Adata Legend 970 review: PCIe 5.0 speed and a fan-cooled heatsink

Price When Reviewed

1TB: $170 I 2TB: $300 | 4TB: $400

Best Prices Today: Adata Legend 970 NVMe SSD

Adata’s Legend 970 is the corporate’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD and it’s a wonderful total performer — taking the highest spot in our charts by a gnat’s eyebrow. It’s dear after all, and requires a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, however it ships with an precise fan-cooled heatsink and was barely cheaper than its efficiency rivals, the Crucial T700 and Seagate FireCuda 540 on the time of this writing.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best SSDs to find out about competing merchandise.

What are the Adata Legend 970’s specs and value?

Adata’s Legend 970 is a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD that leverages a Phison PS5026 E26 controller, 1GB of DRAM per terabyte of storage, and 96-layer TLC NAND to offer top-tier on a regular basis efficiency.

It makes use of the usual 2280 (22mm vast, 80mm lengthy) type issue, but additionally sports activities an enormous heatsink to maintain it cool. It’s not the one NVMe SSD on the market bought with a gargantuan cooler, however so far as we all know, it’s the one one with a fan.

As you’ll be able to see above, the fan requires a separate energy supply, however the heatsink is so massive you may doubtless pound on the SSD with out the fan linked and nonetheless not expertise thermal throttling. Given satisfactory cooling in your rig, that’s.

One factor to contemplate on the subject of heatsinks normally, is the situation and orientation of your M.2 slot. It could not accommodate one. Our testbed is a little bit of an odd duck, however we’ve got to take away heatsinks to check SSDs. It’s straightforward to take away the Legend 970’s heatsink (4 tiny screws), however there’s little profit to a heatsink in case you don’t have the room, or have already got one in all your personal.

We didn’t spot the Legend 970 on the market with out a heatsink, however that could be an choice by the point your learn this. Save a few bucks in case you haven’t the necessity.

Alas, as talked about, on the time of this writing the Legend 970 was on the dear facet: $170 for 1TB and $300 for the 2TB taste. That’s nonetheless barely cheaper than the present 1TB Crucial T700 and Seagate FireCuda 540.

But it’s additionally far pricier than good-performing host reminiscence bus (HMB) SSDs such because the Lexar NM790. Note that DRAM accelerates random efficiency so HMB DRAM-less drives is not going to run your OS as fast as one thing just like the Legend 970. That mentioned, NVMe is so quick, you may not discover the distinction.

Adata covers the Legend 970 with a five-year guarantee, and a 700TBW (terabytes that could be written) per TB of capability ranking — whichever comes first. That TBW is a hair above common, however lower than the Seagate FireCuda 540’s 1,000TBW.

How quick is the Legend 970?

The Legend 970 turned in CrystalDiskMark 8 numbers that left it shy of solely the Crucial T700. In AS SSD 2 it was once more slower than solely the T700 and the Gigabyte Aorus Gen5 10,000.

Where it caught as much as these worthy contenders to take the highest spot was in our 48GB transfers and the 450GB write, the place it established a brand new report of solely 142 seconds.

There was no matching the Crucial T700’s multi-queue sequential efficiency (proven above), however the Legend 970 was shut in single queue efficiency, and most software program makes use of solely a single queue.

The Legend 970 was additionally solely a hair off the tempo set by the primary Crucial T700 in CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K exams.

The Seagate FireCuda 540 is the quickest SSD we’ve examined on the 48GB transfers, however the Legend 970 isn’t any slouch and was sooner than the mighty Crucial T700 by this measure.

Note that a number of of the quickest drives on this take a look at, such because the Solidigm P44 Pro, have been way more inexpensive PCIe 4.0 host reminiscence bus drives.

As famous, it was the 450GB write the place the Legend 970 actually made hay. However, this take a look at is designed to point out the native write price, i.e., how briskly knowledge is written to the NAND with out treating a portion of it as SLC. It just isn’t a job that customers will carry out fairly often, so we weight it half of the opposite exams.

Jon L. Jacobi

Should I purchase the Adata Legend 970?

As quick as, or sooner than, in some ways, the Crucial T700 and Seagate FireCuda 540, the Legend 970 can also be a bit cheaper. Throw within the beneficiant TBW ranking and guarantee, and you’ve got your self a winner. Yes, you can purchase it if you’d like glorious total efficiency.

How we take a look at

Internal drive exams at present make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit operating on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence whole). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking over 58GB of the 64GB of whole reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a 2TB Samsung 990 Pro which additionally runs the OS.

Each take a look at is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency could lower attributable to much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components. This is much less of an element with the present crop of SSDs with their far sooner NAND.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we had been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can differ by capability attributable to extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND out there for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap elements. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.