HD Tune Pro 5.75:

Next, I ran a series of tests using HD Tune Pro. This hard disk utility measures a drive's performance by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its access time, burst rate and CPU usage. For this review, I'm also going to use it to benchmark the ATOM 50's random read and write speeds, random access times and the number of operations per second.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB - Read Benchmark

Silicon Power US70 1TB - Read Benchmark

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB - Write Benchmark

Silicon Power US70 1TB - Write Benchmark

The ATOM 50 performed relatively well when benchmarked with HD Tune. The drive had average read and write speeds of 5,718.5 MB/s and 2,565.8 MB/s, respectively.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB - Random Access Read

Silicon Power US70 1TB - Random Access Read

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 1TB - Random Access Write

Silicon Power US70 1TB - Random Access Write

When reading 4KB blocks, the ATOM 50 reached 46,384 IOPS and had an average speed of 181.189 MB/s. The drive was even faster when writing, reaching 56,593 IOPS with an average speed of 221.067 MB/s.

Anvil's Storage Utilities:

Anvil's Storage Utilities is another benchmark designed with SSDs in mind. The standard storage benchmark measures a drive's performance by testing its transfer speeds, access times and IOPS.

Iometer:

Lastly, I ran a series of tests using Iometer. This tool can be configured to benchmark a number of things. In this case, I used it to measure the ATOM 50's read and write speeds and the number of operations per second. The tests were run using random bytes and a queue depth of 3.

The ATOM 50's performance was very similar to what we saw in our other tests. The drive was able to read at 4805.31 MB/s and write at 4573.41 MB/s.

The ATOM 50 also performed fairly well when doing random reads and writes. In our tests, the drive was able to read at 459.64 MB/s and write at 529.51 MB/s.

According to ADATA, the 1TB ATOM 50 is capable of 650,000 IOPS when reading and 600,000 IOPS when writing 4K blocks. With two threads and a queue depth of three, the drive reached 117,668 random read IOPS and 135,555 random write IOPS.

The ATOM 50's random write performance was limited somewhat by its DRAM-less controller. With an 8GB test file, it peaked at about 267,000 IOPS. Using a smaller 1GB test file, the ATOM 50 was able to bypass this limitation and reach a respectable 635,053 IOPS.

PCMark 8 - Storage Test:

PCMark 8 is a complete benchmark for Windows. It includes five benchmark tests, each designed around a specific scenario. The storage benchmark measures drive performance using real-world traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office and a selection of popular games.

PCMark 8 also includes a consistency test which measures the performance consistency and degradation tendency of a storage system. The test reports the performance level at the start, the degraded steady-state and the recovered state as well as the number of iterations required to reach the degraded state and the recovered state. For this test, we are focusing on the Adobe Photoshop (Heavy) trace and will look at both the bandwidth and latency of the drive.

The ATOM 50 did quite well throughout PCMark's consistency test. The average bandwidth stayed above 1000 MB/s throughout most of the degradation and steady state phases and peaked at 1108 MB/s during the recovery phase.

PCMark 10 - Full System Drive Benchmark:

PCMark 10's 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. This benchmark produces an overall score as a measure of drive performance. Comparing devices is as simple as comparing scores. The tests also measure and report the bandwidth and average access time performance for the drive.

The ATOM 50 did surprisingly well in PCMark 10's Full System Drive Benchmark. While not nearly as fast as the Plextor M10PY or the WD_BLACK SN850, it performed better than both the Samsung 980 PRO and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus.

TRIM Performance:

While SSD's offer many benefits, there are some downsides to using flash memory. One of the biggest issues people run into is performance degradation. Over time, an SSD will run out of fresh blocks and will have to write over data the file system has marked as deleted. This procedure is very complicated and can slow an SSD's write speeds considerably.

To fix this problem, most manufacturers have added TRIM support to their SSDs. The TRIM command allows an operating system, such as Windows 10, to tell an SSD which data blocks are no longer in use. Using this information, the drive pro-actively erases these blocks and adds them to the free block pool.

To test the ATOM 50's TRIM and garbage collection functions, I first put the drive in a "dirty" state. I used Iometer to fill 80% of the drive and then ran a random write test for 30 minutes. Looking at the screenshot below, you can see that the ATOM 50's average read and write speeds dropped to 2081.39 MB/s and 213.20 MB/s, respectively.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50 - Dirty

To see how well the ATOM 50 could recover, I let the computer sit for about 30 minutes and then reran the test. The drive's average read speed climbed up to 4176.78 MB/s. However, its write speed lagged behind, averaging out at only 1939.60 MB/s.

ADATA XPG ATOM 50  - After TRIM

Lastly, I used Parted Magic to perform a secure erase on the ATOM 50. With the drive wiped clean, it had average read and write speeds of 4225.98 MB/s and 4582.78 MB/s, respectively.

 
ADATA XPG ATOM 50 - Secure Erased

Final Thoughts:

The ADATA XPG ATOM 50 is an excellent choice for the gamer or tech enthusiast looking for a fast, yet affordable, PCIe 4.0 SSD for their computer or gaming console. This heatsink-equipped, M.2 form factor SSD is powered by Innogrit's RainierQX (IG5220) controller and is equipped with 1TB of 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. Combine this with an ultra-fast PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4 interface and you have a drive capable of reading and writing at speeds well beyond that of the fastest PCIe 3.0 SSDs. In our sequential read and write tests, the 1TB version of the ATOM 50 was able to read at speeds as high as 5,035 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 4,800 MB/s.  It also did fairly well in our random write tests, producing more than 135,000 IOPS at low queue depths.

Of course, fast read and write speeds aren't the only things the ATOM 50 has to offer. In addition to a slim, aluminum heatsink, the drive features intelligent SLC caching, Host Memory Buffer (HMB) and advanced LDPC error correcting code technology. To top it all off, the ATOM 50 supports AES 256-bit encryption and is backed by a 5 year warranty.

The 1TB XPG ATOM 50 is available now and can be purchased from online retailers like Amazon for $120.

Highs:

• PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
• Innogrit RainierQX (IG5220) controller
• Equipped with 176-layer 3D TLC NAND
• Excellent sequential read and write speeds
• Good random read and write performance
• Small M.2 2280 form factor
• Intelligent SLC caching
• Advanced LDPC ECC technology
• Host Memory Buffer (HMB)
• Includes optional aluminum heatsink
• AES 256-bit encryption
• Reasonably priced
• Works with ADATA's SSD Toolbox software
• 5 year warranty

Lows:

• Only available in 1TB capacity (so far)
• Write speed drops when SLC cache is full