Spatium M480 Play: MSI SSD gets cooler and 4TB for PS5

MSI, as a youngster in the SSD field, is expanding the Spatium series with an M.2 model with a flat heat sink that also fits the PlayStation 5. The new Spatium M480 Play is announced as having the same performance as the previous M480. However, in the first tests, it was faster.

At Computex last year, MSI unveiled its debut SSD with several models according to previous indications. The spearhead was the Spatium M480 series with up to 7000 MB / s and 650,000 IOPS when reading and 6800 MB / s and 700,000 IOPS when writing. The M480 was initially offered as a “bare” M.2 unit, then followed in October with a clear heat sink of about 2 cm.

Play with PlayStation

Now the Spatium M480 Play is another variant of the higher performance class with PCIe 4.0 x4. With the radiator flat designed significantly, and the SSD’s height is only 10.7mm, the SSD fits the PlayStation 5 like many others as a memory expansion. The manufacturer also focuses on exactly this feature during the presentation.

While MSI advertises the M480 Play with the same performance numbers of 7000 MB/s read and 6800 MB/s write, it cuts In the first tests Even better off. Test samples at least used Micron’s newer, faster 176-layer NAND, while the M480 still had 96-layer NAND at the time. This explains the increase in performance.

Brief confusion with key data

Approximately disk city However, when asked by ComputerBase, MSI did not officially confirm the published specification, which states, among other things, 7400MB/s for reading and 7000MB/s for writing. The company’s response states that while they are happy that the test reports measure higher performance, they only guarantee the values ​​specified on the packaging, which fall at the stated level for their older sister models.

Ultimately, this can also mean that the 176-layer fast NAND layer is not necessarily used. Due to its conservative performance specifications, the manufacturer has more leeway when it comes to memory configuration. However, the very powerful Phison E18 controller is set, which is included in the datasheets as well as the DDR4 cache.

New 4TB option too

The Spatium M480 Play is offered in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB storage capacities. This is another difference from the previous M480 series, which is only available with a maximum capacity of 2TB. However, MSI has not announced any pricing yet.

With the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX (test), Corsair recently launched a variant of the MP600 Pro XT (test) specially adapted for the PS5.