A Reddit user posted in the PCMR subreddit to complain about the RMA process for their broken Silicon Power RAM. According to u/permanentlytemporary, they had a problem with the 2x8GB RAM sticks, which they bought for $54.97. However, Silicon Power reportedly charged the user a 15% depreciation fee. While they did not mention when they bought the memory modules, the purchase price indicates this was before the memory shortage gripped the industry, likely in the third quarter of last year.

Given the state of the RAM market, the user was hoping for a replacement — it’s unclear what happened after the company received the RAM kit, but Silicon Power reportedly decided to refund the client instead. Unfortunately, the refund is based on the client’s purchase price, not on the kit's current price. With the 16GB (2x8GB) Silicon Power DDR4-3200 RAM kit now priced at $140.97 on Amazon, the Redditor would have to shell out more than 2.5 times the original cost of the RAM. To add insult to injury, Silicon Power slapped the Redditor with a 15% depreciation fee, meaning they’ll only receive $46.72.

Unfortunately, the depreciation fee follows the company’s policy, which states, “If a product is confirmed to be defective under this (sic) our Limited Warranty, we will, at our sole discretion, provide one of the following remedies… A partial refund of the original purchase price. Any refund amount shall be determined by us based on factors including, but not limited to, product availability, length of product use, the extent of damage, or other reasonable business considerations. Cash refunds equal to the original purchase amount are not guaranteed.”

Two other remedies include a full replacement of the defective product or a full refund of the original purchase price, but it’s unclear why Silicon Power did not choose either.

The Redditor has said they’ve already bought replacement RAM, so this move won't keep them from using their PC. However, they said that they were disappointed with the response, especially given that the refund amount will not even buy one 8GB Silicon Power DDR4-3200 stick, which costs $69.97 on Amazon. In the end, the user probably has no choice but to accept this deal to avoid the hassle of dealing with the company’s RMA system again, which they said “felt like it was from 2002.”

Memory and storage manufacturer Silicon Power just released the Hypera microSDXC Express Card designed for the Switch 2, arriving in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB capacities. The company says that this memory card can hit read speeds of up to 800 MB/s and write speeds of up to 700 MB/s — this reduces download, install, and load times on the new handheld, allowing you to seamlessly play AAA titles without worrying about buffering. It was also tested for reliability, ensuring that it will withstand the rigors of daily use so that you don’t lose data due to the card’s failure.

• Where to buy Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards during Amazon Prime Day 2025

The Nintendo Switch 2 supports older microSDXC standards, so you can view screenshots and watch videos. However, if you want to expand its paltry 256GB built-in storage and install multiple AAA titles, you need a microSDXC Express Card. This standard is far more expensive than the older UHS-I and UHS-II standards, but you’d need the SSD-like performance it delivers to avoid frustration with your new console. Most manufacturers only offer microSDXC Express Cards up to 512GB, which might be pretty limiting if you play several titles. So, Silicon Power’s 1TB capacity is an excellent choice if you plan on collecting games and keeping them ready on your device.

Although the Hypera is made for the Nintendo Switch 2, it’s also compatible with the UHS-I standard. This lets you use it on other devices that don’t support the microSD Express standard just yet, like older consoles, cameras, and smartphones. This makes it quite a flexible storage device, allowing you to use it for content creation, transferring large files, and even recording 4K video on your current equipment, but it is also ready for use with future gear.

We expect more manufacturers to start including this standard in their products, especially as the popularity of the Switch 2 drove demand for this memory card to the limit. Thankfully, companies that made these memory cards quickly scaled up their production to meet demand, allowing you to easily buy Nintendo Switch 2 microSD Express cards if you know where to look — we even spotted one on sale in Walmart, but you'd better act quickly before stocks run out.

Silicon Power has unveiled two brand new XPOWER high-performance DDR5 memory modules, the company's first to feature Clocked Unbuffered DIMM technology, as well as an UDIMM module.

Both the XPOWER Cyclone DDR5 RGB CUDIMM and XPOWER Cyclone DDR5 RGB UDIMM feature Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) 3.0 for one-click overclocking. Both also feature Power Management IC (PMIC) for improved efficiency and stability, as well as On-Die ECC.

The new Cyclone DDR 5 modules feature a 2mm aluminum heatspreader, which Silicon Power says can lower heat by more than 10 degrees C/50 degrees F, as well as an RGB light bar and a striking white aesthetic.

Silicon Power says that its CUDIMM version of the XPOWER Cyclone offers speeds ranging from 8200MT/s to 9200MT/s (based on its own internal testing). There's also CUDIMM's customary built-in Client Clock Driver (CKD) module that Silicon Power says delivers improved signal integrity and tighter timing control.

There's also full support for Intel Core Ultra desktop processors (Series 2) and Intel Z890 series platforms.

The new XPOWER Cyclone DDR5 RGB CUDIMM is available in 48GB capacity (24GBx2) at speeds of 8200/8400/8800/9200 MT/s. There's no word yet on pricing or availability.

The big Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales are officially over, but if you didn't manage to pick up a great storage deal fear not. There are still some bargains to be had. The fantastic Silicon Power US75 wasn't on sale during the extravaganza, but now has $10 knocked off the usual price. 4TB is often the largest capacity for many M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs, and having all that storage on one drive means you can pack more storage into your laptop, PC, or even PlayStation 5 games console.

Head to Amazon where the Silicon Power US75 (4TB) is on sale for $199, a reduction of $10 from its usual $209 price tag, the lowest price it's been since late last year, according to camelcamelcamel.

This is a PCIe Gen 4x4 SSD that comes in the M.2 2280 form factor. The Silicon Power US75 has speedy sequential read and write speeds of up to 7,000/6,500 MB/s, so it's more than fast enough for the latest gaming PCs and also meets the compatibility and speed checks for use in a PlayStation 5 console - although you should add a heatsink to the drive for better cooling as the controller can get pretty hot with prolonged workloads.

Silicon Power's US75 is a single-sided drive that uses the Maxio MAP1602 controller combined with YMTC 232-Layer TLC NAND. The drive is DRAM-less but does have a large 2400TBW endurance. We reviewed the 2TB version of the US75 and found the drive to be very power-efficient, delivering solid all-around performance.

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool in our testing to test file transfer performance with a custom 50GB dataset. Copying 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then following up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file to really put the drive to work.

The Silicon Power US75 comes with a 5-year manufacturer warranty and is based on either the 2400TBW or the warranty period. Please check both Amazon and Silicon Power's website for my detailed warranty information.

We put the Silicon Power Xpower Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 memory kit through the wringer and found that it has great overclocking headroom that makes it a contender for our list of best RAM. Silicon Power doesn't have an ample selection of DDR5 memory products yet. In addition to your typical run-of-the-mill memory modules, the Zenith series also hails from the company's Xpower gaming division. Silicon Power introduced the Zenith series with its DDR4 memory kits. The company has since expanded the Zenith series to the latest DDR5 standard. Like the previous generation, Silicon Power's Zenith DDR5 memory kits will give consumers the choice of a standard trim or an RGB trim. Regardless of the flavor, Zenith DDR5 memory kit capacity varies between 16GB (2x8GB) to 64GB (2x32GB), whereas the available frequency spans from 5,200 MT/s to 6,000 MT/s.

Silicon Power didn't bother redesigning its Zenith RGB DDR5 memory modules. They look the same as the Zenith RGB DDR4 counterparts. If the company didn't specify the type of memory on the heat spreader, consumers wouldn't have a way to tell them apart. Silicon Power always offers the Zenith DDR5 memory with and without RGB in white or black colors.

Regardless of the version, the memory boasts a non-intrusive aluminum heat spreader with a height no taller than 38.5mm (1.52 inches). Overall, it's a clean design with minimum marketing. The RGB version of the Zenith DDR5 memory relies solely on your motherboard's lighting software. It's compatible with Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

The Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 C40 is a 32GB memory kit that comprises two 16GB DDR5 memory modules. They are single-rank memory modules with SK hynix H5CG48MEBDX014 (M-die) integrated circuits (ICs). Each chip is 2GB in capacity, so there are eight of them on each memory module. The power management IC (PMIC) is from Richtek, specifically, the 0D=8K J4N solution.

The memory defaults to DDR5-4800 with very loose timings at 40-40-40-77. It's a memory kit that caters to Intel processors, so only one XMP 3.0 profile is onboard. Activating the profile will make the memory modules hit DDR5-5600 and set the timings and DRAM voltage to 40-40-40-76 and 1.25V, respectively. See our PC Memory 101 feature and How to Shop for RAM story for more timings and frequency considerations.

Comparison Hardware

The Intel system runs the Core i9-13900K on the MSI MEG Z690 Unify-X with the 7D28vAA firmware. In contrast, the AMD system pairs the Ryzen 7 7700X with the MSI MPG X670E Carbon WiFi changed to the 7D70v176 firmware. The Corsair CUE H100i Elite LCD liquid cooler keeps our Raptor Lake and Zen 4 processor operating temperatures under check.

The MSI GeForce RTX 4080 16GB Gaming X Trio tackles the more graphics-intensive workloads, ensuring that there isn't a graphics bottleneck in our gaming RAM benchmarks. The Windows 11 installation, benchmarking software, and games reside on Crucial's MX500 SSDs. Meanwhile, the Corsair RM1000x Shift ATX 3.0 power supply provides our systems with clean and abundant power, directly feeding the GeForce RTX 4080 with a native 16-pin (12VHPWR) power cable. Lastly, the Streacom BC1 open-air test bench is vital to organizing our hardware.

Intel Performance

The Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 was slightly slower than the ToughRAM XG RGB DDR5-5600. Silicon Power's memory kit fell behind its rival in almost all performance and gaming benchmarks, except for Watch Dogs: Legion.

AMD Performance

The ToughRAM XG RGB DDR5-5600 continued to prevail on the AMD platform, outperforming the Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 in just about all the workloads. The Zenith RGB DDR5-5600's strongest showing was in the HandBrake x265 conversion test, which faintly outpaced the ToughRAM XG RGB DDR5-5600.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

SK hynix M-die ICs are hands down the best for overclocking right now. We easily pushed the Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 memory to DDR5-6800 with 1.4V. The CAS Latency (CL) had no issues going from 40 cycles to 34 cycles. However, we had to increase the tRCD and tRP from 40 cycles to 45 cycles to achieve stability. Overall, it was a great overclock and well within expectations from the M-die ICs.

Lowest Stable Timings

Most users that want an SK hynix M-die memory kit will likely overclock it. Nonetheless, seeing how tight the timings can get on the Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 memory kit is interesting. By applying a 1.4V DRAM voltage, we tweaked the timings to 28-34-34-76.

Bottom Line

The Xpower Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 C40’s out-of-the-box performance is nothing to marvel at. Instead, the memory kit’s greatest asset is its SK hynix M-die which enables it to hit high frequencies.

