Lexar NM1090 PRO 1000GB

The Lexar NM1090 PRO is Lexar's flagship PCIe 5.0 M.2 2280 drive built on the Phison PS5026-E26 controller and Micron 232-layer 3D TLC. It uses a dedicated LPDDR4 DRAM cache to manage the FTL and maintain random I/O performance, and is tuned to prioritize sequential bandwidth (reported up to ~11.7 GB/s read). The drive requires an active thermal solution—Lexar ships it with a substantial heatsink, integrated fan and RGB—because the Phison E26 controller can thermally throttle or shut down if allowed to exceed roughly 80°C; the cooling assembly increases z-height and the fan requires a motherboard fan header or SATA power depending on revision.

Key Specifications

• Interface: PCIe 5.0 x4 / NVMe 2.0
• Sequential Speeds: 11,700 MB/s Read / 10,000 MB/s Write
• Controller: Phison PS5026-E26 (8-channel)
• NAND Flash: Micron 232-Layer 3D TLC
• DRAM Cache: Yes (LPDDR4)
• Form Factor: M.2 2280 (Double-sided with integrated active heatsink)
• Encryption: AES 256-bit support

Hardware Alternatives

• Crucial T700: Uses the same Micron NAND and Phison controller; differences are mostly firmware and stock cooling options.
• Corsair MP700 PRO: Another E26 implementation that relies on active cooling strategies to sustain peak throughput.
• Seagate FireCuda 540: Shares the underlying architecture but often ships with a passive solution relying on chassis airflow.
• Samsung 990 PRO: Limited to PCIe 4.0 but its proprietary controller often matches or rivals E26 in low-queue-depth random 4K read performance, which impacts daily OS latency.