The second generation of PCI-Express 4.0 NVMe solid state drives are here and offering some blazing fast speeds. Many of them will be powered by the Phison PS5018-E18 controller. The drive we are taking a look at today is one such drive as it makes use of the Phison E18 teamed with Micron 96-layer TLC flash. The drive is the Mushkin GAMMA and it sits as their flagship solid state drive offering sequential read and write speeds of 7175 MB/s and 6800 MB/s respectively. Mushkin is offering the GAMMA in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB models at pretty attractive pricing. Read on as we take a look!
Special thanks to Mushkin for providing us with the GAMMA 2TB Gen4 Solid State Drive to review.
Specifications
Form Factor: M.2 (2280)
Capacity: 2TB
Memory Components: 3D NAND
Interface: PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.4
Controller: Phison E18
Max Sequential Read: Up to 7175MB/s
Max Sequential Write: Up to 6800MB/s
4KB Random Read: Up to 640,000 IOPS
4KB Random Write: Up to 630,000 IOPS
Seek Time: <0.1ms
Total Bytes Written (TBW): 1400TB
MTBF: 1,600,000 hours
Warranty: 5-year limited warranty* or 1400TB TBW (Terabytes Written)
Packaging
The Mushkin GAMMA comes in very minimal packaging. Funny that our sample says “PCIe GEN3 x 4 Solid State Drive” even though it is a Gen4 drive. The front of the package allows you to get a good look at the drive.
Flipping over to the back we have a picture of the drive and not much else.
Opening the package and getting everything out we have the GAMMA drive itself and a small Mushkin sticker.