There are two aspects to consider, though: Nothing in life is guaranteed, so neither is overclocking headroom. Even though Silicon Power employs SK hynix M-die ICs, you are still at the mercy of the silicon lottery since no two memory kits overclock s the same. Furthermore, there is no reassurance that the company will continue using M-die ICs on this model. It certainly isn't unheard of for vendors to swap raw materials during a product’s midlife due to difficulties in securing supply. 

The Xpower Zenith RGB DDR5-5600 C40 retails for $78.97 on Newegg. The black version is also available with the same price tag. You can save a few bucks with the non-RGB version, which sells for $73.97.

• MORE: Best RAM
• MORE: DDR DRAM FAQs And Troubleshooting Guide
• MORE: All Memory Content

Right now at Amazon, users can find the Silicon Power P34A60 2TB SSD for its lowest price yet. This SSD has been going for around $95 lately but today it’s discounted to just $75. This puts the final price at around four cents per GB. The drive has a rated read speed of 2,200 MBps and a write speed of 1,600 MBps. For a budget, DRAMless PCIe 3.0 SSD, this is a great value.

This offer is for the 2TB version but other capacities are available, as well, including 128 GB, 256 GB, 512 GB, and 1TB versions. We reviewed the Silicon Power P34A60 when it debuted, testing the 512GB capacity and noting its competitive performance and power efficiency. 

While the P34A60  is not as fast as mainstream PCIe 4 drives, this is an excellent deal for expanding storage on a budget. It should be more than suitable for average users and even gamers looking for more space to expand their libraries. 

On our tests with the 512GB capacity, the drive loaded Final Fantasy only a second slower than the speedy Adata XPG SX8200 Pro.

According to Silicon Power, the drive is supported with an endurance of 1,200 TBW . Users also receive a limited 5-year manufacturer’s warranty with the purchase. If this deal doesn't appeal to you, check out our complete list of best SSD deals and our list of the best SSDs overall.

November 18, 2022 Update: We've updated this article with new testing for the 1TB Solidigm P41 Plus SSD on page 2.

Original Review published October 17, 2022:

The Solidigm P41 Plus is the successor to the Intel 670p, using the same QLC flash but going with a DRAM-less, PCIe 4.0 design. While QLC has its limitations in sustained performance, the hybrid pSLC cache does a good job of masking this weakness. The drive is not particularly power-efficient, but it does run cool and is ideally suited to general laptop and desktop PC use, like its predecessor, without breaking the bank. The drive’s new controller has proven capable, but stiff competition remains in the market, including from such drives as Crucial’s P3 Plus.

Solidigm officially formed in December of last year as part of the larger Intel-SK hynix deal that found SK hynix buying Intel’s NAND and SSD business. Solidigm is a subsidiary of SK hynix, a company that has recently brought out two excellent SSDs: the Gold P31 and the Platinum P41. 

The new P41 Plus uses the same flash as the Intel 670p, but SK hynix has its own 176-layer QLC based on a different architecture. The drive’s controller is also new but has the same focus as the 670p’s - strong everyday performance. Combined, this makes the P41 Plus a drive designed for OEMs, prebuilts, laptops, budget builds, and more.

Solidigm has done its homework, taking Intel’s foundation from the 660p, 665p, and 670p drives and applying its own knowledge to produce a competent SSD. Solidigm released a wealth of information during a webinar before the drive’s release. Particular focus is paid to the drive being designed for real-world workloads. Solidigm also provides a decent software package for the P41 Plus, including a driver that introduces additional functionality to deliver a better everyday experience, like a new type of caching feature. 

Does it live up to the hype? Recent PCIe 4.0 SSDs have gone above and beyond with new controllers and flash. However, it may be challenging to find a foothold in the current market for Solidigm, especially as prices continue to drop. The SK hynix parent has made popular drives but often struggled to achieve global availability. Time will tell for Solidigm, but the P41 Plus does appear to be a good first effort.

Specifications

The Solidigm P41 Plus is available at 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. This matches its predecessor, the Intel 670p, and Solidigm doesn’t offer a 4TB option like the Crucial P3 Plus. This drive uses the same flash as the 670p and a similar, if newer, controller, albeit without DRAM. Performance is rated up to 4125/3325 MBps for sequential read and write, respectively, and up to 390K/540K IOPS for random read and write. This isn’t quite as fast as other mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Solidigm may have opted for consistency and reliability over peak performance.

Solidigm backs this with a five-year warranty and 400TB of write endurance per TB of capacity. This level of write endurance is fairly good for QLC, easily beating the P3 Plus. It also comes out of the gate with a lower MSRP for all capacities, making it an affordable option. However, as with the 670p, it is probably best avoided at 512GB unless budget is a top priority. Higher capacities can make better use of the dense QLC, and the correspondingly larger pSLC cache helps better hide poor native performance.

Software and Accessories

Solidigm offers a few pieces of software for the P41 Plus, including the Solidigm Storage Tool (SST), the Solidigm Firmware Update Tool (SFUT), and the Solidigm Synergy Sofware (SSS). The SST acts like an SSD toolbox with GUI and has command line (CLI) functionality, offering information about the drive, including SMART with utilities for secure erase, firmware updating, and other diagnostics. The SFUT is a bootable tool for USBs or CDs that you can use to update the drive’s firmware.

Aside from the SST, the SSS includes a storage driver for the P41 Plus, which offers additional functionality. Specifically, this allows for an improved communication path between the host and storage. This optimizes how data is stored by using host metadata to discover the type of data being stored and also how the user tends to use that data. Such a driver, via NVMe, also allows the host to manage caching (HMC), prefetching, and queuing of data to improve performance transparently. The P41 Plus also can do read caching from pSLC.

This type of tiered caching is reminiscent of the Enmotus FuzeDrive, which could have separate pSLC and QLC sections. In that case, performance and endurance could be improved, but a special driver was also required. Solidigm states on its website that its driver can improve performance by up to 21%. Although we tested this feature, it didn't have an impact on our typical benchmarks. Real-world improvements may exist, but this will vary on how you use the drive.

A Closer Look

The P41 Plus has a label on the front and the back. The front label displays the subsidiary’s logo and name with the use of an attractive purple hue for a backdrop. The rear label has more information on the drive. It is a single-sided SSD with a controller and just two NAND packages, made possible by using dense QLC.

The controller is a Silicon Motion (SMI) SM2269XT. This controller has appeared on the Micron 2400 OEM series of SSDs, coupled with Micron’s 176-layer QLC with those drives. This controller’s performance characteristics place it against competing products such as the InnoGrit IG5220, the Phison E21T, and WD’s proprietary design on the SN770.

SMI is a bit late to the game with its new PCIe 4.0 controllers, partly because of the shift from a Cortex-R5 to a Cortex-R8 base. The latter achieves significantly better performance per clock, although there are other differences. So it’s not necessarily more efficient, but the 12nm dual-core design of the SM2269XT should keep it competitive.

The flash packages are labeled 29F08T4A0CQK2. This tells us it’s from Intel, 8Tb or 1TB per package, and of the 144-layer (K) generation. This is now Solidigm NAND, although SK hynix has its own 176-layer QLC, as presented at ISSCC 2022. This particular 144-layer flash is also used on the Intel 670p, utilizing a floating gate architecture. SK hynix’s QLC is, instead, charge trap flash, much like Micron’s 176-layer QLC. All of this flash is essentially comparable in performance.

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Comparison Products 

At 1TB the P41 Plus has more competition as there are several strong TLC-based alternatives. This includes the Silicon Power UD90, based on the Phison E21T controller that also powers the P3 Plus, and IG5220 drives like the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. An alternative QLC drive is the Sabrent Rocket Q4 which uses the eight-channel, DRAM-equipped Phison E16. Samsung’s 980 represents the best DRAM-less PCIe 3.0 option. Popular in this segment is the WD SN770. The SK hynix Platinum P41 represents the very best in PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The P41 Plus does very well here, showing in particular that the older hardware on the Rocket Q4 has difficulty keeping up with newer drives.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The P41 Plus finishes third in PCMark, too, still far behind the SN770 and Platinum P41 but doing well against the other drives.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The P41 Plus struggles a bit more here at 1TB, generally unable to keep up with the TLC drives. It just edges out the 980 in copies but is otherwise underwhelming. Older QLC, even with DRAM, shows its age in the Rocket Q4.

Synthetic Testing - CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tool that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. This tool gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The P41 Plus is not designed for sequential performance, although that is not necessarily a huge concern. This drive may be ideal as a primary drive in a laptop where you are probably not going to be doing a lot of high-speed transfers that would exceed the drive’s capabilities. Nevertheless, it is no match for faster drives. Random performance in general is pretty good, particularly for a QLC drive, which should make for a comfortable “real world” experience.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The 1TB P41 Plus writes in pSLC at around 3.075GBps for over 44 seconds, suggesting a cache of at least 135GB. Officially this is specified to be 150GB. As with the 2TB SKU, this is a hybrid cache with some static pSLC and the rest dynamic. As the static portion is dedicated, it is smaller at 1TB; it is possible to see the static portion for the first few seconds of writes. QLC speeds are at most 250MBps, about half as fast as with the 2TB, which makes sense as the 1TB drive has half the number of flash dies.

QLC drives are best with capacity so we do recommend at least 1TB if possible, although 2TB may be a safer bet. The 1TB P41 Plus fares sufficiently here and in other tests but needs to be cheaper than the TLC options. The P3 and P3 Plus make more sense at 4TB if you need capacity, of course, but the P41 is a good PCIe 4.0 replacement for the 670p. Slow sustained performance is often a concern with QLC so you should buy more capacity than you need. With write performance it is clear that 2TB would be more comfortable, but the drive is good enough at 1TB.

As with the 2TB SKU, the 1TB model can use pSLC as a read cache if the drive is less than half full. Solidigm’s Synergy Storage Driver should help improve performance for everyday activities.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

No surprises here as the P41 Plus’s efficiency at 1TB is close to what it was at 2TB. We see really great things from the other PCIe 4.0 drives, which makes the P41 Plus appear a bit lackluster in comparison. It’s still better than older QLC drives and most PCIe 3.0 SSDs as well. This is not a huge factor if most of the time your PC is idle, but especially if you have multiple drives it may be beneficial to step up to something that can transfer faster and more efficiently.

The FX900 shows what is possible with new hardware. Not shown is the Crucial P3, which with QLC is super efficient, albeit restricted to PCIe 3.0 bandwidth. The SN770 proves again why it was such a nice surprise for reviewers.

As with the 2TB model, it is difficult to get this drive warm enough to throttle. The cache is too small and the QLC too slow. The P3 and P3 Plus have a larger cache but are also slower outside of it, and likewise proved to be relatively cool-running. Combine that with single-sided SKUs and you have a drive that would work great in any environment without additional cooling.

