The last time we spoke about the ADATA SSD happened to be the 850 Lite which was a decent SSD, although not without its hit and misses. That said, this time we are taking a look at another SSD from them – and in this ADATA Legend 960 Max Review, we are going to share what you are getting for the price you pay and if it’s any better option.

ADATA Legend 960 Max Review

Design and Hardware

Since it’s an M.2 2280 SSD, the dimensions are the same as any other M.2 SSD out there with not much of a difference to begin with. We received the 1TB ADATA Legend 960 Max, which is a good storage configuration for users who want a terabyte as their main drive. It does come in other configurations, all the way up to 4TB – so, it’s entirely up to you which storage you prefer. Unlike the 850 we reviewed, ADATA includes a proper heatsink enclosure for the Legend 960 Max.

This is a pretty nice move, especially if you are getting it to upgrade or add storage to your PS5 – which requires you to have a heat sink. Otherwise, as the whole heatsink application is optional, you can just use the ADATA Legend 960 Max SSD as it is. Especially with motherboards these days, which comes with its heat sink baked right into it. The only problem is that if you do install the heatsink and the enclosure, it’s hard to take it out – as the adhesive is extremely strong. So, think carefully if you need it before you install it.

That said, upon looking at the SSD closely, the SSD uses four 3D NAND Flash embedded on both sides and the DRAM HMR08003 which is sourced from Samsung which are also found on both sides. Finally, the controller from Silicon Motion SM2264F is positioned in between the DRAM and NAND Flash. Paying a bit of a premium gets you DRAM and to see in this SSD is a delight, especially for caching for frequently accessed data which gives improved performance.

Specification

When it comes to specification, we are looking at a PCIe Gen 4×4 SSD right out of the box. ADATA claims to offer sequential reads up to 7400MB/s and write speeds of 6800MB/s respectively. As for the rest of the specifications, you can check out below:

  • 4KB Random Read IOPS(Max) – Up to 750K*
  • 4KB Random Write IOPS(Max) – Up to 630K*
  • Operating temperature – 0°C – 70°C
  • Storage temperature – 40°C-85°C
  • Shock resistance – 1,500G/0.5ms
  • MTBF – 2,000,000 hours

Performance

As for the performance, we tested the ADATA Legend 960 Max on our testbench with CrystalDiskMark, CrystalDiskInfo and ATTO Disk Benchmark to see the performance and the thermals of the SSD.

Starting with CrystalDiskMark, we must say that it has passed with flying colours with the benchmark speed test, as the Sequential Read for SEQ1M was rated at 7435.80MB/s whereas the Sequential Write speeds were rated at 6657.49 MB/s respectively. What’s more interesting are the thermals. We noticed the SSD had a temperature of 30 degrees Celsius when it was idle and during the benchmark, it peaked at 65 degrees Celsius and dropped back to 30 degrees after a few good minutes. This was without the Heatsink installed.

After installing the heatsink, and running the rest again, we got a sequential read of 7377.89MB/s and a sequential write speed of 6485.78MB/s respectively. Although this time around the highest temperature recorded was 53 degrees Celsius. So, to some extent, the heat sink does play a good role in knocking off a good chunk of the temperature – at least in CrystalDiskMark.

We then proceeded to benchmark with ATTO Disk Benchmark – where we recorded peak temperature at 60 degrees Celsius with the heatsink and 64 degrees without the heatsink installed. The performance, on the other hand, we noticed that the SSD was consistently providing similar results of 7GB/s read and 6.25GB/s write speeds. Interestingly enough, we noticed the temperatures are pretty much the same as the 850 Max, though with a proper chunk of copper heat dissipation – it does knock a few degrees off the SSD.

This time around we didn’t benchmark on the PS5 as it was not with us but fret not, as we will add this data when we have the time to do so. But the performance on this SSD, expect it to hit around the 6000MB/s mark or slightly more (maybe less) as ADATA rates this SSD to hit about 6400MB/s on the PS5. Even though the PS5 works best with Gen5 SSD – which we have yet to check out – to know, that there are some affordable choices like this is a relief in some way.

Conclusion

We received this SSD sometime in May 2024, and ever since then, the price of the SSD has changed a lot. And right now in October, you could pick up the ADATA 960 Legend Max for RM 400-460 for 1TB and RM 700-800 for 2TB which I feel is a good bargain. Though the thermals can be a bit concerning, most consumers who want to get this should be getting it for the DRAM caching because, at this price point, it isn’t easy to look for SSDs with such hardware.

Just keep your eyes on the thermals – although the times when you will notice peak temperatures are during installation or running something heavy. Otherwise, it shouldn’t peak at such high temperatures. That said, this is a good bang for the buck SSD with DRAM in the RM 400 range.

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