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A few days ago, we posted a review of a new Gen 5 SSD from a China-based company named BIWIN. It was the Predator GM9000 and we liked what we saw. The GM9000 is not yet available in North America, but BIWIN is expanding their portfolio and will have a full line of products within reach soon enough. BIWIN sent us a number of SSDs, in fact, and we are going to be looking at the BIWIN Black Opal NV7400 Gen4 4TB SSD today. Once again…the NV7400 is not available in North America just yet.
The BIWIN Black Opal NV7400 is a PCIe 4.0 (Gen4) x4 (4-lane) form factor 2280 (22mm wide x 80mm long) SSD that is available in 512GB to 4TB capacities and uses the latest NVMe 2.0 SSD protocol. Specifications list performance at 7450MB/s read and 6500MB/s write with up to 1000K read and 900K write IOPS at low 4K random disk access.
The NV7400 is a DRAM-less SSD which uses the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) via the PCIe interface to access a small chunk of the systems RAM to improve performance as a DRAM chip might do. This provides for a lower costing SSD as there is no DRAM buffer chip included. This SSD comes with a 5-year limited warranty and has up to 1000TBW endurance.
The BIWIN Black Opal NV7400 contains the Maxiotek MAP1602A ‘Falcon Lite’ 4-channel Gen4 NVMe SSD controller which runs at 2400MT/s. It contains four pieces of Micron 232-layer B58R 3D TLC NAND flash memory running at 2400MT/s, each piece having a RAW value of 1TB before formatting. The branding sticker shown on the photo above is actually a 0.5mm ‘Graphene Thermal Pad’ that assists with heat dissipation.
CORRECTION: Our original report release detailed the use of YMTC 232-layer NAND. BIWIN has clarified this by stating that the early samples of the NV7400 did contain YMTC NAND , however the NV7400 final product contains premium Micron B58R NAND flash memory. Our apologies as BIWIN brands memory under their own product number making identification very difficult.
This SSD has a feature set to include SMART and TRIM but does not have encryption whatsoever. It is a very cool running SSD as it has an active power maximum of 6.5 watts, is single-sided and contains the graphene thermal branding sticker. Rather interesting is the fact that an installation screw and screwdriver are included within the packaging. Checking Amazon UK, we can see pricing of £229.99 ($330.55US) for the 4TB, £116.99 ($168.14US ) for the 2TB and £67.99 ($97.72US) for the 1TB with no availability for the 512GB. For those in North America, clicking on that link will automatically default you to your country’s Amazon to check if BIWIN products are available just yet.
Totally unexpected was BIWIN’s newest SSD maintenance software which is a free download. It has several selections at the left menu to include Drive Information, Error Scan (Quick or Deep Scan), Performance Test, Drive Erase (Includes Secure Erase), Data Migration, Drive Cloning, Firmware Update, System Information and a Help selection.
Let’s check out some speed…