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Solidigm P41 Plus SSD (1TB)

RATING: ★★★ (3 Stars)

PROS

+ Nice first product from Solidigm
+ Good support with a reasonable warranty
+ Hybrid pSLC cache with read capability

CONS

-  DRAM-less with largely mediocre performance
- Entering a crowded market

OUR VERDICT
The 2TB Solidigm P41 Plus is a competent first effort that yields a capable mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD built on QLC. The hybrid cache and strong support make it attractive, especially as it runs cool, but the market is crowded and its performance is largely average. If priced right, it’s a good budget primary SSD. 

Comparison Products (1TB)

As the Solidigm P41 Plus is essentially the successor to the Intel 670p, we compare it to that drive. QLC alternatives include the Crucial P3 Plus, the Sabrent Rocket Q, and the Sabrent Rocket Q4. WD’s SN770 is a direct competitor with TLC. We also compare our best drive from Solidigm’s parent SK hynix, the Platinum P41. Lastly, we have the Crucial P5 Plus.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The P41 Plus ends up in the middle of the pack, which is actually a good showing. It beats all of the other QLC drives, demonstrating the ability of new hardware to improve performance significantly. The exception would perhaps be the P3 Plus, which uses a new controller and new QLC, although it does well enough and is, in any case, intended to be a budget drive up to 4TB.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

As expected, the P41 Plus again performs near the middle of the pack, doing well enough even to encroach a bit on the TLC SN770. The SN770 is a strong example of a mid-grade PCIe 4.0 TLC drive. So many strong options can make it difficult to pick the right drive, but QLC tends to be the better option for capacity, while many budget TLC drives are aimed at 1TB.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The QLC drives generally underperform during the read workloads in this test, a consequence of slower native read latency and potentially fewer planes due to density. Most flash is trending towards a four-plane design, and TLC usually requires more dies to reach any given capacity. In addition, QLC requires higher read precision due to having more bits per cell, which inevitably slows the average response time. There have been innovations in this area, such as with independent plane reads and more intelligent write behavior — for example, writing hotter data in lower pages that are read more quickly.

This is different for writes as these tend to fall in single-bit pSLC that is generally of a similar speed for consumer flash, whether it be TLC or QLC. With sufficient dies, you are limited by the interface and/or the controller by its bus speed. Copy performance can reveal a little bit more as it will be bottlenecked a bit by QLC read performance. As such, the P41 Plus is pretty close to the 670p, which uses the same flash. Older QLC falls more behind and TLC, in general, does well. Perhaps the most interesting result is from the P3 Plus, as it uses Micron’s rival QLC, but performance is pretty close.

Synthetic Testing - CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tool that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. This tool gives us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Sequential performance is bound by the interface, such that the PCIe 4.0 QLC drives — the P41 Plus, P3 Plus, and Rocket Q4 — clearly beat the 670p and Rocket Q. However, the P41 Plus is at the bottom versus the other two. One reason is that Phison controllers are known for peak sequential performance. This puts the P3 Plus atop these three drives as it also has newer flash than the Rocket Q4. The TLC drives, particularly the Platinum P41 and P5 Plus, easily outperform the QLC options.

Performance in random workloads tends to be more important, and the P41 Plus shines here. It is important to remember that the P41 Plus is a successor to the 670p. The 670p also uses an SMI controller, albeit with different cores and DRAM. Historically, SMI controllers have done well with random read performance, so it isn’t surprising to see these two drives near the top during testing with low Queue Depths (QD). More surprising is the random write performance, which has the P41 Plus on top during the low QD test. High QD is, as of yet, less critical but varies with the controller's horsepower.

Several factors influence total latency. Most of the delay is when reading or writing from flash, as it is the slowest link in the chain. The impact of DMA buffers and bus transfer times are relatively small, as can be ECC. In this case, with low QD writes, the strong performance of the P41 Plus may stem from the new controller. The Cortex-R8 allows for wide power calibration for potentially very fast access times, although, as suggested above, on paper, it is less efficient under load than the R5.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. 

The P41 Plus uses a hybrid cache like the 670p, although this can be difficult to discern. Keen observers will see the pSLC cache pattern is slightly different for the first few seconds. The 2TB P41 Plus writes at around 3.25GBps for 83 seconds, equalling a cache of about 270GB. Officially, it’s declared to be 300GB with a substantial static portion. Static and dynamic pSLC cache have different characteristics, but the importance here is that the drive will always have some dedicated pSLC cache even when the drive is very full.

Once the pSLC cache is full, the P41 Plus begins writing directly to the QLC, which is much slower at around 400MBps. It matches the 670p but outperforms the P3 Plus. The SN770, with its massive cache but TLC flash, ends up about the same outside of pSLC. QLC drives are known for poor sustained performance, although this 144-layer flash is known to be the best on the market. Nevertheless, the P41 Plus’s cache should be sufficient under normal workloads.

Although a pSLC cache typically operates as a write cache, it is not uncommon for drives to use some of the pSLC for read caching. This is one reason drives may be reluctant to empty and recover the cache, another being that unnecessary pSLC cycling can increase wear. Solidigm takes this further with the P41 Plus — if a specific driver is installed. Then, if the drive is less than half full, the pSLC can act as a read cache for the “hottest” data, tracking it with its own driver versus Microsoft’s native NVMe option. It should be noted that, at this time, DirectStorage relies on Microsoft’s native driver.

PSLC writes faster than native QLC, but it also reads up to several times faster in terms of typical latency, so this can be a nice feature. This is especially true as general use is read-heavy, and certain data will be read more often, such as boot or OS data. Solidigm’s software can prioritize such data to make the cache more effective. However, there are certainly downsides to needing a driver for this feature if using a non-Windows OS. Additionally, there will be some overhead in tracking this information, such as potentially higher DRAM demands, but in practice, it should be negligible on a modern system.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The 2TB P41 Plus has good idle power consumption, and although this matters most in battery-limited laptops, any proper NVMe drive should pull very little power when idle. Still, every bit helps on a desktop. In terms of efficiency, however, the P41 Plus is merely average. It does beat the older QLC drives but falls short of the P3 Plus, SN770, and Platinum P41. On the other hand, the Crucial P3, not shown here, proved to be super-efficient as a PCIe 3.0 version of the P3 Plus.

This is still a good showing, and we would absolutely recommend the P41 Plus for laptop use. However, there are reasons why it would be less efficient than the P3 Plus. We’ve already mentioned controller differences earlier in the review. There are also flash differences, including the I/O rate and architecture. For example, charge trap flash may be more power-efficient with simpler programming, although many potential factors exist. It’s possible Micron’s 176-layer QLC is a bit more efficient.

In either case, we did not expect the P41 Plus to have significant thermal issues. We measured it at 34C when idle. After writing 500GB of data, the drive peaked in the mid-60Cs. The drive is not fast enough post-pSLC to cause a throttling effect due to heat buildup.

 Test Bench and Testing Notes 

We use an Alder Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Solidigm P41 Plus looks to replicate Intel’s QLC SSD success and improve upon it. Much of the philosophy is the same, but Solidigm has also taken a streamlined approach: Make a simple, accessible drive aimed at real-world performance, and make it affordable, thus taking the lessons learned from the 660p line to make a better budget SSD. Solidigm backs it with good software and support but isn’t afraid to innovate. While requiring a unique Windows-based driver for full functionality is not ideal, it is at least an interesting concept to pursue.

Some might say that Intel’s QLC line was not a particularly smashing success. In fact, QLC has been slow to gain market share. However, its rise is inevitable, and investment in the technology now will pay off down the road. The 670p, in particular, was a solid drive, but newer technology and techniques can make it even better. Crucial’s P3 and P3 Plus have shown that you can get 4TB affordably with QLC on drives that perform well enough. The P41 Plus is perhaps a bit different, serving better as a primary budget drive, and more options are usually a good thing.

Still, there are probably too many good options in the SSD market right now, especially for PCIe 4.0. It is a good problem to have, but it may mean you have to be more selective when choosing a drive. The P41 Plus is a good option for prebuilts and, if priced right on sale, will be compelling as a single-drive option, particularly for laptops. The real-world performance, especially with light usage, is solid, even without the read cache feature. This is a good start for Solidigm, even if it’s not earth-shattering or super exciting.

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The Silicon Power UD90 is the first drive we’ve had on our testbed with Phison’s new E21T SSD controller. If you only need 1TB of capacity, this is a relatively inexpensive PCIe 4.0 drive that would work great in a Playstation 5 or desktop PC. Thanks to the DRAM-less controller and 176-layer TLC flash, it’s also power efficient enough to work great with laptops. It comes with a fairly decent warranty and some software support, too, earning a spot on our list of Best SSDs. However, we do recommend additional cooling, if possible.

The UD90 finds itself up against tough competition from drives we’ve recently reviewed, including the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. If you’re looking for a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive, there are better options, but this segment is the better value for your dollar. Many top-tier PCIe 3.0 drives with DRAM have come down significantly in price, so the real question is if it’s worth compromising with a drive like the UD90. For the PS5, absolutely; for PCs, it depends. These newer drives can be very efficient for laptops and make good primary or secondary drives for desktops, assuming you don’t need more than about 1TB of space.

The UD90 uses the same flash as many other great drives we’ve reviewed, but it has a new controller. We’re seeing more competition in this space as Silicon Motion has its SM2269XT controller on the way, too. This is a good thing as you have more choices, but it can make it challenging to pick the perfect drive. Perhaps the most significant factor here is cost, and the UD90 should launch at a very attractive price point on Amazon. Let’s see how it measures up to the excellent but more expensive FX900.

Specifications

The UD90 comes in three capacities of 250GB, 500GB, and 1TB. Silicon Power has informed us that it intends to launch with just the 1TB SKU in the U.S. The smaller SKUs are for other regions and markets for now. This drive reaches peak performance at 1TB, and that capacity tends to be the “sweet spot” for mid-range drives like this, so this is not too terrible. Some users prefer smaller drives for the OS in multi-drive builds, but it’s hard to get the most out of a fast PCIe 4.0 drive without a higher capacity for more flash and interleaving.

The 1TB drive reaches 4.8/4.2 GBps for sequential read and write and 570K/600K IOPS for random read and write, both respectively. These numbers are firmly in the mid-range against drives like the FX900 and P400, which use a different controller but the same flash. It’s faster than entry-level PCIe 4.0 drives like the S50 Lite and SN750 SE. The UD90 is warrantied for five years and 600 TB of data writes (TBW) at 1TB, which is pretty solid.

Silicon Power says this will arrive at $94.99, making it very competitive in its intended market segment. This is a bit cheaper than the HP FX900 and the Patriot P400, making it a good budget choice or alternative for the Playstation 5 as well as for cheaper PCIe 4.0 builds.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power has a download of its “SP ToolBox” available on its site. This piece of software offers information about the drive, including SMART and other diagnostics. It’s basic but better than nothing. You can clone and image the drive with free software options.

