ADATA IM2P33E8 2TB NVMe PCIe Gen3.0 x4 M.2 Commercial SSD Review

1. Introduction & Drive Details
2. SSD Toolbox
3. Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM & Anvils
4. Synthetic Benchmarks: AS SSD & ATTO
5. Real-World Testing: Transfer Rates & Gaming
6. Real-World Testing: PCMark 10 Storage Tests
7. Final Thoughts

TweakTown's Rating: 90%

The Bottom Line

The ADATA IM2P33E8 delivers impressive performance and endurance for a commercial/industrial SSD.

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Introduction & Drive Details

ADATA has one of the largest, if not the largest, SSD portfolios in the industry. This is because ADATA manufactures its own SSDs. Most purveyors of SSDs just select components and buy a finished product to resell. ADATA buys controllers and DRAM as complete components, but not the flash they use. ADATA is one of the few memory companies that buy flash by the wafer and packages it themselves.

In addition to packaging their own flash, ADATA builds its own SSDs in its own factories. This gives ADATA more design flexibility than most SSD retailers. With this in mind, it is no surprise that ADATA is heavily invested in commercial and industrial SSD and memory products because ADATA can custom build SSDs to withstand commercial and industrial use cases.

The SSD we have on the bench today is ADATA's newest commercial/industrial SSD, the IM2P33E8. The IM2P33E8 is a beefed-up version of ADATA's highly successful SX8200 Pro Gen3 NVMe SSD. In all capacities, the IM2P33E8 SSD houses a higher than normal grade of TLC flash, delivering a full 3K PE (Program/Erase) cycles or about double that of typical consumer-grade TLC flash.

ADATA's IM2P33E8 is available in capacities ranging from 256GB up to 2TB. There are two variants in capacities of 256GB to 1TB, commercial and industrial. The 2TB model we have on our test bench today is available in the commercial variant only. The difference between commercial and industrial, in this case, is the temperature rating. The commercial variants are rated for 0c to 70c operational temperatures. The industrial variants are rated for -45c to 85c operational temperatures.

To safeguard quality, compatibility, and reliability, ADATA uses a rigorous SSD validation process that encompasses performance testing and quality assurance to ensure IM2P33E8 SSDs meet the exacting requirements of industrial and commercial applications. In addition, the IM2P33E8 supports RAID Engine and End-to-End (E2E) Data Protection for data integrity and safety. For enhanced data security, the IM2P33E8 comes with AES 256-bit encryption and meets TCG Opal standard.

Drive Details

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We were unable to find pricing or endurance ratings for the IM2P33E8. We assume those will be provided on an individual basis when a company places an order. The next thing we notice is that the IM2P33E8 has a higher sequential write rating than its consumer sibling, the SX8200 Pro.

Jon's Test System Specifications

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair Hero VIII Wi-Fi (buy from Amazon)
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X (buy from Amazon)
• Cooler: Swiftech H2O-320 Edge AIO
• Memory: ADATA XPG Z1 DDR4 3800MHz 16GB (buy from Amazon)
• Video Card: Sapphire Radeon RX Vega 64 (buy from Amazon)
• Power Supply: Corsair AX1000 (buy from Amazon)
• Case: InWin X-Frame
• OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro 64-bit (buy from Amazon)

SSD Toolbox

ADATA SSD Toolbox

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As is the case with all ADATA SSDs, the IM2P33E8 is compatible with ADATA's full feature SSD toolbox. The toolbox provides the user with an extensive suite of essential tools to monitor and maintain ADATA SSDs.

Synthetic Benchmarks: CDM & Anvils

CrystalDiskMark

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Excellent sequential and QD1 random numbers. Most impressive is the drive's sequential write speed of 3,334 MB/s as it is the highest for a Gen3 SSD we've seen to date. We are also impressed with drive's 4K QD1 read performance of 75.05 MB/s, which is the second best we've seen from a 2TB flash-based SSD.

Anvil's Storage Utilities

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The IM2P33E8 exceeds our 6,000-point threshold for the total read score, which is good to see. The total score is in-line with what we expect to see from SMI 2262EN powered SSD.

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As this testing shows, the IM2P33E8 doesn't generate massive random numbers at high queue depths. This is fine with us because the drive does generate good numbers where it matters most; low queue depths.

Synthetic Benchmarks: AS SSD & ATTO

AS SSD

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Here again, scoring suffers somewhat because the SMI 2262EN doesn't generate high random numbers at high queue depths/thread counts.

ATTO

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Excellent sequential read performance at 128K transfers, which is what we are looking for when evaluating ATTO results.

Real-World Testing: Transfer Rates & Gaming

Transfer Rates

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Our write transfer is 100GB in size and composed of more than 62,000 files. With an average of 804MB/s, the IM2P33E8 is able to write our massive data block better than most.

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Reading back our data block is another story. Here we see the IM2P33E8 hovering near the bottom of our chart.

Game Level Loading

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SMI 2262-powered SSDs tend to be at the top of our charts when loading game levels, and the IM2P33E8 is no exception. Exceptional performance here, indicating that this commercial/industrial SSD would, in fact, make for an exceptional gaming SSD.

Real-World Testing: PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 Storage Test is the most advanced and most accurate real-world consumer storage test ever made. There are four different tests you can choose from; we run two of them. The Full System Drive Benchmark and the Quick System Drive Benchmark. The Full System Drive Benchmark writes 204 GB of data over the duration of the test. The Quick System Drive Benchmark writes 23 GB of data over the duration of the test. These tests directly correlate with user experience. Of the two tests, we feel that the Quick System Drive Test most accurately replicates a typical user experience.

PCMark 10 Full System Drive Benchmark

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We typically want to see a minimum of 300MB/s bandwidth, and the IM2P33E8 gives us that and then some. The IM2P33E8 handles this heavy workload exceptionally well. This doesn't come as any surprise considering the use case scenarios this SSD is intended to tackle.

PCMark 10 Quick System Drive Benchmark

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Here again, we are looking for a minimum of 300MB/s bandwidth, but this time we do not get it. However, this is the one time we will not consider this result more important than the full test because the intended use case for the IM2P33E8 is industrial/commercial. The result is still a bit lower than we are looking for but still in what we consider an acceptable range.

Final Thoughts

ADATA's newest industrial/commercial SSD has reevaluated our opinion of this class of SSDs. Typically, when we think of "industrial" SSDs, lower performance goes hand in hand with increased durability and operating range - not so with ADATA's IM2P33E8 M.2 SSD. Overall, the drive exceeded expectations and additionally proved itself to be an excellent choice for consumer applications if you can get your hands-on one.

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When evaluating our user experience ranking, we are looking for a minimum score of 4K, and ADATA's IMP33E8 manages to deliver that and a bit more. This is what matters most in our opinion and makes this drive worthy of a TweakTown recommendation.

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Looking back at our test results, we can spot several results that make the IM2P33E8 stand out as an excellent performing SSD. First on the list is the drive's sequential write performance with CDM. It is the best we've seen for a Gen3 SSD.

Secondly, we were very impressed with the drive's write transfer performance, as illustrated by our DiskBench result. Right after that, and maybe the most impressive is how fast the IM2P33E8 loads game levels. Finally, we were impressed with the way the drive handled the heavy workloads generated by the PCMark 10 full system disk test.

With its overall strong performance, ADATA's IM2P33E8 2TB SSD has earned our silver recommended award.

Pros

• Heavy Workloads
• Capacity
• Endurance

Cons

• Light Workloads