Even though PCIe 5.0 SSDs are looming on the horizon, there’s still a vast market for current-generation PCIe 4.0 devices. With this in mind, Adata today announced its latest PCIe 4.0 SSD, the Legend 960. It should soon find itself competing with the best SSDs.
Adata says that the Legend 960 is designed for creators, but it would also be at home in your gaming rig, thanks to rated sequential read/write speeds of 7,400 MBps and 6,800 MBps, respectively. Most high-performance SSDs that we’ve seen released recently are getting close to maxing out the PCIe 4.0 interface, and the Legend 960 is no exception. 4K random reads/writes are spec’d for 750K and 630K IOPS, respectively. A Silicon Motion SM2264 controller runs the show, backed by SLC caching and a DRAM cache buffer. Adata claims an endurance rating of 1,560 terabytes written and a MTBF of 2 million hours while backing the SSD with a 5-year warranty.
It should be noted that while the Legend 960 will most likely find its way into PCs, it is also compatible with Sony’s PlayStation 5. Because of the SSD’s low-profile heatsink and performance that easily meets Sony’s minimum requirements, DIYers could pop in a Legend 960 to expand their storage for today’s best AAA games. However, Adata notes that maximum reads top out at 6,400 Mbps (instead of 7,400 MBps) when using the Legend 960 in a PlayStation 5. Be sure to check out our PlayStation 5 SSD guide.
The Adata Legend 960 should be available at retail locations in 1TB and 2TB capacities in the coming days. In addition, Adata confirms that a 4TB SKU is also in the works and will arrive later this month. Unfortunately, pricing isn’t available for any of the SKUs at this time.
Earlier this year at CES 2022, Adata showed off its next-generation PCIe 5.0 SSDs: Project Nighthawk, which will use a Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, and the InnoGrit IG5666-equipped Project Blackbird. Project Nighthawk promises sequential reads/write speeds of up to 14 GBps/12 GBps, while Project Blackbird is rated for 14 GBps/10 GBps. It’s also reported that the SSDs, which will be available in capacities up to 8TB, will see a 50 to 80 percent uplift in random IOPS over existing PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Of course you'll need either an Intel Alder Lake or AMD Zen 4 platform to get PCIe 5.0 support.