A Closer Look

The UD90 has a label on top showing basic information about the drive, such as the capacity and serial number. Under the label, we see the controller in the middle along with a PMIC, flanked by two NAND packages to either side. There is no DRAM. This type of layout can have some advantages, for example as WD touted with its WD Black and SN750, but the average user can just look at it and imagine a balancing of heat dissipation.

The Phison E21T is Phison’s new PCIe 4.0 DRAM-less controller, positioned to compete with InnoGrit’s IG5220 and SMI’s SM2269XT. It also competes with WD’s proprietary controller used on the SN770. This controller has four channels with a bus speed of 1600 MT/s, capable of using current and upcoming TLC and QLC flash. It has Phison’s 4th-Gen LDPC error correction, end-to-end data path protection, and RAID error correction through Smart ECC 2.0. Encryption support for TCG OPAL 2.0 and Pyrite is optionally available but not activated on this drive.

Performance-wise, this controller can hit up to 5/4.5 GBps for sequential read and write, respectively, and up to 780K/800K random read and write IOPS, also respectively. This matches up nicely with the IG5220, which we’ve seen in past reviews of drives like the HP FX900 and Patriot P400. This is our first review of a drive using the E21T, but we expect to see more drives using this controller. We also expect it to be competitive.

The flash packages are labeled IA7BG94AYA which means they contain dies of Micron’s 176-layer TLC. Each package should host four dies, that is 4DP or QDP, at 64GB per die. The total of sixteen dies is ideal for this four-channel controller, allowing peak interleaving at 1TB.

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Comparison Products

We compared the 1TB Silicon Power UD90 to direct rivals like the Patriot P400, HP FX900, and SN770. The rest of the field includes high-end PCIe 4.0 drives including proprietary designs with the Crucial P5 Plus, Samsung 980 Pro, and SK hynix Platinum P41. Lastly, the Kingston Fury Renegade represents drives built on Phison’s E18 controller with 176-layer flash. This excellent flash is found in five of the eight 1TB drives on this list.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The UD90 performs favorably here, beating the P400 and FX900. The SN770 manages to pull away from its peers. This test isn’t the be-all and end-all for gaming performance, which in fact tends to be the same for any SSD. Load times can vary, but in general, the advantages are pretty small.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

The UD90 again beats the FX900 and P400 in this test but falls behind the high-end PCIe 4.0 drives. This is still a strong showing for what is basically a budget drive. Once again, the SN770 punches above its weight.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The UD90’s first misstep is here, but it’s not a big one and not unexpected. DiskBench results are limited by a drive’s bandwidth potential, and as such, the lower-end drives like the SN770, FX900, P400, and UD90, fall behind on reads and copies. The UD90 still remains pretty close to its direct rivals. If you absolutely need the fastest file transfers, you should be looking at a high-end PCIe 4.0 drive.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

Phison controllers tend to do well with sequential reads in ATTO, and the UD90’s new controller is no different. It’s actually up there with the Fury Renegade and Platinum P41. Its sequential write performance is a bit more modest, but it still matches or beats most drives. This is a very strong showing for a drive of this caliber. Phison’s E21T controller is a bit late to the game, but it was worth the wait: This is more than a suitable replacement for the E16, popular in budget PS5 drives.

Sequential results in CrystalDiskMark are limited by the interface or controller bandwidth, as determined by its channel count and bus speed, leaving the UD90 in the lower tiers. However, it’s still faster than any PCIe 3.0 drive. Random low queue depth 4K performance is good, as we’d expect from this flash with an optimized controller, but it falls behind with reads versus the FX900 and P400. In practice, this might not mean much as all of these drives are very quick here, but InnoGrit’s IG5220 controller is better optimized for that all-important metric.

Higher queue depth 4K results are a mixed bag, but this drive isn’t intended for those sorts of workloads. However, we do still see lagging with reads in particular. Nevertheless, these numbers are good and beat anything from the last generation of DRAM-less NVMe drives.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The UD90 writes in its fastest, pseudo-SLC state at over 4.6 GBps for almost 15 seconds. This implies a dynamic cache of around 69GB which, although presumably shrinking with drive usage, is sufficient to absorb random and smaller sequential writes. The UD90 then drops down to around 1.8 GBps for another eight minutes of writes. Then, finally, it hits its slowest state at about 275 MBps.

We can reasonably compare this to its peers and see that it has a significantly smaller SLC cache, a faster middle state, and a very slow worst-case scenario when SLC must be emptied. It nevertheless manages to outwrite the FX900 given enough time, but this is not a typical workload. Therefore, this design seems closer to something like a Phison E12-powered drive, as in our Corsair MP510 review, than launch Phison E16 drives like the Sabrent Rocket 4.0.

DRAM-less drives often have large SLC caches to hide their weak native performance states, but a more conservative design (as with newer DRAM-equipped E16 drives, like the MSI Spatium M470) can offer better consistency. Most users will not see the worst a drive has to offer, but dynamic cache inevitably shrinks with drive usage, and sustained writes will eventually slow down the drive. The UD90 offers a nice, balanced approach, with higher speeds in the middle state than we see on E12 and E16 SSDs, although in practice what we see with the FX900 and P400 might offer a slightly better user experience.

The UD90 did not recover its SLC cache quickly, instead bouncing back to its middle state, which is still plenty quick. This drive can better handle bursty writes, especially random ones, as befits normal consumer usage. You'll need to jump to a high-end model if you want faster performance in sustained write workloads.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The UD90 is extremely efficient in our power consumption test, right up there with the FX900 and Platinum P41. Although this result is limited by testing only a file copy, it does demonstrate that this drive is quick enough to finish tasks without much delay. A DRAM-less, four-channel controller design like this, coupled with an efficient 176-layer flash, is bound to be an excellent choice for laptops.

Its top power state is rated for 5W versus 3.5W for competitors, but it is more efficient in its other states with the trade-off of higher overall enter and exit latencies for idle. It can also move between active states freely with little delay. These numbers are only a guideline, anyway, but do offer a general idea of drive responsiveness and power draw. In practice, this is a flexible and efficient design.

We measured the drive temperature at idle and under sustained writes, both via SMART and with a temperature gun. The UD90 idled in the mid-40s degrees Celsius but reached 81C as measured by SMART and 73C as measured by gun after 380GB of sustained writes. Although not a realistic workload, this suggests that additional cooling could benefit this drive.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Silicon Power UD90 is yet another winner in a stream of affordable, DRAM-less SSDs that manage to exceed expectations. Improvements to controller design and flash have allowed manufacturers to offer efficient, powerful drives at a reasonable price point. Of course, these aren’t the fastest drives — they don’t saturate your PCIe 4.0 connection, and in everyday use, they might not be a huge upgrade over older PCIe 3.0 drives that had DRAM. However, they work with the PS5 and offer a great experience on PC — if only at limited capacities.

The UD90 compares favorably with drives like the FX900 and P400, plus other popular drives like the ADATA Atom 50. It scores a bit better with peak sequential read performance over bigger block sizes but tends to fall behind a bit during random read workloads. This probably doesn’t mean much to most users, and it more than passes the threshold for an excellent user experience. The SLC cache is more conservative than what’s found on its peers, including the SN770, which does suggest it should be more consistent across a range of workloads and fill rates, but it will not absorb as many writes at maximum speed.

Silicon Power backs this drive with an SSD toolbox and decent support; no three-year, low-endurance warranty here. We think it may benefit from a heatsink, but it is probably not required — most other drives in this segment also lack full heatsinks. This drive should be cheaper at launch than its competition. That makes it a fantastic budget choice and hard to beat, but be aware it may not be possible to get it at capacities other than 1TB in the U.S.

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The Patriot Viper VPR400 is a mid-range PCIe 4.0 SSD designed with a bright aesthetic in mind. The stylish heatsink features bright RGB lighting, and the SSD has software support for RGB sync. The VPR400's hardware is similar to two other drives we have reviewed, the HP FX900 and Patriot's own P400, so it’s effectively a gaming-oriented version of the latter. The P400 proved to be a stalwart drive with good performance for its price. Like that drive, the VPR400 is DRAM-less, but it comes equipped with a fast controller and newer flash that deliver solid performance in tandem with the bright lighting, earning a spot on our list of Best SSDs.

RGB is still all the rage, especially in the “gamer” space, although some drives do not support color control like the VPR400. The downside to this feature is that, historically, drives with RGB tended to run hotter with a higher risk of throttling. We'll test the drive in both the on and off states. The VPR400's heatsink, while aesthetically pleasing, doesn't seem well-designed for heat dissipation. That said, we didn't have much trouble with the P400 overheating.

The SSD market is becoming a bit oversaturated, especially in the mid-range, and more drives are on the way. New SSD controllers and flash are also on the horizon. It’s important for individual drives to stand out; therefore, Patriot has chosen to focus on RGB with the VPR400. If you only want the performance, you can opt for the cheaper P400 or one of its competitors, but if you're interested in adding some RGB to your M.2 port, this might just be the right fit for your build’s theme.

Specifications

The Patriot VPR400 comes in three capacities of 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. At the time of review, only the 512GB and 1TB SKUs were available and documented. Compared to drives like the P400, the VPR400 comes with a significant premium in the interest of aesthetics: you’re paying more for the heatsink and RGB. The drive is otherwise standard fare for its hardware in terms of performance. The warranty, at least, is quite good, with a full five years of coverage with endurance of up to 800 TB of data writes (TBW) at 1TB.

Software and Accessories

Patriot offers an RGB sync app for download on its website, and it's compatible with the RGB sync systems from ASRock, ASUS, Gigabyte, and MSI. Patriot also cites support for their Viper toolbox, a typical SSD application for information and utility use. Patriot additionally says that the VPR400 has an advanced temperature control function.

A Closer Look

The VPR400 has a black heatsink on top with sixteen windows for LEDs to shine and an informative label on the back. The thermal padding appears to make relatively good contact. Under the heatsink, we see the controller and two NAND packages, with no DRAM present. We can also spot the LEDs.

The VPR400 uses the InnoGrit IG5220 SSD controller, which has proven quite popular. It’s present in the HP FX900 and Patriot P400, two drives we have previously reviewed. The VPR400 is, in fact, quite similar in layout to the latter. However, the P400 and FX900 had the BAA revision of this controller. This SSD has the BCA revision, with the difference appearing to be in the material of the integrated heatsink (IHS). It’s possible this will demonstrate better heat dissipation with the VPR400. The IG5220 does not run particularly hot, but it is still a fast controller, and this drive does have RGB lighting that typically adds a bit of heat. 

