Apacer AS2280F4 PCIe Gen5 1TB M.2 SSD Review

Apacer is a leading name for high-performance storage and memory, and now with the release of their new PCIe Gen5 x4 M.2 SSD, they look set to prove once again that they can deliver extreme performance for the professional and enthusiast market. The Apacer AS2280F4 promises blistering speeds of up to 12,000 MB/s sequential reads and up to 11,800 MB/s sequential writes, making it one of the fastest drives on the market today, and it's sure to appeal to content creators and gamers around the world. With its custom aluminium fin heatsink and mini cooling fan, taming the high temperatures that come with these flagship Gen5 drives should be easy work, ensuring this extremely fast drive can maintain those speeds without thermal throttling. Of course, that's something we'll be putting to the test in today's review! Features Fully compliant with NVMe 2.0 & PCIe Gen5 x4 Extreme read/write speeds of up to 12,000MB/s and 11,800MB/s Features an active cooling system custom-designed for Gen5 SSDs, realizing a remarkable temperature decrease of up to 25%. Wide range of storage capacities, up to 4TB Features SLC caching, advanced wear levelling, and auto-error correction 5-year global warranty Specifications Packaging & Accessories The box is nice and vibrant, with a large photo of the drives on the front, mostly showing the unique heatsink design, and that it is the 1TB version; there's also a 2TB and 4TB model being made available. Around the back, there's just a breakdown of the warranty, a QR code, and a serial number, but nothing of much interest. The drive comes well protected in a clamshell insert, with the drive, cooler and documentation all carefully packaged next to each other. A Closer Look The drive comes with an optional heatsink but doesn't come pre-installed. This is good, as if you have a high-end cooler of your own, or a good one included on your motherboard, you can simply use that instead. It's also a standard 2280 M.2 form factor, so there's no reason why it wouldn't fit in most laptops/notebooks or consoles such as the PlayStation 5. The drive uses the popular Phison E26 controller, which offers a range of stability and reliability features to this drive. The AS2280F4 has built-in data security and error-correction capabilities, SLC caching, built-in wear levelling, and automatic error correction. Using the latest SK Hynix ICs, and the Phison controller, it's no wonder this drive can deliver up to 12000MB/s read speeds, however, while its operating temperatures are 0 to 70c, I'd bet this drive would hit over 100c without any form of cooling, so I do not suggest running it without a heatsink, especially since it comes with one already bundled in the box. The included cooler is pretty chunky but comes with a clip-over design using a metal backplate to hold the aluminium block and fan over the top. There are two thermal pads included too, ensuring the back and front of the PCB make good contact with the cooling surface. The fan may look small, but it's appropriate to the size of the heatsink without causing conflict with your CPU socket, PCIe lanes and other hardware. Apacer says this heatsink design can deliver up to 25% temperature reduction, albeit they don't say in comparison to what, but I don't doubt it'll make things perform better in general. Overall, this is a neat-looking package, and to think how small it is and the level of performance these little drives can deliver is pretty mind-boggling! The cooler is simple enough to configure though, with a PWM header it can be hooked up to your motherboard easily enough. So, with that out of the way, let's get to testing! Preparation The drive will be formatted as NTFS with default settings, as most users will do. The quick format option isn’t used as that might affect the performance the first time data is written. Modern operating systems all take care of the TRIM command in the background and it isn’t something to worry about for regular users. However, for these reviews, I will add a waiting period between each benchmark to make sure that the TRIM command has been fully executed and finished. After all, we want a clear picture of the drive’s performance with minimal interference from the operating system. Data We will start with a typical benchmark analysis of the formatted drive with various fillage scenarios. However, depending on how a drive is built, the performance may differ depending on how much data it is already storing. The drive will be tested empty and at 25%, 50%, and 75% space usage for this area. We’re using Anvil’s Storage Utilities and CrystalDiskMark for this part of the review. Hardware Processor: Intel Core i9 12900K Graphics Card: XFX Speedster RX 6800 XT MERC Motherboard: ROG MAXIMUS X690 EXTREME RAM: Corsair Vengeance DDR5 5200Mhz 32GB(2x16GB) Storage: Seagate FireCuda 530 PCIe Gen 4 2TB M.2 (Primary Drive) Power Supply: NZXT C1000 Gold