Affordable 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD: Acer Shadow Knight N5000 Review

In the 500 yuan range for 2TB, PCIe 4.0 spec, produced by a reputable brand, performance and lifespan are guaranteed, what a bargain!

Welcome to “Kim is Slim”, today we will review the Acer Shadow Knight N5000 SSD, to see if it can become the sweet spot for PCIe 4.0 SSDs?

Affordable 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD: Acer Shadow Knight N5000 Review

Since switching to a Zero Mini PC, my productivity and entertainment have been maximized, and the desktop space is much cleaner, making me feel better. Until one day… a few big games and a dozen movies later, the standard 1TB hard drive started running out of space, leaving me with less than 170GB. Expanding storage has become urgent. For a mini PC, mid-range PCIe 4.0 performance is sufficient, as power consumption and heat dissipation are not as ideal as a desktop.

So the question arises, is there an affordable sweet spot SSD?

I don’t know if the A-share market has bottomed out, but the prices of flash memory products have started to rebound. Now 2TB SSDs basically start at 500 yuan, and top brands often charge seven or eight hundred yuan. Considering that data is priceless, I really hesitate to buy a no-name product for 500 yuan.

After a lot of filtering and comparison, I found one, the Acer Shadow Knight N5000 SSD, with PCIe 4.0 standard performance, priced at 500 yuan for 2TB. What more do you need? I quickly bought it to try.

▼Acer N5000

As a leading global PC and accessory brand, Acer absolutely guarantees quality. In the fall of 2023, Acer launched the Shadow Knight series “Dragon Dual Engine” SSDs targeting the value-for-money player market, including PCIe 4.0 N7000/N5000 and PCIe 3.0 N3500. Interestingly, the model names of the three products correspond to their maximum read speeds, making it very intuitive for consumers to identify performance and class.

The main character of this episode is the Acer Shadow Knight N5000 SSD, with a top configuration of 2TB, PCIe 4×4 interface bandwidth, NVMe 1.4 high-speed protocol, officially claimed sequential read/write speeds of 5000MB/s and 4400MB/s, random read/write IOPS reaching 600K, a five-year warranty for replacement, and a write endurance of up to 1200TBW with an average lifespan of 1.5 million hours.

The packaging of the Acer N5000 is quite design-oriented, with a striking dragon pattern and the word “Engine” in uppercase full of gaming elements, indicating that this is a value-for-money SSD aimed at gamers. The factory comes standard with a dual-head screwdriver and screws, which is very considerate, and also includes four cute themed laser stickers, conveying the determination of the Shadow Knight to accompany players on their journey to victory.

▼Static Experience

The Acer N5000 adopts the mainstream standard of M.2 2280 specification, with a single-sided PCB ultra-thin design, easily adaptable to laptops, mini PCs, or gaming consoles. The front of the SSD features a Shadow Knight Engine logo sticker that also serves as a heatsink, while the back has the product nameplate with the serial number for warranty claims.

It is worth mentioning that the sticker on the front of the N5000 is actually a 0.5mm ultra-thin graphene heatsink, which can enhance the heat dissipation capability of the bare drive. Of course, if the device you are installing has its own heatsink or thermal pad, you should remove this layer of sticker before installation.

After tearing off the heatsink, we can see that the Acer N5000 adopts a single-sided design with four particles and no cache, with the controller being the Maxio MAP1602A, and the flash memory being Acer’s own sealed particles, making the entire PCB very simple.

Through testing, it is not difficult to see that the flash memory particles of the N5000 come from Yangtze Memory (YMTC) third-generation TLC 3D NAND flash memory particles, which is reliable and can be safely purchased.

▼Benchmark Testing

Testing environment…

CPU: AMD R7 7840HS
Motherboard: Zero self-developed
Memory: Crucial DDR5 5600MHz 16GB×2
System Disk: Crucial P3 Plus 1TB
Test Disk: Acer N5000 2TB

The Acer N5000 2TB has an effective capacity of 1908TB after formatting. Looking at the usable space after expansion, I suddenly feel better!

Using CrystalDiskInfo to check the hard drive status, it matches the official specifications completely, with a transmission mode of PCIe 4.0, a transmission protocol of NVMe 1.4, supporting standard hard drive features, and the firmware is SN13124, with read/write counts and power-on time both at zero.

Using CrystalDiskMark for speed testing, the sequential read/write speeds are 4918MB/s and 4719MB/s, with the read speed meeting the official specifications and the write speed exceeding the official specifications (4400MB/s); the 4K random (Q1T1) read/write speeds are 68MB/s and 219MB/s, performing normally for PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Using TxBENCH for speed testing, the scores are relatively strict, with sequential read/write speeds of 4755MB/s and 4744MB/s, and the write speed is still a bit fierce; the 4K random (Q1T1) read/write speeds are 63MB/s and 213MB/s, consistent with CrystalDiskMark test results.

▼Application Experience

The Acer N5000 is a standard PCIe 4.0 SSD, with read and write speeds ten times that of aging SATA SSDs. The actual application experience is not just fast, it’s incredibly fast.

First, let’s experience file copying, using the entire game directory of “Total War: Three Kingdoms”, which is 57.5GB and contains nearly 500 files, for both cross-disk and same-disk copying.

Cross-disk copy: Copying from the system disk to the N5000 mainly tests the collaboration of various components and does not fully utilize the performance of the N5000. The burst read/write speed reaches 4.1GB/s, with a stable read/write speed of about 1.3GB/s, which meets expectations.

Same-disk copy: Copying within the N5000 tests the SSD’s limit for simultaneous read and write. The burst read/write speed reaches 3.5GB/s, with stable read/write speeds also approaching 2GB/s, showing very balanced performance, ensuring that daily data copying will not become a bottleneck.

Next, let’s experience media creation, as Kim is Slim often processes a large number of photos, all in RAW format for editing. If the SSD performance is lacking, just loading RAW files can take a lot of time.

Kim selected a photo directory of 2.29GB, containing 126 RAW files and image parameter files, using SILKYPIX Developer Studio SE Version for image processing.

Highlighting, the following GIF shows the original speed (no fast forward), SILKYPIX opens over 100 RAW photos and loads the corresponding parameters, completing the whole process in seconds. Speed is passion, speed is productivity!

Conclusion

The Acer Shadow Knight N5000 is a typical value-for-money sweet spot SSD. Backed by Acer’s quality assurance and using Yangtze Memory flash particles, it achieves the performance and application experience expected of PCIe 4.0. The key is that the 2TB is priced just over 500 yuan, making it an ideal choice for SSDs during Double 11, very suitable for mini PCs, laptops, and even gaming consoles for expansion upgrades.

Alright, this lesson ends here. For more tech tips, please follow “Kim is Slim”!

Affordable 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD: Acer Shadow Knight N5000 Review

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