What sets this SSD apart from other solid state drives on the market is that it uses memory BiCS FLASH TLC, a type of vertically stacked three-dimensional memory that allows not only to increase the density, but also to reduce the size of the chips. It is currently produced in 96 layers, and according to KIOXIA this allows for greater speed, more reliability and lower consumption than what we are used to in this field of SSDs on the current market.
In terms of durability, KIOXIA has sent us the 2TB capacity model, which has 800TBW and 5 years warranty. This means that we could be writing about 438 GB per day every day for 5 years before exhausting its durability, but considering that, on average, a gaming PC writes 30 GB per day, it means that a KIOXIA Exceria Pro has an average life expectancy of just over 60 years, which means that you will sooner change your PC than your SSD.
Unboxing and external analysis
This KIOXIA SSD is packed in a soft black cardboard box, on the main face of which we can see an image of the product and its main characteristics summarized.
On the back we have a brief explanation of the asterisks that we find on the front face (as in the capacity of 2 TB and in the 7,300 MB/s of reading), as well as the identification label of the product. The interface, the form factor and its 5-year warranty also stand out here.
Inside, we have a couple of pamphlets: one with a guide not on how to install the SSD, but how to remove it from its packaging without damaging it, as well as the usual quick guide pamphlet.
The SSD is encased in a transparent plastic protection, thus preventing it from being damaged even if its outer case is hit.
Here we have the 2TB KIOXIA Exceria Pro out of the box; As can be seen, the SSD comes practically “naked”, without any heatsink and only with an identification sticker that does not even cover all the chips. This sticker is not metallic to encourage heat dissipation as we have seen on other SSDs.
On the back we find its blue-green PCB, covered only by another KIOXIA sticker but, as we can see, it does not have any chip in this area, only the contacts. This means that KIOXIA has crammed 2TB of capacity into just 4 memory chips, at a rate of 512GB per chip, as we’ll see shortly.
We remove the sticker to better see the chips, and as we said before, we only have 4 BiCS FLASH TLC memory chips with 96 layers and 512 GB of capacity each; in the center, we have the memory controller and the DRAM memory that we will take a closer look at shortly.
Here we have these two chips more closely. The controller is manufactured by KIOXIA, and specifically it is the TC58NC1210GSE model of the brand. For its part, the integrated DRAM memory is signed by SK Hynix, and looking for information about its reference H5AN8G4NCJR we find that it consists of 8 Gb (gigabits, not Gigabytes) of DDR4 SDRAM, more than enough for an SSD of these characteristics.
The memory chips do not have logos and only have a silk-screened reference (but as we have explained before, they are the brand’s famous 96-layer BiCS FLASH TLC chips), so we are going to proceed to install the device in our memory bank. tests to see how well it works.
KIOXIA Exceria Pro Testing and Performance
To check how well this SSD performs, we have used our Intel Alder Lake-S benchmark consisting of the following hardware:
- Intel Core i9-12900K.
- Noctua NH-U12A Chromax.
- ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 HERO.
- 2×16GB TeamGroup Delta RGB DDR5 6400MHz.
- TeamGroup CARDEA A440 2TB (System SSD).
- CORSAIR RM1000i.
The operating system used has been Windows 11 with all the updates installed, and it is worth mentioning that this SSD has been tested connected to the motherboard as a secondary storage device, so we free you from the burden of supporting the operating system, thus always delivering its maximum performance.
Here you can see the information that it gives us Crystal Disk Infowhere we can see that we have it connected to a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.
An interesting fact is that at rest, this SSD was barely 28ºC (with an ambient temperature of around 22ºC), so it barely heats up; Let’s also remember that this SSD can work at its maximum until the temperature reaches 85ºC, instead of the usual 70ºC (later we will see what maximum temperature it has reached during our tests).
Now yes, let’s see what performance it offers us, and nothing better than Crystal Disk Mark to check.
