You might think of the HP FX900 PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD (starts at $64.99 for 512 GB; $104.99 for 1 TB as tested) as the low-cost counterpart to the HP FX900 Pro, an elite speedster among the internals. solid state drives. But that would do the cheaper ride a disservice. While its rated throughput is on the low side for PCI Express 4.0 SSDs we reviewed recently, the FX900 largely held its own against drives with faster read and write speeds in our benchmark tests. And it comes in at a very consumer-friendly price.
A PCIe 4 SSD with DRAM-free TLC memory
Designed and manufactured in collaboration with Chinese memory chip maker BiWin, the HP FX900 is a PCIe 4×4 drive manufactured on an M.2 Type-2280 (80mm long) “gumstick” PCB. It uses the NVMe 1.4 protocol over the PCIe 4.0 bus. It features an InnoGrit IG5220 (RainierQX) controller and is based on Micron’s 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. (Check out our glossary of SSD terms if this jargon isn’t familiar to you.)
The InnoGrit controller has no DRAM cache and instead uses your PC’s main memory as a host memory buffer (HMB). This helps keep the cost of the SSD down, seemingly without hurting performance in our Windows-based benchmarks. The FX900 joins two other excellent DRAM-less PCI Express 4.0 NVMe SSDs we tested this year, the WD Black SN770 and the Editors’ Choice award-winning ADATA XPG Atom 50.
The label on top of the drive hides a graphene heat spreader, and an energy-efficient controller also helps keep the FX900’s temperature down. The drive is thin enough to fit into the open slot of a PlayStation 5, but the sequential read speed falls a little short of Sony’s recommendation for the PS5. The PS5 also lacks HMB architecture.
At the moment (beginning of August 2022), a 2TB version of the FX900 is not yet on sale, but it is expected to be available soon. HP also offers 256GB and 512GB versions, but there are currently no plans to sell the former in the United States.
The FX900’s durability ratings, measured in terabytes written (TBW), are low for a TLC-based drive. The WD Black SN770, the Crucial P5 Plus and the Samsung SSD 980 Pro are all rated at 600TBW and 1,200TBW for their 1TB and 2TB models respectively. The Kingston KC3000 has even higher ratings, 800TBW for 1TB and 1,600TBW for 2TB. The XPG Atom 50 is rated at 650TBW for 1TB.
A pair of PCIe 4.0 TLC drives offer much higher durability ratings: the Corsair Force series MP600 and the Silicon Power US70 are rated at 1,800 TBW for 1 TB and 3,600 TBW for 2 TB. At the other end of the scale, QLC-based drives like the Mushkin Delta and Sabrent Rocket Q4 are less durable, rated at just 200 TBW for 1 TB, 400 TBW for 2 TB, and 800 TBW for 4 TB.
The specification “terabytes written” is a manufacturer’s estimate of how much data can be written to a disk before some cells begin to fail and be retired. (TBW tends to scale 1:1 with capacity, as with the drives mentioned here.) HP’s warranty covers the FX900 for five years or until you reach the rated TBW figure when writing data, depending on whichever occurs first.
Testing the FX900: solid performance, with a touch of shine
We test PCI Express 4.0 internal SSDs using a desktop testbed with an MSI X570 motherboard and AMD Ryzen CPU, 16 GB Corsair Dominator DDR4 memory clocked up to 3,600 MHz, and a discrete GeForce graphics card. (Read more about how we test SSDs.)
We ran the HP FX900 through our usual internal solid-state drive benchmarks, including Crystal DiskMark 6.0 and PCMark 10 Storage, as well as a relatively new test, UL’s 3DMark Storage Benchmark, which measures a drive’s performance in a number of gaming-related tasks .
Crystal DiskMark’s sequential speed tests provide a traditional measure of disk throughput, simulating the best-case, linear transfer of large files.
Our Crystal DiskMark tests provide a good way to evaluate manufacturers’ claimed speed ratings. The HP FX900 matched the nominal sequential read and write speeds almost exactly, coming in just above the advertised figure for each. While the HP drive’s 4K write speed was average, the 4K read speed essentially tied two other SSDs at the top of our PCIe 4 drive comparison group.
In the PCMark 10 Overall Storage benchmark, which measures a drive’s speed during everyday storage tasks such as loading games and launching programs, including the Windows operating system, the FX900 scored poorly. The results in our trace tests, which evaluate the individual components that fit into the overall score, were solid and sometimes better than solid – the Windows 10 loading score actually put the ADATA XPG Atom 50 at the forefront of the class , just like his speed when starting Battlefield 5.
In the 3DMark Storage gaming test, the FX900 landed at the bottom of a very narrow range of results among the smaller group of drives we ran that benchmark on.
In summary, while the FX900’s read and write speed ratings were near the lower end of our PCIe 4 comparison group, it not only achieved those rated speeds, but also delivered respectable and in some cases superior test scores.
An M.2 SSD priced to sell
The HP FX900 is a no-nonsense PCI Express 4 internal solid-state drive that delivered good results even when compared to drives with significantly higher throughput. Among the tests where it did particularly well were two that mattered to gamers, 4K reading and the launch of Battlefield 5. The DRAM-less architecture didn’t seem to hurt performance for day-to-day operations, while the cost per gigabyte among the lowest in the PCIe 4.0 SSD segment.
The FX900 skips an aluminum heatsink in favor of a graphene heat spreader and lacks the 256-bit AES hardware-based encryption found in some comparable drives, including the Editors’ Choice-winning ADATA Atom 50. The durability rating is relatively low in terms. of terabytes, but that shouldn’t be a problem unless you’re constantly writing and overwriting large amounts of data.
Of course, some gamers will insist on one of the latest high-performance PCI Express 4 NVMe drives with nominal sequential read speeds in the 7,000 MBps range. But high throughput doesn’t always translate into great performance in our benchmark tests. The DRAM-less HP FX900 is priced lower, but rises above its weight class. It’s worth considering by gamers looking for a capable drive at a bargain price.
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