Lexar NM620 M.2 512GB SSD Review

Lexar’s NM620 M.2 Gen3x4 SSD focuses on providing higher performance for power users with heavy workloads and those who work and play on the same machine. Built around Lexar’s own DM620 controller, Lexar’s NM620 offers up to 3300MB/s read speeds and 3000MB/s writes. On top of speedy throughput, the NM620 employs a Low-Density Parity-Check for catching and fixing data errors on the fly with minimal impact to performance, giving you peace of mind backed by a 5-year warranty. Let’s check it out! PC Test Bench would like to thank Lexar for providing us with a sample of the NM620 to check out. Lexar’s take on the NM620 Drive: Designed for intensive workloads, the Lexar NM620 M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe SSD offers next-level performance that puts you in the computing fast lane with speeds up to 3300MB/s read and 3000MB/s write1. It’s supported by the PCIe Gen3x4 NVMe 1.4 technology standard and built with the latest 3D NAND flash. This is the right fit for users who want next-level performance for heavy workloads, as well as those who expect powerful and effective performance for demanding creative workstations and gaming experiences. About Lexar: Lexar was split off from Cirrus Logic in 1996 in San Jose, California, and manufactured flash storage products including SD and CF memory cards, USB flash drives, and Solid-State Drives. Lexar was later acquired by Micron in 2006 and continued on until 2017 until parent company Micron announced it would discontinue its retail removable media storage business and put it up for sale. Lexar branding and trademark rights were purchased by China-based memory company Longsys. FEATURES High-speed PCIe Gen3x4 interface: 3300MB/s read and 3000MB/s write – NVMe 1.4 supported 2 2280 form factor Get 6x the speed of a SATA-based SSD3 Ideal for PC enthusiasts and gamers 3D NAND Features LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) Shock and vibration resistant with no moving parts Five-year limited warranty SPECIFICATIONS Capacity - 256GB, 512GB, 1TB Form Factor - M.2 2280 Interface - PCIe Gen3x4 Speed 256GB sequential read up to 3000MB/s sequential write up to 1300MB/s IOPS: up to 92/240K 512GB sequential read up to 3300MB/s sequential write up to 2400MB/s IOPS: up to 200/256K 1TB sequential read up to 3300MB/s sequential write up to 3000MB/s IOPS: up to 300/256K NAND flash - 3D TLC Operating Temperature - 0° C to 70° C (32°F to 158°F) Storage Temperature - -40° C to 85° C (-40°F to 185°F) Shock Resistant - 1500G, duration 0.5ms, Half Sine Wave Vibration Resistant - 10~2000Hz, 1.5mm, 20G, 1 Oct/min, 30min/axis(X,Y,Z) TBW 256GB: 125TB 512GB: 250TB 1TB: 500TB MTBF - 1,500,000 Hours Dimension (L x W x H) - 80 mm x 22 mm x 2.25 mm / 3.15” x 0.87” x 0.09” Weight - 9g A Closer Look Lexar’s NM620 drive comes in a small black box with a full-color picture of the drive. The capacity is indicated clearly on the silver top. The rear of the box indicates the top speed in the corner and has a short blurb about the drive in a few languages. Inside, the NM620 is cradled in a clear plastic tray. It comes with an extra mounting screw, in case the carpet monster eats yours. The NM620 itself is your typical M-Key M.2 2280 drive. A label covers most of the front of the drive but the black PCB should blend in with most builds if not covered. The NM620 is a single-sided drive, so compatibility with almost any system is almost guaranteed. The NM620 is powered by Lexar’s own DM620 controller. There is no DRAM chip on the drive anywhere so the NM620 either runs DRAMless or an amount of cache is built into the custom controller. A single Micron 3D NAND flash chip makes up the 512GB worth of storage, but three empty pads mean the NM620 could potentially be created in a 2TB version. At this point, Lexar offers 1TB as its largest SKU. Testing Test Platform: CPU Intel Core i9-10900k Mobo Aorus Z490 Master RAM 32GB HyperX Fury RGB GPU Nvidia RTX 2080 FE OS SSD Kingston KC1000 1TB CrystalDiskInfo We see our drive can use the maximum bandwidth available from an M.2 Slot running PCIe 3.0 x4. At idle, temps settle in around the upper 30C range. During heavy testing, we only saw the drive warm up into the low 50C range, far from throttling. Sequential Testing – Variable Queue Depth Sequential speeds start around 420MB/s for reads and around 380MB/s for writes at QD1. We see a slight dip at QD2 and then things shoot up at QD4 to about 790MB/s on writes and 640MB/s on reads and mostly stay there. Random Testing – Variable Queue Depth Random performance is decent on the write side with IOPS hovering around 8000 at QD1 and climbing to around 27,500 at QD32, but reads don’t climb much with queue depth. Simultaneous mixed-use, made up of 70% read and 30% write is also held back by reads and tops out about 8000 IOPS CrystalDiskMark 7.0 “CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows measuring sequential and random read/write speeds." One nice thing to see here is that low queue-depth reads on the NM620 are not far behind higher queue-depth reads. Random performance is fairly strong as well. On the write side, things look even better with the NM620 able to stay above 1600MB/s in sequential with random QD1 4K performance hugging the 200MB/s mark. You’ll notice solid performance in typical day-to-day low queue depth usage scenarios. PCMark 10 Storage Test PCMark 10 introduces a set of four storage benchmarks that use relevant real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the latest modern drives. The Full System Drive Benchmark uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to fully test the performance of the fastest modern drives. The Data Drive Benchmark is designed to test drives that are used for storing files rather than applications. You can also use this test with NAS drives, USB sticks, memory cards, and other external storage devices. With a varying workload that mimics real-world activities a user might do on a computer, the NM620 edges out its NM610 companion at hits 307MB/s as a data drive, indicating decent performance in the real world. As an OS or system drive, performance falls a bit compared to the NM610 but still pulls a decent 225MB/s. ATTO Disk Benchmark ATTO gives us readings close to specified speeds with reads hitting 2.99GB/s, and around 2330MB/s on writes. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil’s overall score of 12,574 points is pretty decent for this class of drive though read and writes both come in about 500MB/s short of the specified speeds. Black Magic Disk Speed Test Disk Speed Test is an easy-to-use tool to quickly measure and certify your disk performance for working with high-quality video! Simply click the start button and Disk Speed Test will write test your disk using large blocks of data, and then display the result. Disk Speed Test will continue to test writes and reads from your disk so you can evaluate both performance and readability over time. One of the biggest needs for fast storage is video editing, and Lexar’s NM620 is well up to the task with it providing plenty of performance for dealing with the most common video formats. While Lexar’s NM620 provides a solid level of performance for real-world daily use for those that work and play. Queue Depth 1 random performance is a bit on the low side for a mid-tier drive which is going to represent your day-to-day desktop activities, but it makes up for it with solid sequential performance which is needed for getting things done. The NM620 runs nice and cool so even sustained workloads shouldn’t bother it much and if your given platform has an integrated heatsink, I don’t think you’ll ever be able to make it throttle. With a street price of around $66 for the 512GB model on sale right now, its pricing vs capacity and performance level makes it a steal. The larger 1TB model is a touch faster and lands at $120 on sale. NM620 1TB $119.99 : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V1647LL/ NM620 512GB $64.99 : https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08V1MWQQR/ Good Job Lexar.

Lexar NM620 M.2 512GB SSD Review

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