Lexar NM790 512GB, M.2 2280 / M-Key / PCIe 4.0 x4

The combination of the Maxio Tech MAP1602-C controller and 232-Layer TLC NAND from YMTC that Lexar is using here has really made getting a “DRAMless” Gen4 drive more of a consideration as when you think of “DRAMless” you typically think middle of the road performance, but with the NM790 we have great overall performance. This same combination is pretty popular as Patriot made use of it with their Viper VP4300 Lite. In our testing we saw sequential read speeds of 7130.07 MB/s and sequential write speeds of 6676.58 MB/s, which is very close to the advertised speeds of the drive. With this type of performance the NM790 competes with pretty much every other Gen4 drive that we’ve tested, and again this is without a cache chip. The drive does make use of part of the storage for SLC caching and looks to be able to handle high-capacity writes and we only saw performance take a hit after the drive was 30% full (600GB). Lexar does offer this drive in both heatsink and non-heatsink versions. In our testing the drive did not get very hot at all and for most of you, your motherboard will come with M.2 heatsinks. For the PlayStation 5 crowd this drive is compatible, but you should go with the heatsink version. Right now the 2TB version of the drive is selling at our favorite online retailer for $129.99, which is very close to what Patriot’s Viper VP4300 is selling for. Lexar also backs this drive up with a 5-year warranty. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Lexar NM790 Gen4 Solid State Drive a 10 out of 10 and our Good Value Award!