Case: NZXT H7 Flow Cooling: NZXT Kraken Z73 RGB Software CrystalDiskMark Anvil’s Storage Utilities ATTO Benchmark Windows 11 64-bit The drive is rated for read/write speeds of up to 12,000MB/s and 11,800MB/s, but that's absolutely best case scenario, and the read speeds got extremely close to that, but the write speeds were coming in a little over 9500 MB/s, which is still extremely fast, but I was hoping to push that a little further. IOPS are fantastic though, with around 250,000 read IOPS in the RND4K test. One of the highest scores we've ever had for Anvil, coming in at 27,704, and seeing 13,000 MB/s read in the 128K read test. The drive was a little slower getting to its maximum read speed, albeit as it's so damn fast, the read has completed before its had time to get up to full speed! But it hit its stride at around 2MB. However, write speeds got to full speed from around 64-128KB test runs. Again, very fast in AS SSD, showing extremely fast access times and a strong overall score. This is reflected in the IOPS yet again, with incredibly high scores throughout all the tests. Response times from the drive are impressive, showing fast loading times for ISO, programs and gaming loads. AJA is a great test for those planning to record high-resolution footage to the drive, and since I've seen drives 1/4 as fast pass this test with flying colours, these speeds are clearly more than fast enough. The compression test was great, showing consistent read speeds throughout, and only two drops in the write speed, likely caused by the CPU bottleneck, but the drive was nearly instantly back to full speed when the compression was ready to be written. With a score of 15977, Final Fantasy XIV scored an "extremely high" rating, but I think that was to be expected. This drive is rated to operate at its best up to 70c, and clearly, that premium heatsink and fan combo is doing its job, as the drive never exceeded 66c under sustained heavy loads. How Much Does it Cost? Unfortunately, at the time of writing, I couldn't find the UK stock of this drive, but you can check Amazon for up-to-date stock and prices here. However, I can see it for sale in the US at NEWEGG, with the 1TB model I tested today listed for $299.99 and the 2TB for $499.99. Obviously, that's not cheap, but keep in mind, that this is one of the fastest drives on the market, so you get what you pay for. Overview Apacer is well known for its high-end hardware, and its latest SSD is certainly no exception. It promised big read and write speeds, and it certainly delivered on both fronts. However, while we got closer to the theoretical read speeds than we did the write, both were still exceptionally fast. Why we didn't reach the full write speed, I'm uncertain, but it can be any number of factors, but is not something I'm overly concerned about as it's quite common to be hard to hit the peak speeds given by brands in all be the most perfect testing scenarios. This drive comes with its own premium heatsink with an active PWM-controlled fan, and while it may not look like much, it's more than powerful enough to keep this drive running at its absolute best. An uncooled M.2 Gen5 drive can quickly exceed 100c under heavy load. When this happens, the drive performance is throttled to bring temperatures back down, which is far from ideal. However, the heatsink ensured the drive never exceeded 66c, meaning it performed flawlessly even after multiple stressful benchmark runs. It's also quite an attractive drive, I like the heatsink design and think the little fan looks cool too. Plus, the fan is pretty small and very quiet, so by the time you install this into your PC case, I doubt you'll ever hear the fan over the noise of any other single fan in your system. With the latest NVMe 2.0 and PCIe Gen5 x4 interface, you will need a fairly modern motherboard to support it, and even then, a strong CPU and RAM configuration to really make the most of it too. While an SSD can be a quick upgrade to an older system, these Gen5 drives demand a fast PC to get the full benefit of them, but that's hardly surprising given how much these drives still cost. Fully compliant with NVMe 2.0 & PCIe Gen5 x4 Extreme read/write speeds of up to 12,000MB/s and 11,800MB/s Features an active cooling system custom-designed for Gen5 SSDs, realizing a remarkable temperature decrease of up to 25%. Wide range of storage capacities, up to 4TB Features SLC caching, advanced wear levelling, and auto-error correction 5-year global warranty Should I Buy One? Apacer has built a very fast drive with the Apacer AS2280F4 PCIe Gen5 1TB M.2 SSD, and with SLC caching, advanced wear levelling, and auto-error correction, its premium cooling solution, top-quality components and Phison controller, and a 5-year global warranty, you can push it to its limits with peace of mind. It may not be a cheap drive, but if you want fast and reliable performance, you won't be disappointed.