The Adata Legend 960 is a PCI Express 4.0 NVMe solid-state drive that starts at $129.99 for 1TB. In our tests, it did well in both loading programmes and playing games. The PlayStation 5’s internal SSD has a thin heat spreader and can be used as extra storage. Its hardware-based encryption keeps your data safe. It should be a good choice for gamers, game designers, creative professionals, and graphic artists who like to spend hours playing AAA games you can buy this product directly from Adata’s store.
Adata Legend 960: Description
The Legend 960 will come out on October 10 with capacities of 1TB and 2TB. You can preorder it from online stores at the prices listed in the table below. It is a PCIe 4×4 drive that is built on an M.2 Type-2280 “gumstick” PCB that is 80mm long. It uses the NVMe 1.4 protocol over the PCIe 4.0 bus and is based on a Silicon Motion SM2264 controller and Micron’s 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. Chips are attached to both sides of the circuit board so that it can hold this memory and all of its other parts.
This makes the board too thick for some ultra-thin laptops. A thin metal heat spreader is included, and its adhesive strip can be stuck to the top of the drive by peeling off the plastic that covers it. The heat spreader was in place when we did our benchmark tests. Even with the spreader, the Legend 960 is still thin enough to fit into the PS5’s open slot, and it meets all of Sony’s requirements for use with the PS5 in terms of specs When used with a console, ADATA says the drive can write at up to 6,400MBps.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Good sustained performance
- Didn’t throttle
- Competitive performance
- Included heatsink
Cons
- The build quality isn’t great
- Average pricing
- Middling write endurance
- Subpar power efficiency
Adata Legend 960: Specifications
| Pricing | $109.99 |
| Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
| Interface / Protocol | PCIe 4.0 x4 |
| Controller | SM2264 |
| Random Read | 730K |
| Random Write | 610K |
Design and Features
The Adata Legend 960 looks a lot like the brand’s less expensive XPG Gammix S70 Blade, which came out in 2021. That means that this drive comes with a PS5 SSD heatsink with a sticky back to cool down the NVMe components. On the silicon, there is the tried-and-true SM2264 controller, which has been around since late 2020.
Even though it’s not a bad performer, it’s not as powerful as the top-of-the-line Phison E-18 controller because it can only read and write up to 7,400 MB/s and 6,800 MB/s, respectively. Read-wise, that’s near the top of the line, but we have seen so many Gen 4 drives that excel up to the 7,000 MB/s mark, like the Kingston Fury Renegade, Seagate Firecuda 530, and PNY CS3140.
The Adata Legend 960 keeps up with other NVMe SSDs with its 176-layer Micron TLC flash memory. Since that’s almost the limit of what NVMe 1.4 can do, it’s not too surprising. The heatsink on the Adata Legend 960 is a nice touch, but it isn’t strong or sturdy. It’s thin and has an adhesive layer that sticks to the silicon, which makes it perfect for the PS5’s M.2 port. However, it doesn’t offer the same level of protection as, say, the Kingston Fury Renegade SSD.
Adata Legend 960: A Closer Look
The Adata Legend 960 comes with an easy-to-install heatsink or heat spreader. This is a nice option for a high-end drive like this, especially since you can use your own solution to get rid of heat if you want to. Each side of the SSD has one DRAM package and two NAND packages, for a total of two DRAM packages and four NAND packages. Also, the required SSD controller is in the middle, which should help the spreader get rid of heat better.
This is the first drive we’ve tested with a SMI SM2264 controller, which is a newer model. The SM2264 is an eight-channel, 12nm, quad-core ARM Cortex-R8, 1600 MT/s SSD controller. It has 4KB codeword LDPC error correction, which is twice as much as the SM2262EN’s 2KB. It can also support up to 64 dies, which is twice as many as the SM2262EN.
The R8 is a different version of the processor than the R5, which is used in most or all of the Legend 960’s competitors’ SSD controllers. Getting the R8 made may be why SMI is late to the market. The SM2269XT, which is on the Solidigm P41 Plus, also uses the R8, and the SM2268XT, about which we will hear more soon, should be based on the R8. An R8-based design could be very powerful, and SMI’s PCIe 5.0 solutions will also use it.
The DRAM package is labelled K4A8G165WC-BCTD, which stands for Samsung DDR4 in a 512Mx16b configuration for 1GB of DRAM. Together, the two modules add up to 2GB, which is the right amount for 2TB of flash.
Adata Legend 960: Performance
As we said at the top, the drives we are using to compare the 1TB Legend 960 to are 2TB. And because 2TB models have more NAND to use as secondary cache, they are almost always better than 1TB models. Even so, the Legend 960 beat its competitors in sequential read/write speeds for multiple queues. No small task.
When you add up the sequential and random transfer rates, the Legend 960 is still on par with other top drives. In our real-world 48GB transfers, the 1TB Legend 960 was even easier to use. In fact, it was the best time we have seen so far when added up. The 1TB version of the Legend 960 is not great for long data transfers, but that’s true of almost every 1TB drive.
The more space there is for these kinds of operations, the more capacity there is. But most users don’t do these things very often, and the drive works perfectly for everything else. The performance numbers shown only apply to the tested size of the drive. The performance of an SSD can change based on its capacity. This is because the number of chips that can be read or written across and the amount of NAND available for secondary caching can change.
Final Words
The Adata Legend 960 is a good SSD for the PS5, but since it came out at the end of Gen 4, it’s hard to recommend it when there are better-known drives that cost about the same.
FAQs
Are Adata drives any good?
The ADATA Legend 960 is a high-performance PCI Express 4.0 SSD that did very well in benchmarks and is a top choice for both gaming and creative work. It fits everything from gaming rigs to the PS5, but not the thinnest laptops.
Is ADATA better than SanDisk?
They are pretty much the same no matter where you buy them. Both are made by well-known brands, so they should be good enough. Choose the one you like better in terms of looks or features, because there’s not much else to choose between them.
