Lexar NM790 with Heatsink 4TB SSD Review

Lexar's NM790 comes in a black and silver finished box with a clear image of the drive on the front. Above the image and to the right, the drive's name is printed in silver which makes it stand out. Below the image of the drive is the Sequential read speed rating and to the right of this is a sticker highlighting the 4TB capacity.

The rear of the box has a narrow clear plastic window to display the drive above which are multi-lingual instructions to find additional warranty and drive information. To the left-hand side of the window, there are yet more multilingual notes, this time talking about the drives speed rating.

Lexar's NM790 with Heatsink drive is built on a single-sided M.2 2280 format. The heatsink adds 2mm to the width of the standard drive and around 7mm to the height.

Being a single-sided design, all the major components sit on one side of the PCB. Nearest the interface is the Maxiotech MAP1602A controller and then there are four packages of 232-Layer 3D TLC NAND (coded Longsys RY18TAA48421024). As the MAP1602A is a DRAM-less design that is pretty much it for the major components on the PCB.

Maxiotech's MAP1602A is a 4-channel controller built on a 12nm TSMC process with ARM Cortex-R5 architecture. Unlike many other DRAM-less design the 1602A uses a 2400 MT/s interface speed. The controller supports up to 4TB of TLC 3D MLC/TLC/QLC NAND and uses MAXIO Agile ECC 3 Technology for error correction.

The heatsink comes in two pieces. The drive (with its heat spreader top label) sits sandwiched between two thermal pads that run pretty much the whole length of the heatsink. The top heatsink part is connected to the support cradle by four very small screws.

Lexar’s SSD management utility is called SSD Dash. It’s not as fully featured or flashy as some of its competitors, but it does offer all the basic information you might need to keep an eye on your drive in an easy-to-understand way, plus supporting Secure Erase and data migration functions.

Become a Patron!