The VPR400 uses Micron’s 176-layer TLC flash, known as B47R. This flash is also on the P400 and FX900, as well as numerous other drives like the P5 Plus. Presumably, this SSD uses the standard 512Gb or 64GB dies, or eight per 8DP/OCP for a total of sixteen dies at 1TB. This is an excellent amount to saturate the IG5220 controller with four dies for each of its four channels.

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Comparison Products

We compare the 1TB Patriot Viper VPR400 to the Patriot P400 and HP FX900, two drives that have the same type of hardware. We also include the Silicon Power UD90, which uses a rival Phison E21T controller. The WD Black SN770 is also included because it is a strong competitor in this segment. Lastly, we have three high-end drives: the SK hynix Platinum P41, the Samsung 980 Pro, and the Crucial P5 Plus. As usual, we test all drives at the same capacity.

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

The VPR400 actually seems to do better than its two direct peers in this test. It falls behind the rest, but its performance is still adequate.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

In contrast to the 3DMark results above, the VPR400 comes in dead last in PCMark. The differences in these tests may be down to optimization or firmware, particularly as the VPR400 is specifically designed for gaming.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The VPR400 lands exactly where we’d expect it to in this bandwidth-limited test: right in the middle. It performs well against its direct competitors, including the UD90 and SN770.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

There are no surprises with the ATTO tests — the VPR400 matches the P400. It’s also a fair match for the SN770. What we do see is the UD90 pulling away in sequential read performance, a Phison staple that indicates the E21T SSD controller has a shared lineage with the popular E18.

The VPR400's sequential performance is also solid in CrystalDiskMark. Performance in random workloads lags a little bit, particularly with writes, but reads tend to be more important, and these results are good on the whole. This hardware combination - controller and flash - has proven itself to be consistently above par. Nevertheless, the SN770 and UD90 remain competitive.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The VPR400 has three distinct performance states with SLC, TLC, and folding modes. The primary mode of pseudo-SLC writes at 4.65 GBps for up to 73 seconds, indicating an SLC cache of around 340GB. This is a bit larger than what is found on the FX900 and P400. Its TLC state at 2 GBps is correspondingly much shorter before hitting the 500 MBps bottleneck.

The VPR400 is clearly optimized a bit differently than those two peers, although the difference would not usually be noticeable in practice. This flash is quite fast in its native state, which makes for relatively quick writes for a four-channel controller. In addition, the large SLC cache should catch most things even if the drive is fuller. That being said, the SN770 matches it quite well, while the UD90 would be more consistent.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

We’ve charted the VPR400’s power consumption both with and without the LEDs illuminated. Unsurprisingly, the drive is more efficient without the LEDs enabled. As expected, it comes close to the P400 in that state, rivaling the SN770. However, the drive consumes significantly more power with the RGB enabled, although this is probably not a concern with use in a desktop PC.

We also tested thermals under both conditions. With RGB disabled, the drive idled around 50C with a maximum of around 69C after an extreme amount of writes; no throttling was seen even after 600GB. With RGB enabled, the idle temperature rose to the mid-50s Celsius, hitting over 73C with sustained writes. This was sufficient to engage throttling after about 420GB of writing. So we can say that the heatsink does work and helps compensate for the extra LED heat sufficiently for its intended use.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Patriot VPR400 is essentially more of a good thing, serving as a Patriot P400 with a better warranty, a heatsink, and RGB. The RGB lighting syncs with most major platforms with Patriot’s software, as well. The InnoGrit IG5220 is a proven SSD controller and Micron’s 176-layer TLC remains the best flash on the market. What’s not to love?

Part of the problem is that this market segment is becoming crowded and competitive. There are other drives with the same hardware, sure, but also WD’s stellar SN770. Moreover, we have newcomers like Silicon Power’s UD90, which uses Phison’s new E21T controller, nipping at the heels. The VPR400 certainly stands out with its looks and the performance is nothing to ignore. However, it doesn’t really do anything new.

Patriot says a 2TB SKU is forthcoming, which would be nice as we don’t see that with the P400 or HP’s FX900 (yet), but it's still missing at the time of writing. That’s okay as 1TB is the sweet spot with this type of drive, but then we have to start looking at the price. The VPR400, as priced today on Amazon, is simply far too expensive unless you absolutely need matching RGB for your build. We do appreciate the heatsink and metal heat spreader, but ultimately it’s not a lot more effective than plain drives with the same hardware.

If you’re looking for a budget drive or even an entry-level PCIe 4.0 SSD, this is simply not the drive for you. It’s more along the lines of the Lexar SL660 Blaze, a portable drive with RGB, in the sense that it’s aimed at the gamer aesthetic. Patriot does separate the VPR400 a bit from its own P400 with a better warranty, but similar drives like the FX900 plus ADATA’s Legend 840 and Atom 50 already do that at a competitive price. That’s not to mention the SN770, which for the average gamer, assuming they don’t care about RGB, is a safer bet.

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Silicon Power’s XS70, also known as the XPower XS70, is rated up to 7.3 GBps of bandwidth, which is effectively the limit of consumer PCIe 4.0 SSDs. This drive is capable of up to 1 million IOPS, which matches expectations, and comes with a five-year warranty. Silicon Power markets the XS70 as a gaming drive, with specific attention given to the attractive aluminum heatsink. 

Silicon Power is another third-party SSD manufacturer that also makes other products, predominantly flash-based drives that vie for a spot on our list of Best SSDs. The company's most popular SSDs are and were the P34A60 for budget or entry-level, and the perennial mainstream P34A80. The latter was one of the first SSDs based on the Phison E12 controller and it maintained the original hardware layout for a significant period of time. Eventually, it transitioned to using the Phison E12S or Silicon Motion’s SM2262EN controller. Such swaps are common in the industry, but this made the drive less desirable.

Still, the availability and reasonable pricing of the P34A80 put Silicon Power on the map. The company continues to produce mostly Phison-controlled drives, like the UD70 and US70, but the XS70 is certainly the premium part of their product stack.

Silicon Power positions it as a PlayStation 5 (PS5) option as we have seen from competing products, like the Kingston Fury Renegade and Inland Gaming Performance Plus, and it has the newest flash and an attractive PS5-compliant heatsink. The option of a 4TB capacity is nice, particularly because the Gaming Performance Plus doesn't come with this spacious option.

Let’s see if the XS70 measures up.

Specifications

The XS70 is rated for sequential speeds of up to 7.3/6.85 Gbps read/write and 1 million random read and write IOPS, matching competing drives. The drive comes in 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB capacities. Pricing varies from $0.12-0.19 per gigabyte with the upper limit approached only with the 4TB SKU; this premium is typical, particularly with TLC. The pricing is quite competitive. if you search Silicon Power's spec sheets hard enough, you'll find that the endurance is rated for up to 700 TB of write data per TB of capacity (with the exception of 3PBW at 4TB).

As with all SSDs, there is an “up to” qualifier for performance metrics. It’s worth noting that sequential reads are taken from the native flash, in this case 3-bit MLC or TLC, while sequential writes come from the SLC write cache. Speeds are limited by the amount of interleaving, that is the amount of flash (NAND) dies available for parallelization, such that sequential writes, for example, should be lower at 1TB. Likewise these metrics may rely on a certain queue depth or level of threading, often at unrealistic values.

Therefore, the wise consumer should pay attention to overall hardware and design, which includes the mutability of hardware. That is to say, be aware that results are often under ideal circumstances that will vary in actual usage and, further, manufacturers may modify the hardware down the road.

SP also informed us that the XS70 does not support TCG Opal. Self-encrypting drives (SED) can utilize AES-256 encryption to protect the contents through hardware. This includes an option for a cryptographic erase which throws away the key, being a faster option for a sanitize. Data can also be scrambled after this process.

While we do try to check for this support on drives, it’s worth noting that this feature, while optional for most controllers, is often not present on consumer drives. This can be for product segmentation but also because software encryption is often a preferred approach. For example, Microsoft removed SED support for Bitlocker back in late 2018 because poor firmware implementation allowed malicious decryption. This did require physical access. Worth noting here is that modern drives often have encryption in-flash as well, so attackers cannot access data by removing the physical NAND chips.

Software and Accessories

SP’s XS70 arrives in minimal packaging with no additional accessories. Software support is also nonexistent. This is not a huge deal for experienced users as they can rely on free software, for example CrystalDiskInfo (CDI) or Macrium Reflect Free. Also, gaming drives like this may end up in a console, so the lack of software may not be super important. Modern drives tend not to be reliant on firmware updates, although it is nice to have a SSD toolbox.

A Closer Look

The XS70 utilizes the common M.2 2280 form factor, with an attractive, aluminum heatsink in black and silver. One complaint some enthusiasts have is that heatsinks are often more about looks than performance, meaning the design is not conducive to airflow. While many SSDs do not require a heatsink in the first place, high-end PCIe 4.0 drives can start to run quite warm, especially in poorly-ventilated environments or inside a console. This one gets the job done despite itself. SP claims it’s up to 40% cooler, but our testing has it running hotter than the Inland Gaming Performance Plus. The thermal padding also did not have quite as good contact.

Under the cover we see the traditional layout of four NAND packages, the controller, and DRAM cache, with the flash and DRAM likely mirrored on the back side.

Phison’s E18 controller has appeared many times on our testbench. It’s a popular, if not the most popular, choice for high-end PCIe 4.0 drives. Phison took the consumer SSD market by storm with its E12 controller, and while we feel the E16 was a nice stop-gap solution — which has actually remained of at least niche use with the PS5 — the E18 really begins to push the envelope.

DRAM consists of SK hynix DDR4 in the 512M x 16b configuration, for a total of 2GB with two 1GB modules. We have seen older E12-based drives come with either DDR3 or DDR4, and many drives also had DDR3L or DDR4L as options. Effectively the difference here is in power consumption, keeping in mind that DRAM cache on a SSD is utilized for metadata storage and access. This means the latency advantage is most important, and “true latency” is a factor of both bandwidth, through clock speed, and native latency, the latter of which usually increases generationally. DRAM ICs also tend to support a range of speeds and latencies.

The flash is Micron’s 176-layer B47R TLC NAND which is being produced in good volume at this point. We will see competitor flash of this generation soon, even as flash manufacturers are already looking ahead. The QLC options in particular should be interesting. Regardless, Micron’s B47R remains the best consumer option on the market and it pairs excellently with Phison’s E18 controller. We have seen that in past reviews as it’s been compared to very similar drives utilizing Micron’s 96-layer B27B instead.

As with the Inland Gaming Performance Plus the flash is running at 1200 MT/s. This is not a hard limitation on the controller as Phison lists up to 1600 MT/s per channel on their data sheet for the E18. As flash tends to operate in an 8-bit mode this translates to 1600 MBps per channel maximum, given sufficient flash, although there’s significant overhead due to other bus data such as commands and addresses. This is especially true for write operations which require acknowledgement. In any case, it’s plenty of bandwidth to saturate four lanes of PCIe 4.0.

