Specification
| Form factor | M.2 2280 |
| Interface | PCIe 5.0 x4 NVMe |
| Capacities | 1TB, 2TB, 4TB |
| Sequential read/write | 14,000/13,000MB/s |
| NAND | 3D TLC |
| Endurance (total bytes written) | 1TB – 740TB 2TB – 1480TB 4TB – 2960TB |
| Storage temperature | -40°C~85°C |
| Operating temperature | 0°C~70°C |
| Dimensions | 22mm x 80mm x 3.2mm (4.5mm with heatsink) |
| Weight | 8g without heatsink 12g with heatsink |
| Vibration non-operating | 20G (10-1,000Hz) |
| MTBF | 2,000,000 hours |
| Warranty/Support | Limited 5-year warranty with free technical support |
Features
On the MARS 980 BLADE’s PCB, we will find a rebranded Micron 232-layer 3D TLC NAND, two 1GB Samsung K4A8G165WC-BCTD LPDDR4-2666 chips that serve as cache. One of the Samsung chips is located on the back of the PCB, which may cause issues with some thin laptops. However, most users won’t even consider installing this SSD in smaller laptops.
The MARS 980 BLADE offers sequential bandwidth of up to 14 GB/s. This is about as high as most of the competition offers. In our tests, we achieved results of up to 14.5 GB/s, but this highly depends on the specific test used.
The SSD supports all the latest technologies to improve stability, data protection, and performance.
ADATA provides SSD ToolBox software that checks the SSD’s health, optimizes its performance, and lets us update the firmware. The tested SSD arrived with the latest available firmware. There were no issues during all our tests.
Below is a screenshot from CrystalDiskInfo, one of the most widely used diagnostic programs. The SSD arrived in perfect condition with 0TB written.
Depending on the load, the drive’s temperature typically ranges between 35 °C and 75 °C. The maximum specified (safe) temperature is 85°C, whereas our tests observed a temperature of up to 75°C without a heatsink and around 68°C with a motherboard heatsink. Although the temperature increases significantly under load, we haven’t observed thermal throttling. We may still experience this issue if the SSD is installed in a laptop with limited airflow. On the other hand, the MARS 980 BLADE is the coolest PCIe 5.0 SSD with DRAM we have tested so far.
