XPG Gammix S50 Lite 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD Review

 The XPG Gammix S50 Lite M.2 NVMe - Fast, Reliable and revolutionary!

 

ADATA over the years has grown and expanded exponentially, catering now not only with its wide range of storage options in forms of SSDs and RAMs but also in form of the gaming peripherals such as keyboards and mice. Quite recently they launched their version of a PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD in form of the XPG S50 Lite,  hopping onto the latest trend in the industry but considering its one of the, if not the, cheapest option in the market today under the PCI 4.0 tag it kind of makes everyone curious as to how this thing would perform!

Thanks to ADATA I have one on the table today and boy its impressive from the packaging itself! The S50 Lite comes in three capacity variants of 512GB, 1TB and 2TB which should be more tan enough for everyone in the market. It is a M.2 NVMe PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD which comes rated at The company covers the 1TB model for up to 740 TB of writes within its five-year warranty and to sustain upwards of 540,000/540,000 random read/write IOPS and dish out up to 3.9/3.2 GBps of sequential read/write throughput. Over all a solid rating for a product of this category and price and talking about the pricing the XPG S50 Lite 1TB is priced in at $150 or ₹11,500 in India.

Packing and Closer Look

ADATA brings the XPG Gammix S50 Lite in a shiny red packaging with the product image right in the center along with all the details that one would require on top such as capacity, connectivity standards etc. A bit too shiny for my taste but then its subjective.

At the back we have the usual details along with  other markings. The SSD rests in a clamp-shell packaging inside the box which is good enough for ease in transportation.  

The XPG Gammix S50 Lite is a 2280 form factor M.2 drive which uses a dual sided PCB layout with the NAND chips, controller and DRAM chips located on both the sides of this black PCB wafer. It connects via the PCIe 4.0x4 standards so you can expect nearly double the speeds of a conventional PCIe 3.0x4 drive.

The heatshield is brushed aluminum and as per ADATA can reduce the operating temperatures of the SSD by almost 20% which is needed since at high speeds SSDs are bound to thermal throttle.

Silicon Motion’s SM2267 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.4 SSD controller powers the Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite. It is a quad channel controller unlike the 8-channel ones we usually see on other PCIe Gen 4.0 SSDs and has a dual core 28nm Arm Cortex R5 CPU for data handling and processing. It also features a DRAM cache and has a single SK hynix 8Gb (1GB) DDR4 DRAM IC for buffer storage. The four memory ICs located in a pair of two on each side of the PCB are Intel/Micron 96-layer 3D TLC NAND with a 256GB capacity each.

Test Setup and Benchmarks

We used our usual testbench to benchmark the ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite 1TB NVMe M.2 SSD -

CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
Motherboard: MSI Prestige X570 Creation WiFi
RAM: Antec Katana 16GB 3200Mhz
Cooler: NZXT X53 240mm RGB
Graphics Card: Inno3D RTX 3090 iChill X4
Storage: Kingston A400 256GB
Secondary Storage: ADATA XPG Gammix S50 Lite 1TB NVMe M.2
Power Supply: Antec HCG1000 1000W 80+ Gold
Case: NZXT H510 Elite
OS: Windows 10 Pro 64-bit 

TRIM Check

Since this is a very new SSD for us so it called for some new testing suits aswell, one such tool is TrimCheck which verifies if TRIM function on the drive is working perfectly or not.

 

The test shows that TRIM is working perfectly on the SSD.

Crystal Disk Info v8.11.2

Crystal Disk Info is a great tool for displaying the characteristics and health of storage devices. It displays everything from temperatures, to the number of hours the device has been powered, and even to the extent of informing you of the firmware of the device.

 

Crystal Disk Info shows us that a bunch of useful SMART attributes are presented to the end user. Total reads and writes as well as NAND writes are shown. The firmware version we are testing with today is version 82A7T9PA with the drive working at optimum temperatures even during summers.   

ATTO Disk

ATTO Disk Benchmark measures transfer rates across specific lengths for any storage system. ATTO uses RAW data, I set my transfer size from 0.5 to 8192kb. This is generally the most reliable benchmarks for today's SSDs.

We can clearly see that the speed put up by the S50 Lite are in coherence with the advertised speeds and is performing as expected.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software that analyses different types of hard drive. Giving sequential benchmark write and read statistics in MB/s. A simple program that is very useful.

A similar scenario is what we are seeing here aswell. 

Anvil Storage Utility

The next test is Anvil Storage Utilities, which is a really great piece of software. The SSD benchmark gives you scores for both read and write as well as a combined score.

 

Identical results yet again in terms of performance aswell as on the IOPS end which is same as that on the specification sheets.  

AS SSD

The AS SSD software determines the performance of Solid State Drives (SSD). The tool contains five synthetic and three practice tests. The synthetic tests determine the sequential and random read and write performance of the SSD. These tests are performed without using the operating system caches. In Sequential tests, the program measures the time it takes to read and write a 1 GB file respectively.

With an impressive score of above 5006 points the XPG S50 Lite blazes ahead of any PCIe 3.0 SSD in the market today, including the Copy benchmark which emulates real life performance compromising of miscellaneous data types and sizes.

AIDA64 Extreme Edition v5.97.4600

AIDA64 is one of the best tools out there to check the system stability, error diagnostics and even to validate overclocking.
It has a set of suites for almost every hardware out there including SSD/HDD. So we started of with AIDA64 disk suites.

As we can see that the drive is hitting the advertised speeds and is extremely consistent in read and write activities. This is a very good indications since most drives including the XPG SX8000 tend to fluctuate a lot in the Linear and Random Read tests indicating towards a more solid and consistent performance by the S50 Lite. 

 

PCMark 10

PCMark 10 is specifically designed to stress test the entire system for a variety of daily tasks in an emulated fashion, the test ranges from application load time to daily office and personal tasks such as editing Excel sheets to video conferencing etc. It gives a more thorough insight into the real world performance of the storage drive.

A brilliant performance presented by the S50 Lite yet again with a total score of 6134, where its beating others by a substantial margin! The drive is not only extremely consistent but shows really high speeds.

My Verdict 

ADATA under its XPG lineup always brings something new to the table and the S50 Lite is no exception! The drive performs as advertised and does exactly what's expected making it tick all the right boxes.

The drive is powered by a new quad channel Silicon Motion’s SM2267 controller which is no slouch  at handling the 1TB memory thanks to the 1GB onboard buffer chip. Its speed are not the fastest but are way ahead of the conventional PCIe 3.0 drives and extremely close if not ahead of the more expensive options in the market that are PCIe 4.0 rated and are equipped with a eight channel controller hence not only being costlier but also more power hungry compared to the S50 Lite.

In our tests the drive stayed relatively cool hitting 70°C under full consistent load which is lower than what most PCIe 4.0 SSDs would hit. The drive offers great write speeds but where it really shine is read speeds which in real life means that windows boot up, game load times, anti virus scans and even data retrieval for editing or any other read intensive task would be completed quickly making it one of the best options for gamers and since its XPG lineup its hitting the right market with the right performance.

"With blazing fast speeds and relatively cheap price tag, the XPG S50 Lite offers everything that one can ask for this price. Decent price and high read speeds make the S50 Lite and ideal option for gamers and content creators alike."

Pro - 

• Affordable Price Tag
• Blazing fast speed
• Minimalist Design 
• Lower operating temperatures 
• AES 256-bit full-disk encryption
• 5-year warranty 

Cons - 

• Slower write speeds

I give it a 9/10 earning our Gold Award