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Comparison Products

We compare the XS70 to the top PCIe 4.0 drives, including those with the same hardware. The Kingston KC3000, Seagate FireCuda 530, and Corsair MP600 Pro XT all have Phison’s E18 SSD controller paired with Micron’s 176-layer TLC. The other usual suspects are Western Digital’s (WD’s) Black SN850, the Crucial P5 Plus, and the Samsung 980 Pro. Lastly we have the recently-added Inland Gaming Performance Plus that's a direct “gaming” competitor in this space. It has the same hardware with a similar focus on PS5 compatibility and a cooling heatsink. These drives are all 2TB. 

Trace Testing - 3DMark Storage Benchmark

Built for gamers, 3DMark’s Storage Benchmark focuses on real-world gaming performance. Each round in this benchmark stresses storage based on gaming activities including loading games, saving progress, installing game files, and recording gameplay video streams.

A gaming drive should do well on this benchmark, and the XS70 does. This is as expected since other E18-based drives, especially those with 176-layer flash, have dominated here. Loading times still rely heavily on latency, so it’s nice to see good performance there. Bandwidth might become more important on the PC in the future due to DirectStorage, but the E18 has it covered.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Benchmark

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices.

PCMark 10 presents itself as a more “real world” benchmark and it is at least useful for illustrating optimization differences. It’s one place we see the P5 Plus and Black SN850 pull away from the Phison-controlled drives, for example. In any case, the XS70 almost precisely matches the Inland Gaming Performance Plus, as we would expect.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom, 50GB dataset. We copy 31,227 files of various types, such as pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The E18 controller is known for strong sequential performance and we see that here. This is a somewhat realistic burst test, but check the sustained write results to get a better picture for larger transfers. The XS70 throws us no surprises here.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The XS70 shows strong performance with sequential workloads at queue depth 1 within the ATTO test suite, particularly at higher I/O block sizes. This matches expectations from other E18-based drives, regardless of the flash used.

The XS70 also precisely matches E18-based drives with 176-layer flash in the CrystalDiskMark (CDM) tests, although this is one area where WD’s Black SN850 stands out a bit. CDM is a very popular tool for reviewers and enthusiasts as it can give a quick look at performance to see if there’s anything wrong with a new drive, if nothing else.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use Iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The XS70’s SLC caching scheme is reminiscent of the more conservative ones seen in drives like the FireCuda 530, the MP600 Pro XT, and the Inland Gaming Performance Plus. This includes a fast SLC mode, writing at around 6.9 GBps for up to 32 seconds, indicating a cache size of roughly 220GB. This is about one-third of the drive’s native flash being capable of SLC mode, given an empty drive, as opposed to the full-drive SLC caching found in products like the KC3000.

The second performance phase, typically direct-to-TLC, is slower but still much faster than drives with older flash and/or larger caches. Micron’s 176-layer TLC is quite fast in native mode, hitting speeds that would exceed typical PCIe 3.0 limits for consumer drives. This continues on for some time and is also where the drive goes back to when allowed to idle for some time. That is, recovery is not particularly swift, but the drive remains relatively responsive compared to many others.

The final performance state, which is easier to hit when the drive is fuller because there are fewer free blocks and the SLC cache is much smaller, is a bit less than half the native write speed. Cache that shrinks with drive usage is known as dynamic, although it’s also possible to use static or dedicated SLC — which notably is not actual, native SLC — or a hybrid structure as with Samsung’s TurboWrite. It’s worth noting that, due to how flash operates, NAND already performs worse when the drive is fuller, so SLC caching can exacerbate the situation if the cache is exhausted.

The slower state is bottlenecked by 'folding,' which is the copyback mechanism of data from SLC to TLC blocks, with freed SLC blocks converting to TLC. Flash tends to be cycled into SLC mode based on effective wear. This can introduce additive wear or write amplification since data is rewritten. This is related to over-provisioned space, also, because dynamic SLC shares its garbage collection zone with native flash, so erased SLC blocks eventually operate as TLC. In any case, this state is slower because incoming data is first written to SLC, then read from SLC, then finally written to TLC. One reason it’s important to respect this performance state is that latency is increased particularly for incoming information as it must be transferred before being read.

Technical details aside, a more conservative SLC caching scheme — as on the XS70 versus the KC3000 — ensures more consistent performance, particularly in edge cases as with sustained writes on a fuller drive. Steady state or equilibrium performance is also better. This is ideal for a premium drive that’s used for more serious workloads. Of course most consumers, and certainly those focused on gaming, don’t need to be concerned with this. Strong burst performance offered by a large enough SLC cache is usually sufficient.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade as even the best ultrabooks can have mediocre storage.

Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Remember that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Power consumption, efficiency, and thermals are only becoming more important in the consumer SSD space. Power draw is increasing in gaming machines and we have PCIe 5.0 SSDs on the horizon. One advantage of newer flash, which includes putting peripheral circuitry under the array but also increasing layer count and die density, is that power efficiency is going up. Controllers still run hotter under peak performance (for example, with longer SLC writes), so SSDs are more often coming with robust cooling solutions. Gaming drives like the XS70 are no different; the drive comes with a thick heatsink, but remains able to fit in the PS5.

The XS70 pulled about as much power as other similarly-equipped drives but still taking more average power than the 980 Pro and Black SN850. This certainly comes from the emphasis on performance in sequential work with the E18 controller, and the large-cached KC3000 is notably the least efficient. The XS70’s considerable heatsink is more stylized than it is effective. That is to say, the drive ran notably hotter than the more functional design on the Gaming Performance Plus. We saw temperatures as high as 73C, although throttling was not an issue.

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

Silicon Power’s XS70 finds itself in an increasingly competitive space. We’ve recently reviewed two direct competitors in the Kingston Fury Renegade and the Inland Gaming Performance Plus, but aside from the “gaming”-oriented marketing there are simply a ton of high-performing PCIe 4.0 drives on the market. Gaming at the moment, whether on PC or console, does not benefit much from this extreme level of bandwidth. This may change in the future, particularly when DirectStorage arrives, but there is a limit to how much of a premium you should pay for a small advantage.

Likewise, putting a fancy heatsink on the drive — even if it is PS5-compatible — doesn't make an SSD a gaming drive. It certainly can help with throttling in difficult environments, although a well-ventilated case with a workload that has a minimum sustained writes should have no issues, even with a bare drive. This is especially true with the more efficient 176-layer flash we see on this drive. That said, the drive is attractive and a heatsink does offer some cooling even if it’s mostly for looks, although perhaps form should not be prioritized over function. The real question is: how much value does it add when considering the price?

Luckily, the XS70, as priced during the writing of this review, is affordable relative to the other options. Considering it has high-end hardware and a 4TB option, this is no small favor. Silicon Power of course had this advantage also with the P34A80, so it’s nice to see the company returning to that approach. One can only hope they don’t decide to switch the hardware later as they did on that drive. As is, it’s equally capable as any competitor and only lacking in the software department. To be fair, that's not critical for PS5 usage in any case.

The SLC cache design is also more conservative (the cache is smaller), allowing for higher post-SLC performance. This is not usually relevant for gaming usage, although it can be nice to have in some cases with a fuller drive and extreme updates. That being said, it enables the drive to be used for much heavier workloads if the need ever arises. Considering that higher-capacity drives are on the way and a user might prefer that for a gaming drive, this does add some long-term versatility.

On the whole, there’s little not to like about this drive, and we rather like the design and pricing. It doesn’t offer anything special over other drives that use the same hardware, but that’s not a bad thing. We can easily recommend this drive as a premium option for any user, particularly at 2TB.

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The Xpower Zenith RGB will probably be familiar to you if you've already seen Silicon Power's non-RGB version — they're carbon copies of each other. The only difference is that the Xpower Zenith RGB features an RGB diffuser with five addressable RGB LEDs. Other than that, the memory module still comes equipped with a low-profile aluminum heat spreader dipped in an iron-grey color.

Many tests have shown that a setup with four memory ranks is the ideal configuration to maximize the performance on Intel and AMD processors. A few years ago, that translated to a 32GB (2x16GB) memory kit, as 16GB memory modules are typically dual-rank. The emergence of higher-density integrated circuits (ICs) changed that, though. So with single-rank 16GB memory modules becoming more common, it's hard to tell the difference nowadays if a 32GB memory kit has single-rank or dual-rank modules. Rest assured, though, that the Xpower Zenith RGB has a dual-rank design that is superior to single-rank competitors. 

Despite its RGB lighting, the Xpower Zenith RGB checks in at the same height of 38.5mm (1.52 inches) as the vanilla version. One of the downsides of the Zenith RGB's implementation is that it has spaces between the RGB LEDs, which may look visually unappealing. Silicon Power doesn't include any software to control the Xpower Zenith RGB's illumination, but that isn't an issue since the memory is compatible with Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

Silicon Power manufactures its Zenith RGB 32B (2x16GB) memory modules on an eight-layer PCB and sticks with a traditional dual-rank design. They feature Hynix ICs, although Thaiphoon Burner wasn't able to decipher the exact model. The H5AN8G8N?FR-VKC are potentially C-die ICs.

The memory defaults to DDR4-2133 and 19-19-19-43 timings when the system posts for the first time. Flipping the XMP switch will quickly bring the memory up to DDR4-3600 and the timings to 18-22-22-42. The Zenith RGB requires 1.35V to hit the advertised frequency. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.

Comparison Hardware

The Intel system employs the Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex, which operates on the 0901 firmware. On the opposite side, the AMD system consists of the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero. The latter is on the 3501 firmware. The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio makes sure there are no bottlenecks in our gaming RAM benchmarks,

Intel Performance

The Xpower Zenith RGB ranked fourth in overall application performance. The memory kit outshined its single-rank rivals, such as the Viper Elite DDR4-4000 C20 and the Orion AMD Edition DDR4-4266 C18. It just goes to show the benefit of a dual-rank memory kit over a single-rank one.

AMD Performance

The Zenith RGB kit performed even better on the AMD platform, finishing third in our cumulative application chart. The Xpower Zenith RGB delivered its best performance in Cinebench R20.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

Overclocking the Xpower Zenith RGB memory kit to DDR4-4100 was very easy. Bumping the DRAM voltage from 1.35V to 1.45V was all it took to stabilize the memory at the aforementioned data rate. We didn't have to make any changes to the memory's primary timings, either.

Lowest Stable Timings

Knowing that Silicon Power used Hynix ICs in the Xpower Zenith RGB memory kit, we kept our expectations in check. With the DRAM voltage increased to 1.45V, we managed to lower the timings down to 17-19-19-39 from the default 18-22-22-42. It wasn't the most amazing result, but it fell in line within the margins of what Hynix ICs have to offer.

