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if you buy Electronics on marketplaces like eBay or AliExpress you can easily

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end up with a product that doesn't live up to the performance or quality that

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you would expect but what if I told you that the same thing is happening right

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now on reputable websites like new EG

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and Microcenter and with trusted Brands

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like Kingston PNY and adata that's right

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all three of them have been accused of releasing new products then silently

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downgrading them after the fact it's the perfect crime right you get a wave of

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positive reviews from media and early Enthusiast customers right and for

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everyone who comes later well they have no way of getting the original product

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to compare so you can just handwave it away as your mileage may vary right

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wrong in March of this year I put out a

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bounty for a particular Drive the adata

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xpg sx8200 pro offering to pay our

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community members three times the MSRP

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if anyone could ship me a unique variant

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of this drive I mean how many could there be right two three eight wow

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that's a lot and we've got five of them to answer three questions once and for

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all are manufacturers bait in switching their customers why would they do that

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and does it really matter anyway

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on paper the xpg sx8200 pro is one of the top performing PCI Express gen 3 m.2

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drives it's rated at up to 3500 megabytes per second reads and up to

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3,000 megabytes per second rights and in third-party reviews it managed to meet

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and sometimes even exceed those lofty claims whether sequential speeds are a

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meaningful measure of SSD performance is a separate discussion but adata used it

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as the standard to measure this product and they delivered on it except for one

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small problem if you go to the store today and pull an sx8200 Pro Off the

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Shelf you might not actually be getting one of these it ended up being a Reddit

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user by the name of svart chimpan who blew the whistle on this they purchased

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three adata sx8200 Pro 2 TB drives at

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different points in time and and found that a brand new Drive purchased in 2021

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was performing about as well as a 94%

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full drive that had been in use for over a year big yikes as the kids say of

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course just because something was posted on Reddit doesn't make it accurate and

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in fact ad data pointed out that the user appeared to have connected one of

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the ssds directly to CPU controlled PCIe

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lanes while the other was running through the motherboard's PCH that

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actually could account for The observed performance difference but I'm not fully

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satisfied let's go through all of our different variants then and get them

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naked starting with what a data sent to

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the media all right there we go now

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there are three main Hardware components that affect SSD performance starting

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with the controller this acts as both the brain and Communications Hub of the

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drive and better ones use smarter storage algorithms that have a profound

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impact on both performance performance and endurance next we've got the nand

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flash where all your data is actually stored fast high endurance nand means a

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fast high endurance drive and then finally we've got our dram cache this

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holds data temporarily so that it can be written in a way that okay this is

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becoming a bit of a pattern here makes the drive faster and longer lasting and

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this right here this is a good combination silicon motion SM 2262 EG

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controller four times 256 gigs of imft

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64 layer TLC n flash it's a total of 1 tbte and two packages of 512 megabytes

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of n ddr3l hold on a second given that speed

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and endurance are the only things really separating a premium SSD from a cheap

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one it stands to reason that changing even one of these components has the

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potential to turn this into an entirely different class of product so so what

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did ad data change I'm so glad you

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asked everything thanks to a tool developed

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specifically for silicon motion controllers we were able to generate

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this table with the full actual specs of

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each of our five drives and to summarize what's happening here compared to our

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original remember the one sent to the media not a single Drive had more than

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one of these three components I just talked about that match

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only this one purchased in July of 2019 even uses the same EG variant of the

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controller with the other three using the slower G variant none of our Samples

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used the same DDR3 as our original although I don't really expect that to

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be a problem and all five of them used

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not just different nand flash but

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different Nan Flash from completely different vendors that's right out of

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the top six Nan flash man manufacturers in the world we have five of them

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represented here which doesn't matter as

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long as they all meet the same bar for performance and endurance but the

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question is do they unfortunately

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without hundreds of samples we can't perform any kind of meaningful endurance

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testing but we can validate performance and let's just say some discrepancies

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were found right out of the gate the three drives using the slower G variant

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of the controller failed to to meet the up to sequential read and WR speeds

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advertised on the box while both of our en variant samples at least came very

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close in Crystal disk Mark but let's see if these differences hold up in PC Mark

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which is a benchmark that more closely simulates Real World Drive use now this

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is interesting much like in the synthetic Benchmark the faster clocked

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en variants managed higher Peak speeds for both reads and rights but their

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overall performance was actually measurably lower and when we reran the

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tests with all of the drives 3/4s filled with data the en variance took a more

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noticeable performance hit between 7 1/2

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to 9% that's compared to less than 1% on

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the g- drives so in the case of the controller swap you're likely to end up

