Spatium M480 Play: MSI SSD becomes flatter and 4TB for the PS5

MSI, as a youngster in the SSD business, expands the Spatium series with an M.2 model with a flat heatsink that also fits in the PlayStation 5. The new Spatium M480 Play is announced to have the same performance as the M480 previous. In the first tests, however, it is faster.

At Computex last year, MSI presented its debut SSD with numerous models as per previous indications. The spearhead was the Spatium M480 series with up to 7,000 MB/s and 650,000 IOPS in reading and 6,800 MB/s and 700,000 IOPS in writing. Initially offered as a “naked” M.2 module, the M480 followed in October with a conspicuous and around 2cm tall heatsink.

Play like PlayStation

Now the Spatium M480 Play is another variant for the higher performance class with PCIe 4.0 x4. With the significantly flatter design heatsink, in which the SSD is only 10.7 mm high, the SSD fits like a memory expansion in the PlayStation 5. The manufacturer is also focusing on exactly this feature during the presentation.

While MSI advertises the M480 Play with the same performance figures of up to 7,000 MB/s read and 6,800 MB/s write, it reduces in first tests even better. At least the test samples use Micron’s newer and faster 176-layer NAND, while the M480 was still equipped with 96-layer NAND at the time. That explains the increase in performance.

Brief confusion with key data

approximately of tweaktown However, when asked by ComputerBase, MSI did not officially confirm the published specifications, which state, among other things, 7,400 MB/s for reading and 7,000 MB/s for writing. The company’s response states that, although they are satisfied that the test reports measure higher performance, they only guarantee the values ​​specified on the packaging, which are at the level of the older sibling models.

Ultimately, however, this may also mean that the fast 176-layer NAND is not necessarily used. Due to the conservative performance specifications, the manufacturer has more freedom when it comes to memory configuration. However, the very powerful Phison E18 controller, which is listed in the data sheets, as well as the DDR4 cache, is configured.

4TB option is also new

The Spatium M480 Play is offered with storage capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB, 2 TB and 4 TB. This is another difference from the previous M480 series, which is only available with a maximum of 2TB. However, MSI has yet to announce any pricing.

With the Corsair MP600 Pro LPX (test), Corsair recently released a variant of the MP600 Pro XT (test) that was specially tailored for the PS5.