[Software] Adata Legend 970 review: PCIe 5.0 speed and a fan-cooled heatsink

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Adata Legend 970 review: PCIe 5.0 speed and a fan-cooled heatsink
This PCIe 5.0 SSD offers superlative performance and sports a hefty heatsink featuring its own fan!

At a glance
Pros
Excellent PCIe 5 performance
Massive heatsink with fan
Good TBW rating and warranty
Cons
Pricey
Our Verdict
The Adata Legend 970 bumped the Crucial T700 off our top spot (barely) by virtue of superior real world performance. It’s also a hair cheaper.

Adata’s Legend 970 is the company’s first PCIe 5.0 SSD and it’s an excellent overall performer — taking the top spot in our charts by a gnat’s eyebrow. It’s pricey of course, and requires a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, but it ships with an actual fan-cooled heatsink and was slightly less expensive than its performance rivals, the Crucial T700 and Seagate FireCuda 540 at the time of this writing.

 

Further reading: See our roundup of the best SSDs to learn about competing products.

What are the Adata Legend 970’s specs and price?
Adata’s Legend 970 is a PCIe 5.0 x4 SSD that leverages a Phison PS5026 E26 controller, 1GB of DRAM per terabyte of storage, and 96-layer TLC NAND to provide top-tier everyday performance.

It uses the standard 2280 (22mm wide, 80mm long) form factor, but also sports a massive heatsink to keep it cool. It’s not the only NVMe SSD out there sold with a gargantuan cooler, but as far as we know, it’s the only one with a fan.

The Adata Legend 970 with the power connector for the cooler fan shown.
As you can see above, the fan requires a separate power source, but the heatsink is so large you could likely pound on the SSD without the fan connected and still not experience thermal throttling. Given adequate cooling in your rig, that is.

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One thing to consider when it comes to heatsinks in general, is the location and orientation of your M.2 slot. It may not accommodate one. Our testbed is a bit of an odd duck, but we have to remove heatsinks to test SSDs. It’s easy to remove the Legend 970’s heatsink (four tiny screws), but there’s little benefit to a heatsink if you don’t have the room, or already have one of your own.

We didn’t spot the Legend 970 for sale without a heatsink, but that may be an option by the time your read this. Save a couple of bucks if you haven’t the need.

Alas, as mentioned, at the time of this writing the Legend 970 was on the pricey side: $170 for 1TB and $300 for the 2TB flavor. That’s still slightly cheaper than the current 1TB Crucial T700 and Seagate FireCuda 540.

But it’s also far pricier than good-performing host memory bus (HMB) SSDs such as the Lexar NM790. Note that DRAM speeds up random performance so HMB DRAM-less drives will not run your OS as quick as something like the Legend 970. That said, NVMe is so fast, you might not notice the difference.

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