Acer FA100 M.2 FA100-1TB 1 TB (BL.9BWWA.120)

A fresh look

The Acer FA100 is an SSD that costs the same as the entry-level M.2 models, but delivers speeds that are almost on par with PCI-E 3.0 x4 flagships. Based on the Innogrit IG5216 quad controller codenamed Shasta+. This is a relatively young player in the SSD controller market, which, however, has a record-breaking PCI-E 4.0 solution in its arsenal.

Make it easier

Savings are achieved due to the absence of a separate operational buffer chip. Instead, Host Memory Buffer technology is provided, which reserves part of the PC's system-wide RAM (DDR4 128-bit) for the needs of the SSD. Considering that the soldered SSD buffer is usually a single slow DDR3L 16-bit chip, there is a noticeable increase in performance.

Smart Algorithm

Flash memory chips are labeled as BIWIN — this is the OEM manufacturer of Acer SSDs. But judging by the example of other SSDs based on Innogrit controllers, as well as the virtual SLC caching algorithm, we can assume that the chips are manufactured by Micron. Linear reading is consistently fast — 3300 MB / s.

Three steps

The first 20 percent of the amount of free space on the disk, the sequential write speed is high — 2700 MB / s. Then it drops down to about 900 Mbps. And in the end it drops to 300 MB / s, which is still quite fast, as for a low-cost SSD. The IOPS figures are 325K and 293K, respectively.