Acer FA100 M.2 NVMe SSD Benchmark

04/22/2021

New Acer storage solution. Acer and BIWIN will make available several memory and SSD products to audiences in the United States and China. The first will be the FA100 M.2 PCIe 3 x4 2280 NVMe SSD that promises to be six times faster than the standard SATA SSD.

1 TB FA100 NVMe SSD

Through its partnership with BIWIN, Acer has now launched several new flash memory products, including 2.5-inch SA100 SSD, M.2 FA100 NVMe SSD and HT100 RAM module. Our benchmarks below are for a single-sided 1 TB FA100 NVMe SSD, with other capacities ranging from 128 GB to 2 TB.

Pricing and availability for the SA100, FA100 and HT100 series have not been announced at the time of writing. Other key details such as NAND flash technology and terabytes written (TBW) also remain unknown.

test system

Our host system is an Intel NUC11TNKi5 mini PC that accepts up to two M.2 SSDs. Most notably, it fully supports PCIe 4.0 SSDs, which means we've installed an Acer FA100 PCIe 3.0 drive into a slot with more bandwidth than it can handle.

For more information on the system and its capabilities, see our review of the Intel NUC.

Acer FA100 M.2 Acer FA100 1 TB

Acer Storage FA100 1 TB FA100 NVMe SSD

Acer FA100 SSD FA100 M.2 PCIe 3 x4

AS SSD & CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark 8

CrystalDiskMark 5.5

AS SSD

	Acer FA100 1 TB	Eluktronics RP-17 HP EX900 Pro SSD	Eluktronics SK Hynix Gold P31	Razer Blade 15 Advanced Model Early 2021	Intel NUC8i7BEH Asura NVMe SSD
	Acer SSD FA100 1TB	HP EX900 Pro 1 TB	SK Hynix Gold P31 1TB SHGP31-1000GM-2	Samsung PM981a MZVLB1T0HBLR	Asura Genesis Xtreme NVMe M.2 SSD 1 TB
AS SSD		3%	53%	16%	17%
Seq Read	2784	1486	2211	2112	2288
Seq Read	2784	-47%	-21%	-24%	-18%
Seq Write	2340	1768	2953	2024	1908
Seq Write	2340	-24%	26%	-14%	-18%
4K Read	43.05	63.3	66.7	46.53	51.9
4K Read	43.05	47%	55%	8%	21%
4K Write	82.3	175.1	178.2	89.7	173.3
4K Write	82.3	113%	117%	9%	111%
4K-64 Read	1325	1095	1991	1747	1222
4K-64 Read	1325	-17%	50%	32%	-8%
4K-64 Write	1119	988	2878	1962	1829
4K-64 Write	1119	-12%	157%	75%	63%
Access Time Read *	0.054	0.026	0.02	0.052	0.031
Access Time Read *	0.054	52%	63%	4%	43%
Access Time Write *	0.326	0.088	0.064	0.04	0.083
Access Time Write *	0.326	73%	80%	88%	75%
Score Read	1647	1306	2279	2004	1502
Score Read	1647	-21%	38%	22%	-9%
Score Write	1435	1340	3352	2254	2193
Score Write	1435	-7%	134%	57%	53%
Score Total	3905	3345	6841	5280	4454
Score Total	3905	-14%	75%	35%	14%
Copy ISO MB/s	2306	1792	1787	2128	1542
Copy ISO MB/s	2306	-22%	-23%	-8%	-33%
Copy Program MB/s	1218	607	1199	707	747
Copy Program MB/s	1218	-50%	-2%	-42%	-39%
Copy Game MB/s	1869	1290	1725	1471	1577
Copy Game MB/s	1869	-31%	-8%	-21%	-16%
CrystalDiskMark 5.2 / 6		-22%	3%	-19%	1%
Write 4K	250	126.1	209.9	138	272.4
Write 4K	250	-50%	-16%	-45%	9%
Read 4K	64.6	58.3	60.5	47.41	57.1
Read 4K	64.6	-10%	-6%	-27%	-12%
Write Seq	2481	1978	3072	1922	2019
Write Seq	2481	-20%	24%	-23%	-19%
Read Seq	1862	1941	2716	1673	1701
Read Seq	1862	4%	46%	-10%	-9%
Write 4K Q32T1	630	470.1	453.3	445.5	844
Write 4K Q32T1	630	-25%	-28%	-29%	34%
Read 4K Q32T1	748	557	523	534	884
Read 4K Q32T1	748	-26%	-30%	-29%	18%
Write Seq Q32T1	2641	2117	3405	2976	2110
Write Seq Q32T1	2641	-20%	29%	13%	-20%
Read Seq Q32T1	3216	2253	3461	3232	3463
Read Seq Q32T1	3216	-30%	8%	0%	8%
Total Average (Program / Settings)		-10% / -6%	28% / 35%	-2% / 3%	9% / 11%

Acer FA100 1 TB

SK Hynix P31 Gold 1 TB

HP EX900 Pro 1 TB

Western Digital SN550 1 TB

Acer FA100 1 TB

SK Hynix P31 Gold 1 TB

HP EX900 Pro 1 TB

Western Digital SN550 1 TB

Verdict

In review: Acer FA100 1 TB NVMe SSD. Test unit provided by BIWIN

The new NVMe SSD from Acer faces stiff competition from the SK Hynix P31. Not only can the latter offer faster maximum read and write rates, but it is also able to reach those speeds at smaller block sizes to make it the faster budget SSD overall.