Nowadays, SATA base SSD are getting cheaper while more faster NVMe SSD are still quite expensive. Mostly, SATA SSD tops at 550Mb/s sequential read and 500 MB/s sequential write while NVMe SSD are operate at PCIe 3.0 x4 makes the read speeds significantly faster than any SATA offering. NVMe PCIe 3.0 x4 offer 3000Mb/s sequential read and 2500MB/s at five (x5) to six (x6) times what SATA SSD offer which also makes the price quite expensive even on smallest 128GB capacity.
This is why some manufacture such as LITEON comes with cheaper solution for their budget friendly NVMe SSD with MU X series. These MU X series SSDs operate using slightly slower PCIe 3.0 x2 which only at 1500MB/s sequential read and 450MB/s sequential write. but still three times (3x) faster than SATA base SSD.
1. UNBOXING MU X LITEON SSD
The package are simple. No manuals sheet or screw, only SSD its self warped in the plastic box with folded printed paper pad as product labels/cover with a little bit information printed the back. So you might want to get M.2 SSD screw separately.
This is M.2 types of SSD, means its using typical M.2 2280 form factor meaning they are 22mm wide and 80mm long.
2. THE COMPONENTS
LITEON use Toshiba BiCS 3D TLC flash and a relatively low-end Phison PS5008-E8 controller that supports NVMe 1.2. According to Anandtech, Phison sampled the controller to partners over the past year, and the MU X drives seem to be the first commercially available for purchase.
3. SIMPLE PERFORMANCE TEST
We using CristalDiskMark ver 5.5 for bechmarking software. For the test machine, we use Asus A411U powered with Intel 8th gen i5 8250U. We also covered how to upgrade this ASUS A411U + LITEON MU X SSD in our blog here.
As expected, The performance are similar to what LITEON claims. In our test we got 1506MB/s read and 460.4 MB/s write which we guess are very good result for PCIe 3.0 x2.
4. CONCLUSIONS
Lite-On’s MU X SSDs will be available in 128GB and 256GB configurations targeting inexpensive gaming and designer PCs or laptops that need something faster than conventional SATA SSDs, but cannot afford more advanced and expensive PCIe 3.0 x4 drives which we said earlier.
Here are full specification on the LITEON MU X website.
LiteOn MU X 128GB price : from $69 on Amazon
You may wondering other brands that have similar price and specification likes MU X series. Kingston A1000 series also offer affordable M.2 SSD with NVMe PCIe 3.0 x2, but the storage start with 240 GB capacity where MU X starts from more smaller 128 GB storage.
