Introduction

Neo Forza is a relatively young manufacturer of DRAM memory modules and flash memory products. The Taiwanese company was founded in 2018 as the enthusiast-focused brand of Goldkey, a well-established producer of computer hardware focusing on OEM manufacturing until recently.



Today, we're taking a look at the Neo Forza NFP455, which is part of the brand-new NFP400-Series. All drives in the lineup are optimized for operation at PCI-Express 4.0, but support PCIe 3.0, too, of course. The NFP455 is built using the Innogrit IG5236 controller, a model we've recently seen on the Acer Predator GM7000, ADATA Gammix S70, and S70 Blade. The flash chips are provided by YMTC, a rising NAND flash manufacturer from China. As expected for a high-end drive, the NFP455 includes 1 GB of DRAM cache, made by Micron in the fast DDR4-3200 speed-grade.

The Neo Forza NFP455 comes in capacities of 1 TB ($130) and 2 TB ($295). Endurance for these models is set to 700 TBW and 1400 TBW respectively. Neo Forza includes a five-year warranty with the whole NFP400 Series of SSDs.

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


While most other M.2 NVMe SSDs transfer data over the PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface, the Neo Forza NFP400 Series connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 interface, which doubles the theoretical bandwidth.


On the top side of the SSD, Neo Forza installed this copper foil. It's an easy way to reduce SSD temperatures without a bulky heatsink.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller, four flash chips, and two DRAM chips.

Chip Component Analysis

The Innogrit IG5236 is the company's first controller to support PCI-Express 4.0. It uses eight channels to maximize transfer rates and is fabricated on a 12 nm process at TSMC Taiwan.


The four 128-layer 3D TLC flash chips are made by YMTC, a Chinese NAND maker that is government-backed. YMTC has an exclusive 3D die-stacking technology called Xtacking, which enables them to claim the "3D TLC" title, more about the tech here. Basically, the NAND storage array is manufactured on a die separate to the CMOS control logic die. In manufacturing, both dies are stacked with vertical interconnections. Obviously, this requires an extremely high degree of precision, but yields great density.


Two Micron DDR4-3200 chips provide a total of 1 GB of fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables.

Test Setup

Synthetic Testing

• Tests are run with a 20-second-long warm-up time (result recording starts at second 21).
• Between each test, the drive is left idle for 60 seconds to allow it to flush and reorganize its internal data.
• All write requests contain random, incompressible data.
• Disk cache is flushed between all tests.
• M.2 drives are tested with a fan blowing on them; that is, except for the results investigating uncooled behavior on the thermal testing page.