In theory this SSD should offer us a speed of up to 7,300 MB/s of reading and up to 6,400 MB/s of writing, but in this benchmark it has fallen a bit behind, delivering about 7,000 MB/s of reading and 6,200 MB/s of writing approximately, some data that is really very good but that, as we said, is a little below what it should be capable of delivering in theory.
In the graph above we can see the performance of this SSD compared to others that have gone through this same test platform; reading performance takes the lead, while writing performance ranks third and last.
Now let’s see what it tells us AS SSD Benchmarkwhere the same tests are carried out but with other algorithms and, in addition, an arbitrary score is given based on the result.
Here you can see the performance compared to the other two SSDs that have gone through this test bench.
In this case, the KIOXIA Exceria Pro is in second position in terms of reading speed but first in terms of writing; it is a different benchmark and that is why it is interesting to do several, since in this way we can see the behavior of the unit in different areas.
As you know, this benchmark has two additional tests, and the first one shows us the copy speed of the unit in different scenarios.
The times are excellent, except in the program copy test that gives us a performance well below expectations; To put this in perspective, where the Exceria Pro took 2.90 seconds, TeamGroup’s A440 Pro took just 1.38 seconds.
We are also going to see the behavior of this KIOXIA SSD with non-compressible files, a type of element that usually causes problems for some SSDs, especially in terms of writing speed.
Here the Exceria Pro behaves impeccably, delivering an average performance very close to its maximum, so we can rest easy when working with non-compressible files.
Now let’s see how this SSD works with files of different sizes, and for this there is nothing better than ATTO Disk Benchmark.
As you can see, the data that this benchmark gives us is strange to say the least: the behavior with very small files (between 512 bytes and 256 KB) is as expected, with an increasing performance that is close to the maximum, but generally from there the SSDs usually deliver constant performance and reach their maximum potential, and yet this Exceria Pro sees its performance reduced, and quite a bit too.
As you can see in the capture that we have put above, this happens in different versions of the benchmark, and we have also repeated the test several times to make sure that the data was real and correct, always obtaining similar results. The conclusion we draw is not that the SSD has poor performance with larger files (for example the transfer speed of a 50 GB ZIP was around 3.8 GB / s on average), but that there is something in the algorithms of this benchmark that “doesn’t get along” with KIOXIA’s custom controller.
Let’s end the synthetic tests with Anvil Benchmarka test that in addition to measuring the sequential performance will also show us the random one, in IOPS.
To finish, we have to see how this SSD behaves in terms of temperature, and it is something interesting because, as we have already mentioned several times, this SSD supports 15ºC more than the rest of the SSDs on the market.
We have obtained the data with the SSD mounted directly on the board, without any heatsink, what we show you is the temperature delta, that is, the measured temperature minus the ambient temperature, so that if the latter varies, the comparison continues being trustworthy.
As we saw before, at idle the SSD is quite cool and only 6ºC above ambient temperature; subjected to maximum load continuously, the temperature of the SSD has been only 31.5ºC above the ambient temperature, keeping it equally cool and without any need for a heatsink, being very, very far from those 85ºC with which the The manufacturer tells us that the SSD will start to do thermal throttling.
Conclusion and verdict
We could say that the KIOXIA Exceria Pro SSD family is a “house brand”, since both the memory chips and the controller are self-made and only use SK Hynix DRAM in their construction. These SSDs incorporate the new BiCS FLASH TLC technology, which not only allows good performance and durability, but has also managed to operate at excellent temperatures and without the need for a heatsink, something that is complicated today to see and more on PCIe 4.0 SSDs.
In general terms, this is an SSD that offers quite good performance, especially considering its price, which is among the cheapest PCIe 4.0 SSDs of more than 7,000 MB/s on the market and, in addition, it is perfectly compatible with SONY PS5. Therefore, we believe that this KIOXIA Exceria Pro deserves our gold award, as well as our recommendation for its excellent quality / price ratio.
