Final Thoughts on the ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade Gen5 Solid State Drive
I think long gone are the days of active cooling for PCI-Express 5.0 solid state drives. These newer controllers for the most part use far less power, which means they tend to run cooler as well. We actually tested the XPG Mars 980 Blade using the M.2 heatsink on our motherboard as well as bare with just the heatspreader that ADATA includes. We only saw thermal throttling in a couple of our tests just using the heatspreader by itself. These were not gaming tests and there really are only certain situations you would even put that much load on a drive like this. If you did plan to use this drive as a game drive you won’t run into any issues whether you have a heatsink on the drive or the included heatspreader.
When it comes to speed ADATA rates this drive for 14,000 MB/s read and 13,000 MB/s write (sequential) and we saw those speeds in many of our test. In CrystalDiskMark we have read and write speeds of 14,483 MB/s and 13,462 MB/s respectively. In ATTO Disk Benchmark speeds were at 12,600 MB/s read and 13,940 MB/s write. And finally in SiSoftware Sandra’s Physical Disks benchmark we saw speeds of 13,790 MB/s read and 12,000 MB/s write. So this drive definitely lives up to ADATA’s performance claims.
You are going to see really great sustain write speeds here are well. That is because ADATA is using a very large SLC cache. We were actually able to write 70% of the drive before we saw any real performance hit. That is quite impressive, so you won’t see much of a performance hit when you are transferring large files.
Like anything storage these days pricing and availability are sort of up in the air. Right now I can’t even find the XPG Mars 980 Blade in a 2TB capacity for sale at either Amazon or Newegg. The 1TB is available, but is being sold by a 3rd party at both places so those prices are quite inflated (~$240). In contrast we can at least find a Crucial T710 in both capacities at a semi-reasonable price considering the current shortages. I think if you can find this drive at a reasonable price it is a very solid Gen5 drive.
Overall ThinkComputers gives the ADATA XPG Mars 980 Blade Gen5 Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Performs right up to specifications
– Included real heatspreader
– Good sustained write performance
– Large SLC cache
Cons:
– Can thermally throttle when using the heatspreader only in certain situations
– Pricing and availability (not ADATA’s fault)
