Mushkin GAMMA 2TB M.2 SSD Review

By red454 - September 2, 2021

Price: $378.99
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Mushkin GAMMA M.2 SSD: Introduction

Are you ready for some pavement shredding speed? Well, hold on because Mushkin has a new NVMe SSD that is making some waves.

First, let me put the speeds in perspective. If you are old enough to remember a time when your desktop was tied to the good old mechanical 3.5" IDE hard drive, you remember how slow and clunky it was. Laptops were no better with their often slower and clunkier 2.5" mechanical hard drives. Then 2.5" Solid State Drives (SSD) started popping up, offering SATA III speeds you could only dream of in the (at the time) blistering 550MB/s range and this was a true game-changer.

Fast forward a few years and we have the curious but now familiar M.2 interface. The M.2 was formerly known as the Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) and the intention was to replace the mSATA interface. While the M.2 socket can be SATA or NVMe (Non-volatile Memory Express), NVMe is by far the fastest. And of course, M.2 SATA drives and M.2 NVMe drives are not interchangeable. M.2 SSDs are becoming the standard as pricing slowly comes down and capacity and speeds go up. This is certainly a huge plus for laptops where every bit of space and weight are critical.

So today the pole position is easily taken by NVMe SSDs that can pump out speeds in the face-melting read/write range of 7.1GBs/6.6GB/s. Yes - you read that right. Today we have the GAMMA NVMe PCIe Gen4 SSD from Mushkin that claims those very speeds - can it deliver? Let's find out!

Mushkin GAMMA M.2 SSD: Closer Look

To keep the consumer happy manufacturers try to offer drives at various performance and pricing levels, and Mushkin is no different. The graphic below sort of sums up the main M.2 drives in the current lineup. As you can see, the GAMMA is the top-performing drive and it comes in three capacities - 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. The 2TB version is what we have today. It is a PCIe Gen4 NVMe SSD and, although it will work on a PCIe Gen3 system, to get the maximum speed and performance, you need to use it on a PCIe Gen4 system. No worries - Gen4 capable motherboards are slowly making their way into the wild.

Looking at the drive up close, it is not all that exciting. You can't dress up a drive this size. A fancy sticker is about all you can do (RGB says "hold my beer"). But who cares what it looks like? It is all about performance, right? The drive carries the standard dimensions, 80mm x 22mm x 3.8 (LWH) along with the NVMe "M key" edge connector on the right.

Installation is easy. One screw. A very small screw - and you might have to dig through the hardware that came with your motherboard to find it as one is not supplied with the drive. Keep in mind that it is also a special flat head screw that is made to hold the drive in place, so don't use any old screw you have lying around. Also make sure your system is powered down completely, like unplug the power supply, before you install the drive. One more thing, when handling components like this it is a good idea to use an anti-static wrist strap - especially in the winter when the air is dry and static build-up can be a problem. In the summer, the humidity keeps the static to a minimum but a wrist strap is always a good thing to use. M.2 sockets can be found almost anywhere on your motherboard and the manufacturers have to get creative when they have to squeeze them into small spaces. Small form factor motherboards don't have much real estate to give up for M.2 space so you may only have one M.2 socket.

Anyway, this particular drive runs fairly cool at idle and under light loads, and only when the benchmarking process is moving large volumes of data does it get a little warm - I observed a peak of 60 °C and there was no throttling due to heat. But typically your system won't see the type of loading demands that a benchmark creates. Assuming your case has decent airflow, I don't think this drive needs any extra cooling - but I did review a couple of inexpensive M.2 drive coolers from be quiet!, so click here if you are interested.

Here is the Wizard. The man behind the curtain. Ok, the chip behind the curtain. But you should pay attention to this man, uh - I mean chip behind the curtain. Peeling the label back reveals the PHISON E18. The E18 is the latest controller from PHISON and it is a beast! It delivers a significant performance improvement over the last generation and is manufactured using the 12nm process to use less power. This, of course, translates to less heat. It uses a 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 (three CPUs) Dual CoXProcessor™ to speed things up. It complies with NVMe 1.4 to ensure compatibility with the latest NVMe specifications. All of this comes together to deliver the fastest speeds yet on an NVMe drive.

Mushkin GAMMA M.2 SSD: Features / Technical Specs

The specs speak for themselves. Look at those read and write speeds! Look at those IOPS! Of course, it says "up to" because as with anything, your mileage will vary. But keep in mind that these speeds can only be reached on a PCIe Gen4 system. Will it work on a Gen3 system? Yes, of course, but you will max out at Gen3 speeds, which is fine but this drive would be overkill unless you are planning to upgrade your system to Gen4 in the future. This model comes with a five-year warranty and with a TBW (Total Bytes Written) of 1400TB, this drive should last a long time.

Mushkin GAMMA M.2 SSD: Testing

Time for the rubber to hit the road. I went through the usual benchmarking using ATTO and CrystalDiskMark. I did the testing on a Gen3 system, and as expected the numbers were at the Gen3 levels, which for my system were in the 3.16 GB/s write and 3.3 GB/s read range. No surprises. Fortunately, I also have a Gen4 system, and when I tested on that system, WOW! The speeds are right there with what specs for the GAMMA claim and again keep in mind that the specs are listed as "up to," so in the real world you will typically see numbers that are just a little below. And there will be variations from the motherboard to motherboard. Will gaming benefit from these speeds? Probably not - unless you are coming from an older SATA SSD or yikes, a 3.5" mechanical drive. You would see shorter load times. Content creators, video editors, etc., anyone moving large volumes of data will certainly notice the speed increases with this drive. One thing is for sure - this drive will not be the bottleneck on your system!

Mushkin GAMMA M.2 SSD: Conclusion

Overall, this is truly an impressive drive. The speeds I saw on the GAMMA are mind-numbing. I know that there will be a time when we look back at these speeds and think "wow, how did we survive with drives that slow?" I suppose I don't know how we survived without smartphones 10 to 15 years ago, or just plain cell phones a few years before that. But as time moves on, we reap the benefits of what new tech offers, and today it is raw speed. For day to day use at these speeds, I think I am at the point where I can't tell the difference between this and the last generation. Maybe even the one before that. You know what? I am ok with that. For some people, this new level of performance makes the temptation to upgrade to a Gen4 system difficult to resist.

The MSRP for the 2TB version was around $400, but right now it is $379 on Amazon and about half that for the 1TB version. I don't have any pricing for the 4TB version although you can usually double the price for the 2TB and you are likely in the ballpark. A lot of money? Yeah, but you are getting the cutting edge in the speed department, and this will likely be the king of the hill for a while. How much faster can a drive be? Click here to see the video review for the GAMMA on our YouTube channel.