Bottom Line

The Xpower Zenith RGB DDR4-3600 C18 may not be the best-looking memory kit on the market, but what it lacks in aesthetics, it makes up for in performance. Silicon Power's memory kit is testimony to the kind of performance that a dual-rank memory kit brings to the table. The Xpower Zenith RGB DDR4-3600 C18 easily outperformed its single-rank rivals, including the memory kits that look faster on paper, like the Redline Lumina DDR4-3600 C16 or the Ballistix Max RGB DDR4-4000 C18.

Silicon Power's Xpower Zenith memory kits are available on Amazon. The Xpower Zenith RGB DDR4-3600 C18, in particular, has a $203 MSRP, placing its pricing in the middle of the plethora of DDR4-3600 memory kits. Unfortunately, the Xpower Zenith RGB DDR4-3600 C18 hasn't made its way to the U.S. retailer yet, which is a shame since it's a very attractive option for consumers that want a decent DDR4-3600 memory kit at the 32GB capacity.

Silicon Power has been around since 2003 and has a diverse portfolio of storage and memory products. The company may not be the first vendor that comes to mind when you speak of memory, but there's no denying that the brand has a ton of experience under its belt. Like any other hardware vendor, Silicon Power also created a separate gaming division that caters to gamers and enthusiasts. Xpower, as the sub-brand is called, recently added two new additions to its memory portfolio: the Zenith and Zenith RGB series.

The Xpower Zenith checks in with an iron-grey aluminum heat spreader. It's a simple and compact design, which many will value. The memory measures 38.5mm (1.52 inches) tall and the rectangular design sports a nice brushed finish. The Xpower logo is imprinted on both sides of the heat spreader as well as on the top.

This particular Xpower Zenith memory kit comes with two 8GB single-rank memory modules. Silicon Power produced the memory modules with an eight-layer PCB and Hynix integrated circuits (ICs). Thaiphoon Burner failed to pinpoint the exact model of the ICs (H5AN8G8N?FR-VKC), but these could be C-die, judging by the nature of the primary memory timings.

The memory modules boot up at DDR4-2666 with 19-19-19-43 timings. The kit runs at DDR4-3200 when XMP is active, and the timings drop to 16-18-18-38 with a DRAM voltage of 1.35V. For more on timings and frequency considerations, see our PC Memory 101 feature, as well as our How to Shop for RAM story.

Comparison Hardware

The Intel system is comprised of the Intel Core i9-10900K and Asus ROG Maximus XII Apex (0901 firmware), while the AMD system utilizes the AMD Ryzen 9 5900X and the Asus ROG Crosshair VIII Dark Hero (3501 firmware). The MSI GeForce RTX 2080 Ti Gaming Trio takes care of the graphics-intensive RAM benchmarks, including all the gaming tests.

Intel Performance

The Xpower Zenith memory kit performed very well in the Microsoft Office benchmark. An 8.1% margin separated it from the slowest memory kit in our tests. The Xpower Zenith was also the fastest memory kit in LuxMark, although the margin was negligible.

AMD Performance

The Xpower Zenith memory kit didn't stand out in any particular workload on the AMD platform as it ranked third place in both the application and gaming cumulative charts.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

The Xpower Zenith showed similar overclocking potential as the other DDR4-3200 memory kit in our tests. The memory kit reached DDR4-3600 without problems. We got there by loosening the timings to 17-18-18-38 and increasing the DRAM voltage to 1.45V.

Lowest Stable Timings

Our optimization efforts produced very good results on the Xpower Zenith. By upping the DRAM voltage to 1.45V, we had headroom to lower the timings from the 16-18-18-38 down to 14-16-16-36. It didn't hit Samsung B-die standards, but it was close enough.

Bottom Line

It's important to establish just what kind of memory the Xpower Zenith DDR4-3200 C16 is. It doesn't take a genius to realize that Xpower isn't looking to compete with the high-end memory kits, like the T-Force Xtreem ARGB DDR4-3600 C14. Instead, Silicon Power's memory kit targets a specific segment of consumers who value the plug-n-play experience. Both Intel and AMD's latest processors natively support DDR4-3200, meaning consumers can install the kit, enable XMP, and then forget about it.

The Xpower Zenith DDR4-3200 C16 currently retails for $54.97, falling in line with the other DDR4-3200 memory kits on the market. But, of course, you will have to live without RGB lighting. If you can't, the XLR8 Gaming Epic-X RGB DDR4-3200 C16 has RGB and offers a similar level of performance but comes with a steeper price tag due to the RGB tax.

Update 2 - September 26, 2021: This review has been updated with new testing for the 2TB SK hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe on page 4.

Update 1 - October 3, 2020: We have updated this article with new testing for the 500GB SK hynix Gold P31 M.2 NVMe on page 2.

Original Review published on September 4, 2020:

SK hynix’s Gold P31 is the first retail M.2 NVMe SSD from the company as well as the first product to hit the market leveraging the company’s sixth-generation 128-Layer ‘4D’ TLC NAND flash. Like the Gold S31 SATA SSD, the Gold P31 M.2 NVMe SSD leaves us with quite a positive first impression, touting killer performance with the best efficiency scores that we have seen yet. It competes with the best SSDs, and at prices of just $0.13-0.15 per GB, it screams value. But being that it is a first, there are teething issues such as an unsightly green PCB.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 is packed with the company’s 4D NAND flash, which while it may sound like a new type of memory, is actually a bit less complex than that. It's SK hynix’s marketing talk for how the company arranges the memory control circuits, known as the peripheral circuitry, in relation to the NAND cell arrays on this 128L 4D TLC flash.

Traditionally, the peripheral circuitry logic lays on the edge of the NAND cell array, potentially taking up to 40% of the die space and thus limiting scalability. By moving the logic under the array, manufacturers can achieve higher-layer designs while retaining a high array efficiency. The concept of placing the peripheral circuitry under the memory cells (PuC) isn’t new. As a matter of fact, this technology is currently implemented on Intel and Micron’s NAND flash in the form of CMOS under Array (CuA) technology.

By combining CuA with a floating gate cell design, Micron’s flash achieved some of the highest bit density going, 6.25 Gb/mm^2 on 512Gb 96L TLC, that is, before SK hynix’s latest 128L 4D NAND dropped. What sets SK hynix’s 4D NAND apart is that instead, the company combined PuC technology with a 3D charge trap flash (CTF) cell design to achieve a very small die size and high die density of 8.1 Gb/mm^2. The CTF cells tend to be smaller compared to floating gate cells and the overall design offers better scaling capability as the layer count grows. 

SK hynix Gold P31 Specifications 

SK hynix Gold P31 Features

SK hynix’s Gold P31 comes in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB capacities and carries very low pricing, listing for as low as $75, $135, and $280, respectively. The Gold P31 delivers up to 3.5/3.2 GBps read/write speed at 1TB and 2TB, though the 500GB model suffers a 100MBps lower write speed. The SSD’s random read and write performance is similar at all capacities, too, with up to 570,000/600,000 random read/write IOPS.

While pushing out fast read performance is rather easy for flash, high write performance requires a few tricks. SK hynix’s Gold P31 utilizes a hybrid SLC cache, similar to Samsung’s TurboWrite. It features a quickly-recovering SLC cache alongside a slower-to-recover dynamic SLC cache. The 500GB’s total cache capacity measures 46GB, the 1TB model comes with roughly 92GB, and the 2TB model has 184GB. 

The 500GB drive can endure up to 500TB of writes, the 1TB drive up to 750TB of writes, and the 2TB model can absorb up to 1,200TB of writes within its five-year warranty.

With the help of Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) ECC, SK hynix’s Gold P31 comes backed with respectable endurance numbers that exceed Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus, WD’s Black SN750, and Crucial’s P5. However, while these figures seem impressive, they can’t hold a candle to the exceptional endurance ratings provided by Phison-powered SSDs like the Seagate FireCuda 510 or Team Group Cardea Zero Z340 that are have more than twice the endurance at the 1TB capacity point.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 features S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, secure erase capability, Trim support, can fall into multiple low power states, and even comes with support for AES 256-bit hardware encryption. However, it isn’t OPAL complaint, meaning there’s no BitLocker support.

Software and Accessories of SK hynix Gold P31 

SK hynix supports the Gold P31 with a basic SSD toolbox and cloning software. The SK hynix Drive Manager allows you to view the P31’s S.M.A.R.T. data and update the firmware if needed. Designed in partnership with Macrium, SK hynix’s SSD System Migration Utility enables you to clone your data from your old drive to your new SK hynix SSD.  

A Closer Look at SK hynix Gold P31

SK hynix’s Gold P31 comes in an M.2 2280 single-sided form factor so it is compatible with even the slimmest of Ultrabooks. The Gold P31’s clean black and gold label pops when you look at it. However, as quickly as it catches your attention, the green PCB begins to become an unattractive distraction. While the Gold P31 gains style points for the hidden SKU markings and other compliance marks, it loses some for the green PCB. 

The company wouldn’t disclose the process node used, core count, or frequency details on the controller, but detailed to us that SK hynix’s Gold P31 is vertically integrated and that all its major components are built by SK hynix. The Gold P31 is powered by the company’s Arm-based multi-core, 4-channel ‘Cepheus’ PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 controller. It measures 14 x 14mm and features a DRAM-based architecture. 

The Cepheus SSD controller interfaces with DRAM to cache the FTL mapping table information, which ensures responsive and consistent performance. The company included an LPDDR4 2,133 MHz DRAM chip that measures 4Gb (512MB) in density on the 500GB model and 8Gb (1GB) in density on our 1TB model.

At first glance, the fact that the controller has just half of the number of channels of most high-end NVMe SSDs makes it seem like it could be very underpowered for an SSD that is supposed to compete with the best of WD, Samsung, and Crucial, as well as SSDs based on Silicon Motion and Phison controllers. That is if it wasn’t for the high IO rate that SK hynix’s 128L TLC NAND flash operates at.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 interfaces with the flash die over those four channels at Toggle DDR4.0 I/O rates of 1200 MTps while consuming just 1.2V. This is an important aspect to note because it is roughly double that of what most current-gen NAND runs up to, and in conjunction with the 4-channel controller, both help the Gold P31 deliver some incredible power efficiency. Typically, SSDs based on Kioxia’s 96L or Micron’s 96L operate at much slower I/O rates of 533-800 MTps, with Samsung being the exception. Samsung’s latest V-NAND flash operates at up to 1,400 MTps, although the company’s flash controllers most likely interface at only 1,000-1,200 MTps in current products.

Since the Cepheus controller on the P31 interfaces with the NAND at this higher operating MTps rate, it somewhat helps to make up some performance for the lower channel count. Plus, like with Micron and Intel’s flash, SK hynix’s 4-plane design helps quite a bit with interleaving, too, because that means the controller has four independent sections of NAND die access for increased performance. Kioxia’s 96L BiCS4 and Samsung’s 92L V-NAND flash are only 2-plane designs, although the latter features sub-planes to help make up for it.

