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MSI Spatium M570 Pro

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Key specifications

• PCIe 5.0 NVMe M.2
• Read/write speeds up to 12,400/11,800 MB/s
• MSI FROZR cooling with triple heat pipes

A tour around the MSI Spatium M570 Pro

Usually there is not much to say about an M.2 SSD, but it is a little different with the MSI Spatium M570 Pro. In addition to the M.2 SSD itself which is tucked away in there somewhere, the MSI Spatium M570 Pro comes with a rather massive cooler fitted.

This means that, overall, we end up with a device that measures 94.80mm x 24.00mm x 71.65mm, which is of course considerably more than a normal M.2 SSD, which is a small thin case.

MSI's FROZR cooling solution has been added here because it is a PCIe 5.0 M.2 SSD. With that protocol, high read and write speeds are possible. When an M.2 SSD has to run at those speeds, however, it generates a lot of heat and if the controller gets too hot, it affects the performance.

So in order to maintain the best performance, it is therefore necessary to have a somewhat beefier cooling solution than, for example, a PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD.

The cooler is 100% passive and consists of three heatpipes which are made so that they have direct contact with the controller on the card together with the flash modules.

They are connected to the tall stack of cooling fins, which are responsible for dissipating heat and moving it away from the SSD itself. With that solution, MSI states that we can look forward to around 20 degrees lower temperatures on the drive during use.

However, the large size also means that you have to pay close attention to whether you even have room for it in your system. There will of course be situations where you will not be able to squeeze in the large cooler or motherboards that it simply cannot be used with.

Installation

As I just mentioned, the size of the MSI Spatium M570 Pro proved to be a challenge in our test system. On the ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero motherboard used in the test system, there are two PCIe 5.0 M.2 slots.

In one of the two, I could not install the MSI Spatium M570 Pro as it conflicted with the Noctua cooler that we use with the system.

Fortunately, there was another option on the motherboard. To use it, however, it required me to remove the normal M.2 Heatsink, which is part of the motherboard. With a mop boy like the MSI Spatium M570 Pro, it could not be used for natural reasons.

Here, however, I could only barely fit the things next to the ASUS ROG RTX 2080 Ti graphics card that was used in the system. If it had been a graphics card that was just a bit thicker, I wouldn't have been able to install.

So it is therefore important to check and double check whether you can use the MSI Spatium M570 Pro in that motherboard but have it together with the other hardware you want to use.

Testing

We quickly skip to the test, which, other things being equal, ends up being the most important.

All tests have taken place on our AMD-based test bench with the following hardware:

• Motherboard: ASUS ROG Crosshair X670E Hero
• CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 7900
• RAM: 32 GB Kingston Fury DDR5 @6000 MHz
• PSU: Seasonic Vertex GX-1000
• 
  

The first step in our benchmarks is, as always, CrystalDiskMark, which is a good standard in storage benchmarks.

In the results here, we can see that we land very close to the promised results from MSI. Write speeds are under 100 MB/s from MSI's figures, while write speeds are just over 100 MB/s from.

However, these are still impressively fast results with read and write speeds well over 1GB/s.

After I had the initial tests behind me, I was naturally curious as to how much of a difference it would be if you use the M.2 SSD without the included FROZR cooling solution.

If you end up not being able to find space for everything in your system with the large cooler, it will of course be tempting to use it without it.

MSI itself notes that the operating temperature should be between 0°C – 70°C. During my tests and benchmarks WITH the cooler installed, I saw a maximum temperature of 41°C while the average was 36°C. So with a good margin up to the 70°C that MSI states as max.

For the upcoming tests, I removed the large FROZR heatsink and mounted the M.2 SSD directly in the motherboard under the heatsink that was part of the motherboard as standard.

Right away I could see it made a pretty significant difference. I experienced in that configuration a maximum temperature of 85°C and an average of 65°C. So here, under load, I experienced getting well above the 70°C that MSI states as a maximum.

This could also be seen in the results, which fell quite significantly. It is still results that beat an alm. PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD but a good distance from the results I saw with the heatsink installed.

Price

At the time of writing, I can find the MSI Spatium M570 Pro with an online price of around 330$. That's around twice the price you have to pay for a similar PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD. So, to that extent, you are really forced to pay for the speeds.

Conclusion

On paper, it is impressive to see how high speeds can be achieved with PCIe 5.0. However, the practical circumstances that must be met in order to achieve those speeds mean that there may be more limited applicability.

As you could see in our test setup, it was actually only just that I could use the MSI Spatium M570 Pro at all due to physical limitations.

Realistically speaking, I would think that it is quite limited what you can actually use speeds for in this rent. For the vast majority of normal tasks such as gaming, photo and video editing, etc., you will never come close to needing speeds that the MSI Spatium M570 Pro can deliver.

There will of course be usage scenarios where they can be relevant, but you really have to be in the small group before an SSD like this one makes sense. Especially when we consider that the price is significantly higher than a PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD with similar capacity.

For the few who need a super fast M.2 SSD, MSI has created a product that hits the spot with the Spatium M570 Pro. For once there is a product where the inclusion of "Pro" in the name makes sense. This is a product that makes the most sense in a few but demanding professional situations.

We end up with a final grade of 9 and an Enthusiast Only Award for a product that delivers lightning-fast M.2 storage, but which is definitely not intended for the general consumer.

Advantage:

• Super fast speeds
• Solid cooling

Disadvantages

• Size limits compatibility