Biwin Black Opal X570 PRO Review – A new player on the market with an interesting product and minor weaknesses

1 - Introduction and Technical Data 2 - Teardown with Component and Material Analysis 3 - Streaming and Root Cause Analysis of Drops 4 - Synthetic Benchmarks 5 - Workstation Benchmarks 6 - Temperatures, Power Consumption and Conclusion

Temperature behavior under permanent load

The average write rate of 600 MB/s observed for the Biwin X570 PRO SSD in the cloning process with Macrium Reflect seems disappointing at first glance, but is technically understandable. The cause is not the hardware itself, but the interplay of fragmented, non-sequential accesses, low queue depth and irregular data structure, as is typical with a file system image. Unlike synthetic benchmarks with ideal block sizes and continuous transfers, this process primarily challenges the internal management mechanisms of the SSD, in particular the mapping, garbage collection and addressing of individual TLC cells.

Precisely because Reflect does not generate a constant data stream, but instead sends many small write packets, the controller and NAND are subjected to very uneven but permanent loads. This makes the cloning process an interesting practical test for the thermal load capacity of the SSD, as the internal management processes are active in addition to the throughput. Although the data rate is far from the advertised 13 to 14 GB/s, the temperature development under real fragmentation load is ultimately more relevant for the thermal design of the controller than a short-term synthetic test. If you want to test the heat development realistically, cloning a larger system partition with Reflect is therefore a very meaningful test case. A good 10 watts (peak 12 watts) are measured here, whereby just over 4 watts should be accounted for by the controller and the DRAM.

The Biwin X570 PRO 4TB reaches a controller temperature of up to 71 °C during the 55-minute SSD cloning process, despite active cooling by the factory-installed SSD shield of the MSI X870E Carbon. The temperature behavior can be divided into two phases: First, the controller temperature rises quickly to over 65 °C and then levels off at around 66 to 68 °C for several minutes before gradually rising further to 71 °C in the second half of the test. This progression shows that the cooling is not completely sufficient to prevent a permanent build-up of heat during prolonged load development. Although the cooling effect delays the rise in temperature, it cannot stop it completely.

Meanwhile, the write speed remains around 600 MB/s, interrupted by increasingly frequent fluctuations and dips to just under 500 MB/s. These drops become more frequent from around the 30th minute, i.e. exactly in the temperature range in which the controller reaches its maximum values. Although no hard throttling in the classic sense (sudden drop in performance to a fixed minimum) is visible, soft throttling cannot be ruled out. The characteristic increase in short performance drops suggests that the controller begins to modulate the clock frequency or management load internally in order to prevent further temperature increases.

The temperatures of the NAND modules remain in the range of 43 °C over the entire period, which is not critical and indicates a significantly lower specific power dissipation and more effective thermal coupling via the substrate.

The Biwin X570 PRO remains functional even under continuous load, but the temperature curve of the controller under real conditions with fragmented continuous load and SSD shield cooling shows the thermal limit of passive cooling. A controller temperature of 71 °C is considered a high but still permissible value in the SSD sector, but it leaves hardly any reserves for summer operation or closed systems without sufficient airflow. Anyone planning to use the SSD in a compact or poorly ventilated system should therefore consider an active airflow in the area of the M.2 slots or the use of a dedicated heat sink with a larger mass or heatpipe integration. For well-ventilated desktop cases with cross-flow, the factory shield on the X870E Carbon is sufficient, but is at the upper limit of what is acceptable under passive conditions.

Summary

The Biwin X570 PRO 4TB is a modern PCIe Gen5 SSD based on the SM2508G controller from Silicon Motion and is nominally aimed at high-end users with high demands on sequential transfer rates. In the synthetic environment, it shows impressive values with over 14 GB/s read throughput and 13.4 GB/s write speed, as was clearly demonstrated in CrystalDiskMark and ATTO. These values remain largely constant even with increasing test sizes up to 32 GiB, which speaks for a well-scaling cache structure. Technically, the drive is based on Biwin’s own NAND with TLC specification, supported by external DRAM and a DRAM-supported FTL architecture.

However, in a practical environment, for example in the AJA system test or with real workstation workloads under SPECwpc, a differentiated picture emerges: The continuous performance is inconsistent, with frequent drops in the write process, especially with continuous load profiles. These drops also occur at a stable temperature and direct connection to the CPU lanes, which indicates internal reorganization behaviour when switching from pSLC to TLC as well as possible firmware optimization requirements.

A real cloning process with Macrium Reflect under Windows only delivers an average write speed of around 600 MB/s, which can be explained by small, fragmented write packets and a low queue depth. Nevertheless, this type of transfer is particularly suitable as a realistic load test for the controller and the thermal evaluation under everyday scenarios; a discipline that synthetic benchmarks systematically ignore.

The SPECwpc results underline the picture: The X570 PRO performs solidly to well, can even clearly outperform Gen4 models in some scenarios (for example in read-heavy tasks), but in controller-critical applications with high management intensity it sometimes falls behind equally fast Gen5 competitors with Phison E26. Especially in fragmented workflows with a high proportion of metadata, performance depends on the firmware maturity and the behavior of the flash management.

Conclusion and target group classification

The Biwin X570 PRO 4TB is particularly suitable for users with a high sequential data volume, for example in the video sector or with large file archives, as long as the access is mostly linear. Anyone who regularly works with raw data dumps, image files or large streaming files will be able to make good use of the SSD’s high peak performance. It also cuts a fine figure as a system drive, provided the focus is not exclusively on maximum IOPS performance. For professional users in workstation environments with a high random share, fragmented workloads or many parallel processes, the SSD cannot be recommended without compromise as long as the firmware and response to atypical access patterns have not been further optimized.

A final assessment ultimately depends on the launch price. If the SSD is priced below the established Gen5 top models with Phison E26 or E27, it would be an interesting alternative for enthusiasts and semi-professionals who value high transfer rates but can live with slight compromises in access consistency. For price-sensitive upgrades or system integrators, the X570 PRO could become quite attractive, assuming a successful firmware.