SanDisk Extreme Pro 480GB Solid State Drive Review

A Closer Look

The top of the drive is very simplistic and stylish in a black metal casing with a sticker in the centre. It has the usual design we know from SanDisk with the drive name at the top and the company logo at the bottom, printed on a glossy sticker.

When we turn the drive around, we see the interesting sticker with all of the information we could want. Capacity, speed and operating voltages are right at the top and below those we find all sorts of certification logos and bar-codes, but also the product and serial numbers which may be needed in case of trouble at some point.

Opening up the drive, it looks like a standard 2 piece top and bottom cover, and it is. Though it does work slightly different than most, as it only uses one set of screws that go all the way through the PCB and into the upper part of the case. All chips in this drive have adhesive heat-transfer pads to help keep everything cool and running smoothly.

Taking a closer look at the printed circuit board, we see the 8 SanDisk 1Ynm MLC NAND chips, this 19 nm flash was developed together with Toshiba. To the left we see the Micron 512MB memory chip used as cache and below it the Marvel 88SS9187 controller. This is the same controller they used in the Extreme II drive, but it has been tweaked and overclocked for this drive.

It’s also worth mentioning that the memory chip and controller are secured with epoxy to keep them firmly placed on the PCB. This is not a thing that’s seen often in the consumer area.

SanDisk have chosen to only use the one side of the PCB in the Extreme PRO drive-design, leaving the rear side blue and empty.