ADATA XPG SX900 128GB SSD Review

Inside The ADATA XPG SX900

Four rather long screws is all it takes to get inside once the void sticker is violated.

Once inside, the PCB is removed without benefit of further removal of tabs or screws.

The first side of the PCB features two rows of NAND with eight total modules on this side.

A closer inspection shows very little additional information as there’s not branding or part numbers to clue us in as to the type and manufacture of the NAND. This is unusual but we can be pretty sure that it’s 2xnm in architecture as nearly all of the new drives being released are using this. Based on performance, we’ll also take a stab and say this is synchronous NAND which is faster than asynchronous.

Flipping it over, we find no additional flash chips although there are dedicated placements for them which would be populated in a larger capacity drive. No cache chip is present either which is the norm for a SandForce controlled drive. The controller is really the only major feature here.

Once again we find ourselves looking upon the ever popular SandForce (LSI) SF-2281 SSD controller which nearly everyone that has been even remotely following SSDs should be familiar with. Employing real time compression technology, they are essentially able to turbocharge writes and post some impressive numbers. We also know that it does a nice job at wear-leveling, encryption and supports TRIM as well as idle garbage collection. There’s a good reason why this controller shows up in drives from nearly every manufacturer – it’s a solid performer. However, it’s stumbled a few times and most recently there is some controversy regarding TRIM and certain revisions of firmware which we’ll discuss at the end of the article.