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with better performance in the real world but that doesn't explain aata's

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loot box approach to Nan flash procurement now this one is more likely

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down to pricing and Market availability the SX 82 Pro launched right around the

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time that 96 layer flash was making its way onto the market there's an R&D cost

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associated with these transitions but adding more layers generally lowers the

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cost per Gigabyte incentivizing this kind of development except that nand

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pricing is subject to supply and demand pressure like any commodity so if Apple

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let's say booked a huge order for 96 layer nand tightening the supply that

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could drive up the price forcing smaller players like ad data to buy older 64

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layer Tech or whatever's available all of which can be fine just like you'll

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look fine in a stealth hoodie from LTT Store.com the thing is sourcing

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components from two or more suppliers isn't a new strategy and sometimes it's

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a necessary one Samsung uses both Snapdragon and exos S so's in their

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Flagship phones and apple was sourcing modems from both Intel and Qualcomm

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simultaneously at one point while they made the transition this this practice

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can alleviate supply chain issues and it can force your vendors to stay cost

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competitive if they know you can just buy it from someone else AMD famously

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pulled a bait and switch with one of their products the ryzen 5600 a couple

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years ago but in that case what they did was quietly moved it from 14 NM to 12 NM

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giving their customers a slightly better version of what is fundamentally the

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same product at a great price no harm no

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foul it's just that the two rules to follow are that proper validation is

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needed to ensure that both parts are indistinguishable to the end user and

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failing that the changes must be disclosed a data doesn't appear to have

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done either of those things in their statement to Tom's Hardware they said we

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do guarantee that every sx8200 Pro will perform to spec within the regular

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variations since the drives have been tested stringently but while that may be

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technically correct anything between 0

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and 3500 megabytes per second is technically up to 3500 megabytes per

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second it also has the potential to be extremely misleading there was a similar

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Scandal back in 2014 when Kingston and

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PNY were called out for this same bait and switch tactic actually as we were

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finishing writing this video news surfaced that PNY had allegedly quietly

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reduced the accelerate CS 3030's Endurance by nearly 80% % on their 500

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gig 1 tbyte and 2 tbte models yet there

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was no revision number or announcement and it's still labeled on shelves as the

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same drive that means that customers are left without the proper tools to make an

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informed decision now these vendors might say who cares about a 10%

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performance difference or it's not our fault it's down to the inconsistent

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Supply and it's unmanageable to make a new skew every time there's a change but

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my counter to that is a people pay a lot

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of money for 10% more performance in some cases and B if you can't be ar to

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test and label and get the specs right

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for your own products maybe you need some oversight I mean this is why

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organizations like Vasa exist prior to

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vesa's display HDR certification program

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HDR ready was casually thrown around

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without any regard for the level of experience that product would actually

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deliver now the current system ain't

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perfect either I me display HDR 400 shouldn't even exist but at least that

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label means that you can trust that product to meet a certain performance

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standard camera storage labels like u3

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and v90 on SD cards serve a similar purpose they give consumers a quick and

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easy way to ensure that their media will handle the speeds their camera requires

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now this hasn't really been an issue with SSD boot drives up until now

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because the main competition for them has been from hard drives but as

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genuinely faster ssds become a requirement for gamers who want to take

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advantage of features like direct storage it would be really nice to see

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someone hold these guys accountable finally for playing so fast and loose

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with their product specs oh wait I guess that's

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us SSD manufacturers stop it we see you all of

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us you see that view counter down there everyone knows about this now and if you

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guys don't cut it out we're going to be stuck telling everyone to just stick to

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vendors like Samsung who are vertically integrated and don't randomly change

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suppliers for literally every core

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component of their product just like we tell everyone to

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stick to buying technology and computer hardware at Microcenter Microcenter has

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25 locations across the United States and you can check out microcenter's

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custom PC Builder to spec out the best PC for your budget they'll help you

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ensure all your parts are compatible find stock available at your nearest

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Microcenter location and once you add it to your cart you can arrange same day in

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store pickup for a fee you can check the box marked same day Pro assembly and

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Microcenter expert technicians will assemble your PC for you if you want

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help deciding what parts to put in your new custom gaming PC join the online

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Microcenter Community it's a great place to discuss Tech with other enthusiasts

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so don't wait check out the link in the video description to learn more about

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Microcenter and get a free pair of wireless bluetooth headphones valid inst

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store only no purchase necessary if you guys enjoyed this video maybe check out

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the uh lonus was right video it's

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doesn't it's not what it sounds like it's the other Linus and we're talking

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about ECC memory offer