Fanxiang S660 2TB Review — The Value Sweet Spot in a QLC Budget Drive (2026)
Quick answer
The Fanxiang S660 2 TB is the right budget pick for a game library drive, a media repository, or bulk storage where capacity-per-dollar is the only metric that matters and every file has a backup.
Read: 5000 MB/s Write: 4500 MB/s Endurance: 1600 TBW Warranty: 5 years Interface: M.2 4.0 x 4
The Fanxiang S660 2 TB hits the value sweet spot in this QLC lineup — enough capacity to be a real game library or media drive, enough cache to absorb most real-world writes, and a price that makes the Crucial P3 Plus look expensive.
Controller & Memory
Inside the S660 2 TB, the Phison PS5021-E21T controller manages Micron 176-layer QLC NAND with no onboard DRAM — it borrows 64 MB of system RAM via HMB for mapping duties. It is the same controller-and-NAND recipe as the Crucial P3 Plus, but Fanxiang sells it for less. The PCB is single-sided M.2 2280, which keeps installation simple in laptops, the PS5, and compact desktops where double-sided drives are a tight fit.
This 2 TB model is the practical sweet spot of the S660 family. The 512 GB variant is capacity-constrained for modern use, the 1 TB is a solid budget boot drive, and the 4 TB offers maximum space but at a price that brings more capable TLC alternatives into range. At 2 TB you get a healthy SLC cache buffer — likely in the 300–500 GB range — which means real-world burst writes rarely trip the QLC write cliff under normal gaming and productivity workloads.
It competes with the Crucial P3 Plus, Silicon Power UD90, and Team Group MP44Q at 2 TB — all DRAM-less QLC drives. The S660 typically undercuts all three on price, but the Crucial and Team Group alternatives carry the support infrastructure of established storage brands, which Fanxiang demonstrably lacks.
Storage Comparisons:
S660 Performance & Benchmarks
Rated at 5,000 MB/s reads and 4,500 MB/s writes, the S660 2 TB delivers PCIe 4.0 throughput sufficient for any consumer workload short of sustained professional video ingest. The 2 TB capacity provides enough NAND dies to fully saturate the rated speeds, and the larger SLC cache compared to the 1 TB model means fewer real-world scenarios that exhaust the write buffer.
Fanxiang S660 2 TB vs M.2 4.0 x 4 peers
Switch between sequential throughput and random IOPS to see how this drive stacks up against other M.2 4.0 x 4 SSDs in our database. The highlighted bar is the drive on this page — click any other bar to open that drive.
- Patriot Viper PV593 1 TB: 14,500 MB/s read, 14,000 MB/s write
- Patriot Viper PV593 2 TB: 14,500 MB/s read, 14,000 MB/s write
- Patriot Viper PV593 4 TB: 14,500 MB/s read, 14,000 MB/s write
- Patriot Viper PV573 2 TB: 14,000 MB/s read, 12,000 MB/s write
- Fanxiang S660 2 TB (this drive): 5,000 MB/s read, 4,500 MB/s write
When the cache does fill, writes drop to roughly 1,400 MB/s during the folding phase and eventually settle at native QLC speed around 530 MB/s. This is the defining limitation of QLC NAND, and it is shared by every drive in this class. For a game library drive — where you write large files once during installation and then read them thousands of times — the write cliff is largely academic. For a video editing scratch disk or a drive that sees frequent multi-hundred-gigabyte transfers, it is a daily frustration.
Fanxiang S660 vs Competitors
See how the S660 stacks up against other M.2 4.0 x 4 drives in our database:
Compare with rival drives:
Endurance, TBW & Warranty
Fanxiang advertises a 5-year warranty, though the S660 does not appear on the company's website. The 2 TB endurance is estimated at roughly 1,600 TBW, scaling from the 4 TB model's confirmed 2,800 TBW. At 50 GB of writes per day, that endurance budget lasts over 85 years. The spec-sheet numbers are reassuring; the practical warranty experience is not. User reports describe drives failing within 40 hours and support emails going into a void. For a secondary drive storing replaceable data, this risk may be acceptable. For anything irreplaceable, it is not.
Fanxiang S660 2 TB Specifications
| Category | Value |
|---|---|
| Capacity [?] | 2 TB |
| Interface [?] | M.2 4.0 x 4 |
| Controller [?] | Phison PS5021-E21T 4 Channel |
| Memory type [?] | Micron 176-L QLC |
| DRAM [?] | No |
| Read speed (MB/s) [?] | 5000 |
| Write speed (MB/s) [?] | 4500 |
| Read IOPS [?] | 600000 |
| Write IOPS [?] | 500000 |
| Endurance (TBW) [?] | 1600 |
| MTBF (million hours) [?] | 1500000 |
| Warranty (years) [?] | 5 |
Verdict: Is the S660 Worth It in 2026?
The Fanxiang S660 2 TB is the right budget pick for a game library drive, a media repository, or bulk storage where capacity-per-dollar is the only metric that matters and every file has a backup. Its single-sided PCB, included heatsink, and aggressive pricing make it a tempting PS5 expansion drive — though it sits below Sony's 5,500 MB/s recommendation. Buyers who want a primary boot drive or who care about post-purchase support should choose a Crucial P3 Plus or Team Group MP44Q instead. The S660 wins on price; it loses everywhere else that matters long-term.
+ Pros
- 5,000 MB/s reads and 4,500 MB/s writes on PCIe 4.0
- 2 TB capacity with generous SLC cache buffer for real-world writes
- Single-sided PCB — fits thin laptops and PS5 without clearance issues
- Includes heatsink, pads, screwdriver, and M.2 screw in the box
- Lowest cost per GB among PCIe 4.0 drives in its class
- Cons
- QLC NAND write cliff drops sustained writes to SATA-class ~530 MB/s
- DRAM-less HMB design limits mixed-I/O consistency under load
- Marketed as TLC on some store listings but confirmed QLC via Flash ID tools
- Warranty support is practically unreachable — failed drives go unanswered
- Below Sony's 5,500 MB/s PS5 recommended sequential read speed
Buy this or similar SSD Storage:
Video Review
Cheapest PCI-E 4.0 SSD on AliExpress: Fanxiang S660 Solid State Drive Review (2TB)
