The GIGABYTE Aorus RGB M.2 SSD Review: Nothing Is Too Small For RGB LEDs
by Billy Tallis on April 10, 2019 8:00 AM ESTAnandTech Storage Bench - Light
Our Light storage test has relatively more sequential accesses and lower queue depths than The Destroyer or the Heavy test, and it's by far the shortest test overall. It's based largely on applications that aren't highly dependent on storage performance, so this is a test more of application launch times and file load times. This test can be seen as the sum of all the little delays in daily usage, but with the idle times trimmed to 25ms it takes less than half an hour to run. Details of the Light test can be found here. As with the ATSB Heavy test, this test is run with the drive both freshly erased and empty, and after filling the drive with sequential writes.
The average data rates from the GIGABYTE Aorus RGB SSDs on the Light test are close to other high-end NVMe SSDs, but the Aorus is definitely at the bottom of that product segment. There's a big gap between the Aorus drives and the tier of entry-level NVMe SSDs.
The average and 99th percentile latencies from the Aorus SSDs during the Light test are mostly too small to be of any concern, but they do still serve to show how the smaller models struggle more with full-drive performance than the 1TB Phison E12 drive included for comparison.
Average read and write latencies for the Aorus SSDs during the Light test trail behind the scores for the Samsung drives, and on the read side the ADATA SX8200 also comes out ahead, but these average latencies are too low to cause problems.
The ADATA SX8200 beats the Aorus SSDs for 99th percentile read latency, but for writes they trade places. Samsung's QoS beat either vendor.
The energy usage by the Aorus SSDs during the Light test is again a bit worse for the Aorus drives than for the 1TB Silicon Power P34A80, but given the LEDs that only the Aorus has, this result is quite welcome.
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austinsguitar - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
conclusion: its actually pretty good.Flunk - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
At this point I think I'd pay a bit extra to NOT have non-functional LEDs on my computer hardware.FreckledTrout - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
I like the idea of LED's but hate the cute way most get implemented. Vendors could make them all functional with a little effort. Change colors due to CPU temps, backlight ports and even change color on said back light when something gets plugged in. Color code audio ports with light. Im sure Im missing some. I actually don't mind being able to see into my case to check for dust bunnies or make sure fans are spinning without opening the case up.CheapSushi - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Or allow them to be Activity LEDs. :( None of the software implementations seem to allow this.CheapSushi - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
You have practically hundreds of SSD choices. Stop whining.Thud2 - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Sorry, a bit off topic but seems the perfect place to ask. What is that below the eagles head? An arm? A huge jaw?Hxx - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
good question. All i can tell u is that its derived from Horus (ancient Egypt). I know bc Gigabyte mentioned it in one of their early vidz. As far as what that thing is, likely a jaw resembling letter G, i dont believe its in arm.andychow - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
The eagle is shaking his fist. Aorus (Horus) is a man with an eagle head, that's why he has arms and not wings. And he's shaking his fist because he's a bad-ass.philehidiot - Wednesday, April 10, 2019 - link
Yeh what Andychow said. Horus with the fist and bicep. He's such a badass that he's now stopped battling Set but is sponsoring SSDs instead. Because.... badass.Duwelon - Thursday, April 11, 2019 - link
An arm. Specifically,. a well-toned right arm, ready to go. Does Gigabyte know the types of people that want RBG on their M.2 drives or what?