Conclusion
We have taken a giant swan dive into the realm of SSD reviews, with our first review of a great value positioned TLC NVMe SSD packing a lot of performance for the money. We have reviewed the XPG SX8100 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD. This is a PCIe Gen 3×4 NVMe 1.3 SSD. It has a rated read speed of 3500MB/s and a quoted write speed (in the best conditions) of 3000MB/s. It also has DRAM SLC caching so that its TLC nature won’t hold it back. Backed by the Realtek RTS5762 controller, it supports LDCP ECC and encryption.
Performance
The one thing we can say about this SSD is that its read performance is Steller for this price point. This SSD certainly excels in its read performance over its write. All of our read tests showed over 3000MB/s. This SSD does an excellent job at reading performance.
The write speed though was a bit all over the place. The quoted speed was 3000MB/s write, but that is only achieved in one benchmark scenario according to XPG’s own performance table. In the CDM (QD32-T1) Sequential Write test the benchmark (according to XPG) will bench at 3000MB/sec. However, this is the rarity out of the norm. On this same table, it shows write speeds as low as 1900MB/s and even 1600MB/sec.
In our own testing, the write speeds varied from 1900MB/s to 2140MB/s in ATTO and 2288MB/s in CrystalDiskMark. Depending on the benchmark, these are not bad write speeds, but just not very consistent. There are certainly SSDs out there with better write speeds, but you’ll be paying for it. Considering this is TLC, these aren’t terrible results, we do think they could be a little better though if you spend more on a newer drive or look at different memory types. For the money, these aren’t bad, and that’s the important thing to keep in mind is how low priced this SSD is.
Use Cases
In our opinion, anyone who is interested in read speeds will love this SSD. This encompasses a wide variety of people. The XPG SX8100 M.2 NVMe SSD would be great for gamers, or general office use, or content creators, or even light workstation applications.
The SSD, however, might start to suffer for those that do heavy write workloads. There are two things that could affect that. The fact that this SSD is TLC based means as it fills up, or with very large writes, its performance could degrade. The endurance of writing and erasing and writing again is also not as robust as “Pro” drives that have higher endurance. This would not be an optimal drive for applications with extreme writes.
Final Points
Otherwise though, for the money, this is a really good drive for generally anyone else. Gamers, look here, a low-cost NVMe SSD like this will ensure you have a great gaming experience. This will be great for new games that utilize texture or content streaming like Flight Sim 2020 will do. Any kind of game that streams in information like this may benefit big time on a fast NVMe SSD with great read times.
The big value is the price, it has great performance for the price of $239.99 for a 2TB SSD and $129.99 for a 1TB SSD, and that’s the key point. Thanks to its SLC like DRAM cache, TLC is not holding it back. This allows there to be a money savings and you can actually afford large 1TB and 2TB SSDs now with NVMe performance.