ADATA has introduced a new lineup of PCIe SSDs aimed at the entry-level market. The XPG SX6000 Lite drives are based on the same controller as the XPG SX6000 Pro, however they're paired with cheaper NAND that lets ADATA price them a bit lower. The manufacturer touts the SSDs as high-performance alternatives to drives with a SATA interface.

Set to be available in 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1 TB configurations, ADATA’s XPG SX6000 Lite SSDs are based on Realtek’s RTS5763DL controller as well as 3D TLC NAND flash memory from an undisclosed manufacturer. The same controller is used for the XPG SX6000 Pro drives launched earlier this year, so the new SSDs are are NVMe 1.3 compatible, support a robust LDPC-based ECC and RAID engines, dynamic SLC caching, and AES-256 encryption. Meanwhile, less is know about the NAND being used, though ADATA's specificaitons make it clear that it'll be lower performing than the NAND used on the SX 6000 Pro. The resulting performance specifications are 1800 MB/s for sequential reads and 1200 MB/s for sequential writes.

ADATA XPG SX6000 Lite Specifications
Capacity 128 GB 256 GB 512 GB 1 TB
Model Number ASX6000LNP-128GT-C ASX6000LNP-256GT-C ASX6000LNP-512GT-C ASX6000LNP-1TT-C
Controller Realtek RTS5763DL
NAND Flash 3D TLC NAND
Form-Factor, Interface M.2-2280, PCIe 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3
Sequential Read 1800 MB/s
Sequential Write 600 MB/s 900 MB/s 1200 MB/s
Random Read IOPS 100K IOPS 100K IOPS 180K IOPS 220K IOPS
Random Write IOPS 130K IOPS 170K IOPS 200K IOPS
Pseudo-SLC Caching Supported
DRAM Buffer No
AES Encryption AES-256
Power Management Active: 0.33 W
Slumber: 0.14 W
Warranty 3 years
MTBF 1,800,000 hours
TBW 60 TB 120 TB 240 TB 480 TB
MSRP ? $65 $98 $178

ADATA’s SX6000 Lite SSDs will start to show up in retail in the coming weeks as the company ramps up their mass production. The entry-level 256 GB model will have an MSRP of $65 in the US, the mid-range 512 GB version will officially retail for $98, whereas the highest-capacity 1 TB flavor will carry a $178 recommended price tag. Though considering how volatile the market of SSDs is, I won't be surprised if we see these drives hit the street at prices tangibly lower than their official MSRPs.

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Source: ADATA

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  • wumpus - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    No DRAM? Psuedo-SLC caching is a good thing, but I really don't think it replaces DRAM. I'll certainly wait for a full review (even the "pro" model, assuming that still sells) before really considering this.

    I think it makes sense compared to SATA, but that depends on street prices. Without the DRAM I wouldn't really want to compare it to other NVMe boards.
  • Billy Tallis - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    If this supports the NVMe Host Memory Buffer feature, then that's an adequate substitute for on-board DRAM for an entry-level drive.
  • eek2121 - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    Looks to be a typo under TBW for the 512 GB model.
  • LukaP - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    Fairly sure there is also a typo in Sequential writes for 512G/1TB models
  • Dragonstongue - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    As long as their quality control is "very good" these seem like they would work quite well considering their price point and what is on the market currently.
  • CheapSushi - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    Not bad price wise.
  • rozquilla - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    I had the sibling ADATA XPG SX6000, it started to corrupt files before the 6 months mark, and never achieved the read speeds promised, much less the writes. I used it as boot drive (and personal data on a RAID1 of SSD) meanwhile prices dropped for a bigger/faster nvme. However, had to change to a WD Black before I hoped. I don't recommend this family of SX6000 drives.
  • Samus - Tuesday, December 18, 2018 - link

    I've actually had few ADATA drives last beyond their warranty. Which is ok for the most part since they are pretty easy to deal with for warranty. But my experience is they fail spectacularly by either locking\no BIOS detect, or corruption\partition missing. Every failure has resulted in total data loss. Not a huge problem since these are machines that have daily backups but...downtime.
  • gglaw - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    I generally try to not make conclusions based on personal experience with a single model unless I've used a ton of them as my standard company builds, but even if these were very reliable and you just had a case of random bad luck, Adata's pricing structure makes no sense. Their entry level M.2 drives are way too close to the 8200 series which is amazing for the price and seems to be on a constant rotation of sales between Newegg, Rakuten, Amazon. I have not seen it at full MSRP in several months and it has stellar tech site reviews as well as customer reviews from every major vendor. For the last year or so, it's basically the only SSD I've used in quite a few builds for the office and family. Well either the Adata 8200 or the HP 920 clone whichever is cheaper at the time. Unless getting the lowest prices possible for a super budget build, you can get low end SATA 240GB drives for $30 which is a substantial savings, but anything above this is too close to the Adata 8200/HP 920 to justify saving a few bucks.

    During BF I stocked up on a stack of the Adata XPG 8200 drives for around $75-$80 for 500GB model, and another stack of AData SU650 240GB drives for $28 each. Every midgrade build and up will use the 8200, and all the budget ones will use the SU650 to meet each price point. Nothing else released yet has been exciting enough for me to replace these trends yet.
  • Samus - Wednesday, December 19, 2018 - link

    That said, it's still safe to assume reliability based on a number of stats: OEM design wins, long term reputation, sourcing, support, feedback.

    ADATA has none of those going for them. They have, however, improved their reputation and reliability from what it was. At one point they were on par with OCZ. Look at the historical data of the SP500 series, and even the recent SU600 series. They have incredibly high failure rates. And unlike Samsung and Crucial, when they fail they fail hard, without warning. This shows incredibly poor firmware management in regard to power loss, bad block allocation, wear leveling, etc.

    I like competition, but seriously it's really hard to consider SSD's from vendors outside of Tier 1: WD, Samsung, Micron\Crucial, Sandisk, Toshiba, perhaps Seagate, and of course Intel (who admittedly has had some real duds in their portfolio recently)

    I'd throw ADATA in that pile of anomaly's that are PNY, Kingston, Patriot, Mushkin, OWC and Teamgroup, where they are all reference designs running nearly identical firmware (because none of these companies has the resources or clout to actually customize firmware) using off the shelf components, controlled entirely by 3rd party's.

    This is your data, why risk it.

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