A high-speed SSD that performs as advertised.
The Genesis Xtreme is the first SSD addition to the Asura Technology product family. Asura provides prosumer technology products and has developed this performance-based SSD to further their vision of creating premium technology products.
According to Asura, Genesis Xtreme is “a performance-based SSD that is designed for content creators, tech enthusiasts, and gamers. In addition to the fast speeds, the Xtreme is state of the art with an M.2 2280 form factor and a PCIe Gen 3.0 X 4 with an NVMe 1.3 interface. The design is meant to stand out with thermal heatsinks and full RGB capabilities that are meant to add a premium look to your system. Whether you are a VR video editor, video creator, YouTube influencer, musician, or high-level gamer this SSD will improve efficiency and reduce lag time.”
SPECS
- RGB capability and features an innovative, stylish design
- Modular design to fit a wide range of motherboards
- The first design on the marketing with RGB on an M.2 form factor
- High-performance Phison E12 controller
- Value pricing – Top tier performance at an affordable price
- Best in class 7-year manufacturer warranty
- Dual heatsink design to prevent SSDs from thermal throttling
- 100% tested before shipping
The SSD is available in four sizes, 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB.
USER EXPERIENCE
The SSD comes in a simple retail package. The box has the Asura logo on the front along with the name of the product “NVMe SSD Genesis Xtreme M.2”. There isn’t a lot of information included on the box other than the different read/write speeds which are listed on the back. Because the Genesis Xtreme SSD is designed to have RGB lighting incorporated, the SSD stick is preinstalled into a case that highlights the RGB lighting. The RGBs are actually built into the stick and can still be seen even if you remove the stick from the case. The case makes the SSD look more like an external hard drive rather than an internal one in my opinion. Asura includes a tiny screwdriver and extra screws for users to be able to disassemble the case the SSD comes in so that it can be used with different types of motherboards.
The SSD is designed to be used with gaming PCs, but for the purposes of this review (testing hard drive speed and performance), I will be using the SSD in a hard drive enclosure and connecting it through USB-C to my MacBook Pro. Disassembling the hard drive case wasn’t difficult, but I did run into an issue where the screws didn’t want to loosen. I was concerned that maybe I would end up stripping the head of the screw out and wouldn’t be able to release the SSD from the case. Fortunately, it did end up loosening and I was able put the SSD into the hard drive enclosure I planned on using.
One extra special surprise I had when I plugged the enclosure into my MacBook Pro was that the hard drive RGBs could still be seen through the vents of the enclosure. This was a very welcome surprise as I thought that feature would be lost inside the enclosure.
The SSD was not immediately readable by the MBP and I had to initialize it using Disk Utility on the computer. I ended up erasing the SSD and reformatting it as ExFat. At this point, the drive showed up on my desktop normally and I was able to resume testing. I utilize two apps for speed testing – Blackmagic Speedtest and AJA System Test. Both apps test the drive performance and speed at which they read and write data. AJA allows users to select specific testing perimeters to see how well it will work for processing different types of video. I ran the Blackmagic test first and then the AJA System Test. The results seemed to be blazing fast. With the Blackmagic test, the read/write speed was over 900mB/s and AJA was showing almost the same speeds but did differ depending on which type of video test was selected. The screenshots below show the official results of each test.
The only ‘complaint’ I have of the SSD is that it seemed to cause the enclosure to get very warm. I measured temperatures between 100º-104ºF while the drive was connected to the computer. While it was surprisingly warm to the touch, 104º is still cool enough for proper operation.
CONCLUSION
The NVMe SSD Genesis Xtreme M.2 is a good option for an SSD. It seems to run very fast and is easy to work with. I find it odd that while it’s an internal hard drive it could require some work on the part of the user to make sure it fits properly with a motherboard. While the SSD can still be purchased on Amazon, the Asura website is not operational. That said, I’ve still included a link below to the site in case they make updates to it.
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