XPG Mars 980 Blade: All PCIe Gen5 Storage you need?

ANT PC | 05-03-2026 17:21:15

With the “NAND Crisis of 21st Century” in the play, storage and memory feel more like investment nowadays. Choosing the drive that maximizes price to performance ratio is very important, especially when we are talking about high performance storage and memory.  

And the SSD here in question has all the bells and whistles you expect from a modern, current Gen SSD. 

XPG Mars 980 is XPG’s answer to the bleeding edge PCIe Gen5 Storage tech. As the Gen5 bandwidth promises a 100% speed increase over the last generation; so today, at ANT PC, we put the XPG MARS 980 Blade PCIe Gen5 NVME SSD through its paces, so you won’t have to second guess to answer the question, is Gen5 SSDs worth it? 

Let’s talk about the on-Paper Specs of the drive before we take a deep dive into the test data: 

 

Adata XPG Mars 980 Blade Specifications 

Product 

1TB 

2TB 

4TB 

Form Factor 

M.2 2280 (DS) 

M.2 2280 (DS) 

M.2 2280 (DS) 

Interface / Protocol 

PCIe 5.0 x4 

PCIe 5.0 x4 

PCIe 5.0 x4 

NVMe 2.0 

NVMe 2.0 

NVMe 2.0 

Controller 

Silicon Motion SM2508 

Silicon Motion SM2508 

Silicon Motion SM2508 

DRAM 

DDR4 

DDR4 

DDR4 

Flash Memory 

Micron 232-Layer TLC 

Micron 232-Layer TLC 

Micron 232-Layer TLC 

Sequential Read 

14,000 MB/s 

14,000 MB/s 

14,000 MB/s 

Sequential Write 

10,000 MB/s 

13,000 MB/s 

13,000 MB/s 

Random Read 

1,600K 

2,000K 

1,950K 

Random Write 

1,650K 

1,650K 

1,650K 

Security 

N/A 

N/A 

N/A 

Endurance (TBW) 

740TB 

1,480TB 

2,960TB 

Part Number 

SMAR-980B-1TCS 

SMAR-980B-2TCS 

SMAR-980B-4TCS 

Warranty 

5-Year 

5-Year 

5-Year 

Points to highlight here are 

  1. When maximum mid to high end SSDs are shifting to QLC, ADATA has equipped this drive with TLC, which in itself, promises better endurance. 

  1. The Controller is Silicon Motion SM2508, which is a very power efficient option compared to the dated Phison E26, which was riddled with overheating and performance issues.  

  1. There is a proper DDR4 DRAM Cache, instead of HMB handling the heavy lifting, which helps this drive achieve the promised 14,000 MB/s Speed and sustain it under load.  

  1. The TBWs are impressive (740TB(1TB), 1480TB (2TB) and 2960TB (4TB)) which is much higher than competition, and higher prices offerings that promise the same speed.