Packaging

Without a desktop adapter bracket or a dense accessory kit the retail box is fairly small. You get a lot of general information on the package.

In the package we found a paper manual that accompanies the actual drive.

SanDisk Extreme 480GB SSD

Here we get our first look at the actual drive. Black on black with a splash of red is visually appealing.

Your model number and serial number are on the back.

All of the mounting points are located where they should be. Here we see the side mounts and on the previous image we saw the bottom mounts.

The SATA power and data labels are also where they should be.

SanDisk chose the LSI SandForce SF-2281 controller and paired it with sixteen 24nm SanDisk Toggle NAND flash chips.

The 240GB Extreme uses just eight NAND flash chips, but this larger 480GB model uses sixteen. This will give us out first opportunity to see how the flash count affects power in our new power tests later on in this review.