Foreword and unboxing
Due to the shortage of upstream flash memory chips and the suspension of process upgrades, the price of storage products has begun to rise again in the near future, especially for 4TB large capacity, for most gamers, 2TB personally thinks it is more appropriate, 1TB capacity is obviously too small, after all, today's large-scale 3A games are often more than 100GB.
And many players still use a single SSD partition, leaving less space to load the game. Back to the topic, the price increase is the price increase, you still have to buy it just now, for example, the Acer Predator GM7 2TB SSD is more recommended, and this article will share the experience of using it.
Acer PredatorGM7The packaging adopts a tough and low-key style of pure black - the front highlights some renderings of GM7, and the capacity of the SSD is marked at the bottom right, GM7 provides 512GB/1TB/2TB/4TB Four versions of capacity are available, this time it is the 2TB version, and the data performance is basically the same as the 1TB version.
The back list is marked with capacity, speed, size, weight, operating temperature, etc., and the warranty time is the mainstream five-year after-sales period (1200TBW writing volume), and the label in the lower right corner indicates the SN code of the product.
The inner packaging uses the entire hard-shell plastic shell to wrap and protect the SSD body, and the manual is also loaded and presented, which is available in 10 languages, and fixing screws are also provided.
The size of the Acer Predator GM7 belongs to the mainstream 2280M.KEY specification design, and the front adopts an ultra-thin thermal conductive paste with PREDATOR LOGO, which is quite compatible and can be perfectly adapted to various installation environments such as desktops, laptops, PS5 consoles, etc.
The label on the back of the SSD is the model and serial number information, and due to the single-sided PCB layout and ultra-thin thermal pad, the overall thickness of the SSD is also well controlled, and the risk of accidental tearing of the product label is also eliminated.
Tear off the thermal pad to see its PCB layout, the front is composed of a master and four flash memory particles, belongs to the cache-free design, it is not recommended to tear off the thermal pad under normal use, after all, it will affect the fit between the components. So what about the effect of such a thin heat sink, the later test link will be revealed!
The main control chip of Acer Predator GM7 is located on the side of the PCB - the familiar domestic mainstream solution Lianyun MAP1602A-F3C, based on 12nm process, has ARM R5 core, data processing capacity up to 2400MT/s, supports the third-generation Aglie ECC 4K LDPC error correction technology, compatible with MLC, TLC, Various types of NAND particles in QLC belong to the mainstream four-channel cache-free solution, which adopts a full-disk analog SLC mechanism, and the performance is comparable to that of the slowed solution.
On the other side of the PCB, four NAND flash memory particles are arranged to form a 2TB capacity, the model is marked as BWN09TC1B1JCAD, and everything is clear with BWN as the prefix, that is, BIWIN's self-sealing scheme, and the specific model information can be viewed with FLASH ID when it is on the machine.
In order to restore the real use scenario to the greatest extent, the whole test will be carried out in the chassis - equipped with MSI's MPG VELOX Blade 100R white model, five fans are arranged in the front, inside and rear, and the M360 mortar water cooling radiator is placed on the top, the overall air duct is quite good, and the chassis also has selling points such as graphics card vertical, front Type-C, 6-way ARGB controller, and double-sided tempered glass.
The test motherboard comes from MSI's MPG Z790 EDGE TI MAX WIFI Blade Titanium, which has 1*M.2 GEN 5 and 4*M.2 GEN 4 slots, which can perfectly play the full performance of the Acer Predator GM7 2TB, the motherboard also uses a 16 (90A)+1+1 phase power supply system, and the memory slot supports overclocking to DDR5-7800MHz+, and the whole is also fully covered by Frost Armor.
The overhead radiator comes from the MSI MAG CORELIQUID M360 mortar, which adopts the classic shape of the MSI mortar in the appearance of the water pump - the simple style + linear ARGB design created by the arsenal style, and in other aspects, it also has high-performance radiators, high-durability three-phase shock-absorbing motors, high-performance fans, micro-convex copper bottom design and other selling points.
In this test, the Acer Predator GM7 will be placed in the first M.2 slot on the motherboard, and only the thermal pads that come standard with the SSD will be used to assist in the whole process, which will test its heat dissipation ability even more.
Hands-on performance test
The first thing to do after getting on the machine is to confirm the Acer Predator GM7 2TB flash memory particles with FLASH ID, as long as you download the SSD utility corresponding to the main control of Lianyun, you can see that the SSD is built with four YMTC Yangtze River Storage's fourth-generation 3D TLC particles 3dv4 (the latest 232 layers), based on the crystal stack (Xtacking) 3.0 architecture.
