The MSI Spatium M480 is a solid-state drive in the M.2 2280 form factor, launched on July 7th, 2021. It is available in capacities ranging from 500 GB to 2 TB. This page reports specifications for the 2 TB variant. With the rest of the system, the MSI Spatium M480 interfaces using a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 connection. The SSD controller is the PS5018-E18-41 from Phison, a DRAM cache chip is available. MSI has installed 96-layer TLC NAND flash on the Spatium M480, the flash chips are made by Micron. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are soaked up more quickly. The cache is sized at 225 GB, once it is full, writes complete at 1800 MB/s. Copying data out of the SLC cache (folding) completes at 1100 MB/s. Thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface, performance is excellent. The Spatium M480 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 7,000 MB/s and 6,800 MB/s write; random IOPS reach up to 650K for reads and 700K for writes.
At its launch, the SSD was priced at 445 USD. The warranty length is set to five years, which is an excellent warranty period. MSI guarantees an endurance rating of 1400 TBW, a typical value for consumer SSDs.