After recently laying claim to the fastest overclocked memory frequency with its Spectrix D60G RGB DDR4 RAM, hitting an insane 5,738MHz, Adata is keeping the pedal to the metal with a new solid state drive that may hold another record—fastest consumer SSD with RGB lighting, in the M.2 form factor.
Adata's new XPG Spectrix S40G RGB is an M.2 NVMe SSD, meaning it's one of those drives that is shaped like a stick of gum and plugs directly into your motherboard (M.2 2280 form factor). The NVMe interface enables much faster speeds than SATA-based SSDs by shuttling data through the PCIe bus, which in this case translates to rated sequential read and write speeds of up to 3,500MB/s and 3,000MB/s, respectively.
I haven't scoured the web far and wide, but a cursory glance on Newegg reveals that this is quite possibly the fastest RGB SSD on the planet, at least in the M.2 space. The vast majority of SSDs with RGB lighting are much slower SATA models.
It seems that M.2 SSDs with RGB lighting is a largely untapped market, which I find surprising, given the industry's obsession with RGB. There is at least one PCIe model with RGB lighting, Gigabyte's Aorus AIC (add-in card), which has slightly slower rated reads (3,480MB/s) but faster writes (3,080MB/s).
Omitting add-in cards, Gigabyte also offers an M.2 RGB SSD, but the rated read speed is still slower (3,480MB/s) and the rated write speed trails further behind (2,000MB/s). Those are still fast in and of themselves, but Adata's new SSD is the speedier option, at least on paper. We haven't tested the new drive.
For what it's worth, the lighting is more robust on Adata's drive. The lighting runs the length of both sides and is configurable.
RGB lighting aside, the Spectrix S40G is still one of the peppiest SSD lines. It's comparable to Samsung's 970 Evo Plus. Both are rated to read data at 3,500MB/s, while Samsung's drive kicks writes up a notch to 3,300MB/s.
As you might imagine, the added speed comes at a higher cost, compared to slower NVMe SSDs. Here's how it breaks down by capacity:
- Adata XPG Spectrix S40G RGB 1TB: $189.99 (~$0.19 per gigabyte)
- Adata XPG Spectrix S40G RGB 512GB: $99.99 (~$0.19 per gigabyte)
- Adata XPG Spectrix S40G RGB 256GB: $69.99 (~$0.27 per gigabyte)
Adata is marketing these new drives at gamers, though there's not much to be gained versus slower SSDs, even SATA drives. A 1TB SATA SSD will set you back around $100, and if you want to step up to NVMe territory, 1TB models can be found for around $120 (like Mushkin's recently announced Helix-L).
That said, street pricing could end up being lower. The new drives are not yet available, but will be soon on Amazon and direct from Adata.
