By: Jonathan Kwan
August 23, 2019
A few weeks ago, I was selling something on a popular local classifieds website. Since I live very close to a Starbucks, I typically meet people there and do not leave the house until I get a message from the them that they have arrived. Things were going routinely until I got the message this time around. As I walked down to the basement to grab the product I was selling, I realized I actually did not have it. In fact, according to my records, I sold the product two months ago and totally forgot about it. Since the guy already arrived, I owed up to my mistake and offered to sell him a similar product at a steep discount. The person agreed, and he even offered to buy a few other things I have listed as well. In the meantime, he tried to lowball me on the other products to which I declined, and we settled on talking in person instead. Now for those who know me, one of the things I love doing is learning the art of negotiating. Even though I do not care that much about a few dollars here and there, I love experimenting with new techniques and I decided this would be an excellent opportunity to benchmark my skills. My goal was to try to get every dollar he had in his pocket while selling as few things as possible, and in the end, I literally got everything dollar he had in his wallet for only half the stuff I had on hand. If this story tells you anything, we have to strategize to make the most out of what we have. Using PCI Express for storage is not new, but in order to take every corner of the market, Gigabyte decided to revive an old trick. The AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB, as its name suggests, is an add-in card that plugs directly into your PCI Express slot on your computer and offers additional features like a massive heatsink and RGB. Electrically, it is the same as any NVMe SSD. Will the different form factor make all the difference? Read on to find out!
Our review unit of the Gigabyte AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB arrived in a medium-sized brown corrugated cardboard shipping box from the company's American headquarters in City of Industry, California, USA. It came alongside the AORUS M2 optical mouse, which Jadon Lee reviewed about a month ago. Using FedEx International Ground, the package arrived on our doorstep here in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in excellent condition for our review today.
Although I have reviewed tons of products from Gigabyte before, the AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB's retail packaging is a departure from what I am used to. The simple packaging is very classy and, in some ways, quite Apple-esque; all you will get is a black box with the AORUS logo in the middle and model name across the bottom. Both the logo and the model name are printed in reflective silver. Features and specifications can be found in various languages at the back of the box. I am a big fan of this super simple design and it is a rare sight from a computer components manufacturer.
Before we move on, let us take a look at the specifications of the Gigabyte AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB, as obtained from the manufacturer's website:
Interface: PCI-Express 3.0 x4, NVMe 1.3
Form Factor: PCl Express Card
Total Capacity: 512GB
Warranty: Limited 5-years or 800TBW
NAND: 3D TLC Toshiba BiCS3
External DDR Cache: 512MB
Sequential Read speed: Up to 3480 MB/s
Sequential Write speed: Up to 2100 MB/s
Random Read IOPS: up to 360K
Random Write IOPS: up to 510K
Mean time between failure (MTBF): 1.8 million hours
Power Consumption (Active): Average: R: 5.9W; W: 4.6W
Power Consumption (Idle): 485mW
Temperature (Operating): 0°C to 70°C
Temperature (Storage): -40°C to 85°C
Sliding out the paper wrapper and opening the rigid box reveals the Gigabyte AORUS RGB AIC NVMe SSD 512GB itself placed on a black foam tray. Underneath the foam tray is a warranty guide. This is it -- out of the box, you will get nothing more than what you need; not even a set of screws or an anti-static bag. Not that we need them anyway, of course.
Page Index
1. Introduction, Packaging, Specifications
2. A Closer Look, Test System
3. Benchmark: AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
4. Benchmark: ATTO Disk Benchmark
5. Benchmark: Crystal Disk Mark 6.0
6. Benchmark: HD Tach 3.0.1.0
7. Benchmark: HD Tune Pro 5.70
8. Benchmark: PassMark PerformanceTest 9.0
9. Benchmark: PCMark 7
10. Benchmark: PCMark 8
11. Conclusion
