OWC Accelsior 8M2 4TB PCIe RAID Card - 26 GB/s on the cheap

TweakTown's Rating: 98%

The Bottom Line

26 GB/s for $1,699 makes the 4TB Accelsior 8M2 a must have for content creators.

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Introduction & Drive Details

Having already tested a couple of similar ultra-high capacity PEX switched RAID card devices, we jumped on the opportunity when OWC offered to send over its similarly configured/spec'd Accelsior 8M2. Based on previous experience, we were expecting a card with eight M.2 NVMe SSDs totaling 32TB or 64TB capable of up to 26,000 MB/s throughput. After all, OWC calls it the world's fastest and highest-capacity PCIe SSD.

So, we were admittedly a bit surprised to find a package containing a 4TB Accelsior 8M2. 4TB? Little did we know OWC makes its Accelsior 8M2 Gen4 RAID card SSD in capacities ranging from 2TB up to 64TB, all with eight M.2 SSDs and all capable of up to 26,000 MB/s throughput. Hey, wait a minute, this is great news for the average man. What this means is 26,000 MB/s throughput can be had for as little as $1,299 thanks to OWC's know-how. Amazing. You, too, can play 16 streams of 8K video via the OWC Accelsior 8M2, as demonstrated by this video:

The Accelsior 8M2 is built on OWC's PCIe Gen4 x16 RAID card featuring a Broadcom PCIe Gen4 eight series PEX switch managing eight onboard M.2 slots. The card requires additional power via a 6-pin VGA power cable. The SSDs and PEX switch are cooled by a heavy-duty solid aluminum and copper heat sink with thermal pads and active cooling. This single-slot card is about the length of a high-end graphics card.

The card can be purchased without SSDs for $799. With SSDs, pricing ranges from $1,299 for 2TB on up to $12,999 for 64TB. The card comes with a key for OWC's proprietary SoftRAID utility, making it as easy as a few clicks to create, monitor, and manage RAID arrays.

Drive Details

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Jon's AMD Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VIII Wi-Fi - Buy from Amazon
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 5900X - Buy from Amazon
• Cooler: Alphacool Eissturm Hurricane Copper 45 - Buy from Amazon
• RAM: Corsair Dominator Platinum RGB 32GB (2x16GB) DDR4 4000 - Buy from Amazon
• Video Card: GIGABYTE GeForce RTX 2070 WINDFORCE 8G - Buy from Amazon
• Case: PrimoChill's Praxis Wetbench - Buy from Amazon
• Power Supply: Corsair AX1000 - Buy from Amazon
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit - Buy from Amazon

OWC Accelsior 8M2 4TB (OWCSSDACL8M204T)

	Today	Yesterday	7 days ago	30 days ago
	$849.99	$849.99	$849.99	$849.99	Buy
* Prices last scanned on 10/22/2024 at 1:52 pm CDT - prices may not be accurate, click links above for the latest price. We may earn an affiliate commission from any sales.

OWC SoftRAID

OWC has a proprietary RAID utility called SoftRAID to create and manage RAID arrays on its RAID-capable products. This is what we used to create the powerful RAID 0 arrays we used for this review. You can see what SoftRAID can do here.

We will note that the Accelsior 8M2 can be configured as bootable if desired, but we don't recommend it be used as a boot volume.

The Accelsior 8M2 can be configured in various RAID configurations, including RAID 10 for MAC. For this review, we choose RAID 0 with a 512K stripe size to enable peak performance. Our NTFS formatted RAID 0 volume yields 3.5TB available to the user.

Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM, Anvil, ATTO, Blackmagic, AJA

CrystalDiskMark

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Not quite 26,000 MB/s with this test, but rest assured, we will get there with another test. Nevertheless, mind-blowing throughput, especially considering the small-cap Gen3 SSDs populating the card. The magic of this card is on display as 16 lanes of Gen3 would typically top out at about 14,000 MB/s max.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

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As we've seen from previous PEX switched cards, sequential speeds are done as RAID 0, while random performance is the same as we get from a single drive. For its intended use spectrum, sequential throughput is all that matters.

ATTO

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And there we have it, more than 26,000 MB/s throughput. 25.97 GB/s = 26,593 MB/s. It's just mind-blowing that this kind of throughput is possible with a 4TB array. Like we said, 26 GB/s on the cheap. Amazing.

Blackmagic Disk Speed

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OWC markets its Accelsior 8M2 at content creators, and for many of them, Blackmagic is the standard benchmark used to determine storage efficacy. As you can see, this baby can easily handle any video content that may be thrown in its direction.

AJA Disk Test

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We like AJA for testing SSDs that are geared toward content creation because it tests with various video codecs of various file sizes. We chose Canon 4K RAW at a 64GB file size. We are showing both MB/s and FPS results. With results like this, it's no wonder the Accelsior 8M2 is targeted for professional video processing applications.

Real-World Testing: TransfersPCM10

Transfer Rates

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These write transfer rates might seem a little slow, but they are actually by far the best we've obtained from a flash-based storage device arrayed with Gen3 SSDs. Our 100GB data transfer is composed of more than 62,000 files of random types of data, making it very hard to swallow for any storage device.

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Our read transfer file is more to the Accelsior's liking because it is a single Zip file. 6,483 MB/s to the host is fast as hell, especially for a single thread.

PCMark 10 Data Drive Benchmark

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Due to the random data nature of this test, it is a bit outside the wheelhouse of what the Accelsior 8M2 is intended for; however, it does give us some insight as to how it would function as a typical consumer data drive. How does it do? Outstanding.

Final Thoughts

So, even though we received a 4TB SSD when we were expecting it to be 32-64TB, we are glad it turned out this way. We had no idea that an SSD with up to 26,000 MB/s throughput could be had for a mere $1,699. This is fantastic as we see it because OWC has enabled professional performance of this nature to be within reach for small startups or even the guy creating content from a home office PC.

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The Accelsior 8M2 does what it is intended to do with near perfection. It is plug and play, requiring no drivers to get it running. Add OWC's exclusive SoftRAID utility into the mix, and you have a legit professional RAID disk that is among the best in the world, and as such, it has earned our highest award.