Acer Predator GM9000 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The Acer Predator GM9000 is the first drive we've reviewed that's based on the new PCI-Express 5.0 Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. One of its design goals was to reduce power consumption, to bring heat output down, so that it can run without a fan-cooled heatsink.

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[stickleback123]

Good result, hopefully the market will soon be flooded with SM2508 based drives from every man and his dog and finally push down PCI-E 5.0 drive prices.

Appreciate the thorough review, as always.

 

[Fluke]

The PCIe5 power draw is abysmal in light of the negligible real world performance difference compared to PCIe4 drives.

Kingston KC3000 vs Acer GM9000
Idle: 0.077€ vs 0.756W
Read: 4.2W vs 3.9W
Write: 4.6W vs 5.0W

Especially idle is out of control.

 

[_roman_]

One of the bettter drives when compared with recent drive reviews on techpowerup.

A file system problem which is in use. This should never take so long or happen. A proper newer file system may save disk space and do it much, much faster by design. Microsoft Windows limitation.

The ISO disc image of Windows 11 gets copied to a different folder on the same drive. This represents a typical large-file usage model.

Kingston KC3000 vs Acer GM9000

I own the KC3000 2TB myself. I bought it because of some reviews. Although it seems there are different drives on the market for the KC3000.

The KC3000 2TB is my drive of choice and one of the best drives in my point of view. PCIE 5.0 has not really catched up.Note: I talk about overall performance - real life - not some fancy benchmark scenario where an empty drive or in some special scenario a drive may be better.

 

[Waweq]

Awesome alternative o Sammy 9100 but it's nowhere to be found

 

[Chane]

And... of course I just bought a drive three weeks ago for my SFF build. I wish I had just held out a little longer. Oh well I'll put this one on my Black Friday list.

 

[mechtech]

Wow thermal throttling with a big heat-sink..............at least good to see the throttling working at a not over the top temp at least.

 

[Bwaze]

Good sustained speed, good overall results.

But still very expensive, various older PCIe 3 and 4 drives can be had for much less, and in use there won't be any noticeable difference.

 

[stickleback123]

Good sustained speed, good overall results.

But still very expensive, various older PCIe 3 and 4 drives can be had for much less, and in use there won't be any noticeable difference.

The hope is that now there is another contender in the market competition will start pushing prices down so the difference will be smaller.

It's certainly taking a long time for them to come down in price though, they're not very appealing given the tiny real world gains.

 

[Bwaze]

I don't know, even reviewers are writing on how SSD prices were too low, and we're seeing the effects with stagnation of progress - although the low prices were very temporary, and we're now almost 2 years into "recovery", and we're still reading how the prices have to go up...

I can't imagine normal market behaviour, not when consumer space is only seeing falling revenue, and companies are focusing on server solutions, AI, LLM more and more.

 

[stickleback123]

It may also be a function of diminishing returns of course, not much consumer enthusiasm for PCI-E 5.0 drives, even less from OEMs, very few to zero demonstrable benefits for 99% of users, so demand is sluggish.

If I built a new PC today I'd get a PCI-E 5.0 SSD but only because I'm an enthusiast and I like the warm fuzzy feeling of knowing it's all as good as it can be. I had to specify a load of PCs for work the other day though and did I care about the SSD specs now they're all NVME? Nope.

 

[Fluke]

You know what's really funny? How Bitlocker happily halves your cutting-edge latest-gen M.2 SSD speed for you.
Seriously, I'd add Bitlocker ON to the benchmarks, because it has such a pronounced effect and a lot of people are using it.