The Acer Predator GM7 can use Acronis, a genuine disk management software, which has hard drive data transfer, operating system transfer, backup hard drive, emergency media generator, safe zone, and other features, but some features have to be paid for.
The test platform is Core i7-14700K+MPG Z790 EDGE TI MAX WIFI, the CPU is in the silent frequency state throughout the test, the memory is only turned on XMP configuration overclocked to DDR5 7600C36, the operating system is the latest version of Windows 11 23H2, the whole process is sealed and tested, and the room temperature is about 15°C.
Through CrystalDiskInfo to view SSD information, Acer Predator GM7 supports NVME 2.0 protocol, S.M.A.R.T, TRIM and Volatile Write Cache function, belongs to the standard PCIe 4.0x4 interface, the firmware version is SN10191, before the test, you can see that the amount of data in this disk is zero, and the temperature is 42°C in Windows standby state with its own thermal pad.
CrystalDiskMark peak performance Q8TI test, Acer Predator GM7 2TB sequential read speed is 7121.82 MB/s, sequential write speed is 6395.49 MB/s, and the official data is similar, due to the algorithm, you need to use the AMD platform to run the full read speed, and the write test is higher than the nominal one. The IOPS for 4K random reads and writes is 924K and 1031K, respectively, and there is also a higher situation in terms of writes.
According to the TxBENCH project, the Acer Predator GM7 2TB has a sequential read speed of 7098.106 MB/s and a sequential write speed of 6592.129 MB/s, which is higher than the CrystalDiskMark as always. The 4K speed is 79.145 MB/s read and 320.673 MB/s write.
ATTO Disk Benchmarks QD1 project, set the file capacity to 4GB, the overall performance of Acer Predator GM7 2TB properly belongs to the T1 level, after the 1KB range, it began to show a trend of doubling step by step, the read and write in the 4M~64MB range is basically stable at about 5000 MB/s, and the peak read and write are 5670 MB/s and 5000 MB/s respectively.
The 3DMark storage benchmark can truly reflect the performance of the SSD in all aspects of the game, including the loading speed of the three games, recording, installing, saving and moving the game seven items, the Acer Predator GM7 2TB final score is 3526, the average transfer bandwidth is 604.71 MB/s, and the average storage time is 51us, referring to the test results of different PCIe 4.0 SSDs in the past, this SSD is a flagship-level level.
Then test the time it takes to write real files, from a PCIe 4.0 SSD that also belongs to the flagship positioning, copy about 170GB of game directory files to Acer Predator GM7 2TB, which includes 1873 files, it takes only 39.5 seconds, and the transfer rate reaches 4540 MB/s, which is very efficient and equivalent to the time to make a tea.
The full disk write + SLC cache capacity test is carried out using TxBENCH Advanced Benchmark, select Whole Area Sequential Write in RAW mode, and the Acer Predator GM7 2TB will be securely erased before the test.
The Acer Predator GM7 2TB Full Drive Write curve is shown in the line chart above
A short curve at the beginning of writing is the stage of SLC Cache, the write speed is maintained in the range of 5700~6000 MB/s, which lasts for 43 seconds, that is, the capacity of SLC Cache is about 232GB, which is quite abundant, and there is rarely a chance to write more than this amount at a time for daily use.
After SLC Cache is used up, the cliff type is slowly reduced in two stages, first it drops to a speed of about 3700 MB/s, which is maintained for about 20 seconds, and then floats in the waveform range of 1000+ MB/s~2000+ MB/s, and finally in 14 minutes, the erase recovery + write stage appears, and the speed is maintained at about 900 MB/s, and the overall curve is very consistent with the charm of MAP1602A Lianyun main control + YMMC NAND, and there is also the tuning of Acer Predator itself.
Finally, in terms of temperature, after 16 minutes of TxBENCH full writing, the maximum temperature of the Acer Predator GM7 2TB is only 48°C, which is achieved with the original ultra-thin thermal pad, which is quite a low performance, and such temperature control is undoubtedly excellent while maintaining high speed.
epilogue
After the whole experience, the performance of the Acer Predator GM7 2TB is still the best in its class, it uses the main control of the Lianyun MAP1602 + YMMC 232 layers of TLC particles, making its nominal sequential read and write reach 7200 MB/s and 6300 MB/s, it also has a large SLC Cache capacity, enjoy high-speed write efficiency in daily writing situations, and the maximum temperature is only 48°C when loaded with the original ultra-thin thermal pad, and it also has a 5-year warranty +1200TBW write life, the current Acer Predator GM7 2TB price is 699 yuan, which is quite suitable for mainstream players.