Fantom SSD makes faster use of Micron NAND than Micron

Fantom has built a VENOM8 gaming and laptop SSD that makes faster use of Micron 3D NAND than Micron’s own SSD.

The VENOM8 has an M.2 2280 (gumstick) format with 1, 2, and 4TB capacity options and a four-lane PCIe 4 interface with NVMe v1.4. It uses 176-layer Micron flash with an SK hynix DDR4 DRAM cache and delivers up to 7.4GB/sec when sequentially reading and 6.9GB/sec sequentially writing. It has a five-year warranty and supports 700 total TB written (TBW) at 1TB capacity, 1,400TBW at 2TB, and 3,000TBW at 4TB. 

Hamid Khorsandi, CEO of Fantom Drives, issued a statement: “VENOM8 drives provide very performant SSD storage for customers seeking a better gaming, virtual reality, digital video production, or business application experience. With zero supply chain delays for immediate availability, our VENOM8 line of drives have shown incredible read/write speeds in testing, making these drives ideal for throughput-intensive consumer applications.”

Fantom VENOM8

Other PCIe 4 M.2 2280 SSDS are a fair bit slower, and most don’t last as long either.

Kioxia’s BG5 uses 112-layer flash and comes with 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. It provides up to 3.5GB/sec sequential read speed and 2.9GB/sec sequential write speed – much slower.

Micron’s 2400 drives have an M.2 2280 format option, with 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacity levels. It outputs up to 4.5GB/sec sequentially writing and 4TB/sec sequentially reading. Fantom uses the same basic NAND and drives it much faster. Fantom’s endurance is better too. Where Micron’s 2TB drives supports 600TBW, the Fantom SSD supports 1,400TB at the same capacity. 

Micron has a better performing 3400 using its 176-layer NAND, with the same capacity options but read bandwidth of 6.6GB/sec and 5GB/sec write bandwidth. It’s still slower than the VENOM8. At the 2TB level this 3400’s endurance is 1,200TBW – again less than the Venom8 with its 1,400TBW rating.

Seagate’s FireCuda 530 comes close to matching the VENOM8 speed, though. It has 512GB and 1, 2, and 4TB capacity options with up to 7.3GB/sec read speed and 6.9GB/sec write speed. The 4TB version has a 5,100TBW endurance – significantly better than the VENOM8’s 3,000TBW.

SK hynix’s Platinum P41 gumstick drive is another close match, with 500GB, 1 and 2TB capacities, 7GB/sec read and 6.5GB/sec write bandwidth and 1,200TBW at 2TB capacity – not quite good enough on either the speed or the endurance counts.

Solidigm’s P41 Plus is so much slower – 4.1GB/sec read, 3.3GB/sec – and less durable – 800BW at 2TB. It’s not even in the same class.

Finally, WD’s Black SN850 (500GB, 1TB, 2TB) delivers up to 7GB/sec reading and 5GB/sec writing with 1,200TBW at the 2TB capacity level. It’s quite close to the VENOM8 but doesn’t quite match it on either speed or endurance.

All in all the VENOM8 is a fast and long-lived drive with, we think, a much better controller than Micron’s 2400 and 3400 products. It supports TRIM, SMART, AST, and LDPC ECC functions as well as AES 256 encryption, and has end-to-end data path protection.

The 2TB VENOM8 is priced at $224.95 on NewEgg. Get a datasheet here.