Product Photos and a Closer Look
The MARS 980 BLADE’s package is a small cardboard box with cardboard protection for the SSD inside – one more eco-friendly step for ADATA, as all new SSDs from ADATA have recently arrived in similar packages.
We won’t find much inside the package. There is only an SSD and a thin heatsink, but that’s about everything we may need to start using the MARS 980 BLADE.
The SSD arrives with the SSD and heatsink separately. I think it’s a good idea, as using a motherboard heatsink, which provides better performance, eliminates the need for the included ADATA heatsink, which may add extra thermal resistance layers and cause installation problems. On the other hand, if you don’t have a motherboard with a large heatsink, it’s recommended to use the one included with the SSD, as it may lower the temperature by 2-3°C, which can be the edge of thermal throttling in small-form-factor computers.
The MARS 980 BLADE features a black PCB, and on the back is a white label with product numbers printed on it. The heatsink is made of aluminum, so it should perform better than a graphene sticker provided by most of the competition.
The MARS 980 BLADE is the only PCIe 5.0 SSD with DRAM that we have tested and recommend for laptops. Even competitive SSDs with the same SM2508 controllers generate more heat, and we tested five other SSDs with this controller. Some of them, you will see in the upcoming reviews.
On the next page, we will examine the test results closely.