Traditionally SK hynix’s flash has used a P-BiCS (Pipe-shaped BiCS) architecture, which is an evolved form of Kioxia’s (formerly Toshiba Memory) BiCS (Bit Cost Scalable) CTF architecture. Its design uses a U-shaped vertical NAND string with the placement of the source line at the top of the stack rather than the bottom. These tweaks, among others, help to both enhance data retention and cell reliability, but also improve cut-off characteristics and provide better cell charge sensing performance.

Furthermore, like Kioxia’s BiCS, SK hynix’s 128L 4D NAND achieves such high layer counts with multiple string stacks (or decks) where groups of data word lines are stacked above one another and commonly with dummy word lines to prevent program disturbs. The issue with this process is that alignment can be tricky and misalignments of the stacks could lower production yield, which is likely why Samsung is trying to avoid this technology for as long as possible. To overcome this issue, SK hynix relies on an ultra-homogeneous vertical etching technology in conjunction with high-reliability multi-layer thin-film cell formation technology.

An early tease from Tech Insights reveals that the NAND on the Gold P31 comes at a die density of 512Gb (64GB per die) and has as many as 147 actual layers with some acting as dummy layers or gates for selection to achieve the 128 data word lines. We believe that this 128L flash could feature a double or triple deck design, but we will have to await Tech Insight’s final analysis. There are four dies per package on the 500GB model, eight in total, as well as 8 dies per package on the 1TB model, for 16 in total. 

SK hynix Gold P31 (500GB)

RATING: ★★★★ ½

PROS

+ Class-leading power efficiency
+ Top-tier performance
+ Competitive endurance & 5-year warranty
+ Single sided-form factor
+ Low cost

CONS

- Lacks AES 256-bit encryption
- Green PCB
- Lacks SSD toolbox

OUR VERDICT

SK hynix's Gold P31 500GB is a top-tier SSD that offers tremendous value. With a powerful and power-efficient design, the Gold P31 competes with the best, but it won’t cost you an arm and a leg.

Comparison Products

To see just how well the 500GB SK hynix Gold P31 stacks up, we put it up against some of the best SSDs of its class in the market, as well as some cheaper alternatives. Representing the high-end and the Gold P31’s top competition, we included Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus. We also included the Adata SX8200 Pro and Seagate BarraCuda 510. Additionally, we included the WD Blue SN550, Crucial P1, P2, and Silicon Power’s P34A60 as entry-level contenders, as well as a SATA Crucial MX500 for good measure. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV 

Final Fantasy XIV Stormbringer is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

SK hynix's Gold P31 scores top marks in our game scene loading benchmark. Throughout five levels, the SK hynix averaged the fastest load performance, beating not only the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro and Samsung 970 EVO Plus, but also the 980 Pro. The drive only outperformed the M500 by two seconds overall, so it isn't much faster than even a plain SATA SSD, though.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom blocks of data. Our 50GB data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. Our 100GB includes 22,579 files with 50GB of them being large movies. We copy the data sets to new folders and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file and 15GB movie file.

While Adata's XPG SX8200 Pro and Samsung's 980 Pro can move files around faster, SK hynix's Gold P31 still delivers very responsive performance. Scoring third place, it managed to copy both the 50GB and 100GB datasets faster than the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. It also left the QLC Crucial P1 and SATA MX500 in the dust.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure storage devices' performance. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

The SK hynix Gold P31 scores well in the quick test, but both the Adata and Seagate provided snappier performance. Once we threw the full drive benchmark its way, SK hynix’s Gold P31 attained the second-highest result we’ve seen from a 500GB NVMe SSD. Both of these tests also demonstrate that NVMe SSDs respond roughly 2-3x faster to requests than SATA counterparts.

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 10, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

In keeping with what we've seen during the Gold P31's testing thus far, the SSD tears through the prosumer workloads in the SPECworkstation 3 storage benchmark. Other than Samsung's flagship 980 Pro, no other competitor can compare to the speed at which the SK hynix Gold P31 can respond. Again, this is with just only a four-channel controller, indicating this is a well-executed, cost-effective design without the drawbacks of QLC flash.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

We tested the SK hynix Gold P31 at a QD (queue depth) of 1, representing most day-to-day file access at various block sizes, as well as a few higher QDs at 128K and 1MB. At a QD of 1, the drive is comparable to many of the most responsive eight-channel SSDs on the market. We measured peak throughput at roughly 3.6/3.2 GBps.

The Gold P31 also responds to random requests faster than most drives, though it trails the Adata SXPG SX8200 Pro and the Samsung 980 Pro. The Gold P31 also delivered exceptionally strong peak random read/write IOPS when hammered with over a hundred concurrent requests, which is especially impressive given the simplified design.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recover

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

The PCIe 4.0 x4 Samsung 980 Pro is much faster if you have a supporting system, but the Gold P31 holds its own well in terms of its write capability. The Gold P31's large SLC cache achieves stellar write performance that puts even the 970 EVO Plus to shame. After writing at a rate of 3.2 GBps for the first 48GB of the test, the Gold P31 degraded to an average speed of 900 MBps until the drive was full. Given some idle time to recover, the SSD only recovered 4GB of its SLC cache within 30 minutes.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

We also monitor the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 is very power efficient thanks to its design. Scoring 305 MBps-per-watt, it leads the test pool by a large margin. On average, the Gold P31 sipped roughly two watts and didn’t even surpass 3W under peak load. Idle power consumption is very good when the device is in an active idle state, but higher than average when ASPM is enabled. Additionally, when copying 300GB of data to the SSD, peak temperatures were in the range of 65-70 degrees Celsius, and it never throttled.

MORE: Best SSDs

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SK hynix Gold P31 (1TB)

RATING: ★★★★ ½

PROS

+ Top-tier performance
+ Unprecedented power efficiency
+ Competitive endurance & 5-year warranty
+ Single sided-form factor
+ Low cost

CONS

- Lacks AES 256-bit encryption
- Unsightly green PCB
- Lacks SSD toolbox

OUR VERDICT

The first SSD with 128-layer NAND, SK hynix’s Gold P31 delivers great performance and power efficiency for the money.

Comparison Products

As the SK hynix Gold P31 touts high-performance, we find it fitting to compare it against the best SSDs going. From the company's arch-nemesis, we include the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, as well as the 2-bit MLC V-NAND-based 970 PRO. We also threw in one of our favorite SSDs, Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro and Seagate’s super-fast PCIe Gen4-based FireCuda 520. Crucial’s P5 and MX500 were included as were WD’s Black SN750, Blue SN550, and WD Black 7,200 RPM HDD. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Stormbringer is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 delivers exceptional game load performance. With the fastest load time in the comparison pool, it goes unmatched. Not only did it beat Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus and 970 Pro, it even bested Adata’s SX8200 Pro, one of the most responsive SSDs we have tested thus far.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom blocks of data. Our 50GB data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. Our 100GB set includes 22,579 files with 50GB of them being large movies. We copy the data sets to new folders and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB zip file and 15GB movie file.

With a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface, Seagate’s FireCuda 520 outscores the test pool, eclipsing the performance of SK hynix’s Gold P31. However, the Gold P31 still offers up the second-fastest performance we have seen in our read tests. With a 4-channel controller, it comes up short of fourth place in the the 50GB and 100GB copy tests. Both the Samsung SSDS and the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro take the lead in the smaller transfer while the WD Black SN750 replaces the Adata on the boards at 100GB. Still, the SK hynix Gold P31 delivers very respectable results overall.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and common tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

Both high bandwidth and low latency random performance are needed to do well in PCMark 10’s quick and full system drive benchmarks. Fortunately for SK hynix, the company’s Gold P31 offers up both, scoring third place in both benchmarks. It clearly is superior in performance to Samsung’s offerings under light use cases, but it fell behind both the Phison E16-powered FireCuda 520 as well as the insanely responsive Adata.

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 10, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

While SK hynix’s Gold P31 scores third place once more, this time under a bombardment of prosumer workloads, it delivers very strong performance. It completed the benchmark over a minute faster than the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, two minutes faster than the 970 EVO Plus, and absolutely leaves the Crucial P5 in the dust. Although even with all the SLC caching and tuning and tweaking the company could do, the TLC NAND still can't sustain heavy writes or respond as well to heavy abuse as Samsung's 3D MLC V-NAND on the 970 Pro, which scores first place in this benchmark.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly-configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

In ATTO, we tested SK hynix’s Gold P31 at a QD of 1, representing most day-to-day file access at various block sizes and it performed very well. In sequential reads , the Gold P31 maintained a strong lead over the competition from the 4KB file size up to 512KB. However, similar to the Crucial P5, at the 1MB file size, there was a significant decline in performance, falling just below 2 GBps. Sequential write performance was strong regardless of the file size and final sequential performance figures peaked at 3,597 / 3,408 MBps.

Additionally, random performance from the SK hynix is phenomenal. Not only does it offer up random read speed that is nearly on par with the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, but also it’s random write performance is a bit better. Not to mention, when hammered with a high QD workload, it delivers the second-highest random read result of 505,910 IOPS and a very competitive 519,201 write IOPS.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

At 1TB, the Gold P31 delivers some very-strong write performance from empty, outperforming some top competitors. SK hynix’s Gold P31, absorbed roughly 90GB-92GB of data at a rate of 3.4 GBps before degrading in performance. The SSD’s initial after cache performance averages a rather inconsistent 1570 MBps before finally degrading to a more consistent 1,475 MBps until full.

After letting the SSD idle over multiple idle rounds ranging from 30 seconds up to a half an hour, only a 6GB SLC write cache recovered each time. That’s in contrast to the behavior of Samsung, Crucial, and Phison SSD controllers, but similar to the Silicon Motion SM2262EN’s behavior that takes longer idle periods to recover the remaining dynamic cache.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

We also monitor the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

With just a four-channel controller, LPDDR4 DRAM, and some very efficient high-speed flash, SK hynix’s Gold P31 is the current champ to beat when it comes to file copy efficiency. With an efficiency score of 350 MBps per watt consumed, it blows past the competition.

It consumed under 2.43W on average and peaked at just a tad over 4W, under our 50GB copy workload, and at idle it consumes fairly little power, especially in its active state with ASPM disabled. When ASPM is enabled, the Gold P31 could use a bit more idle optimization; Adata’s SX8200 Pro sips just 10mW in its lowest idle state on our desktop test bench.

And, because it consumes so little power, the SK hynix Gold P31 can sustain being written to continuously without much concern of thermal throttling. With an IR thermometer, we measured peak controller package temps of 75 degrees Celsius near the end of a 350GB write transfer with no airflow in a 24 degrees Celsius environment. And at idle, it measured 35 degrees Celsius.

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

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Comparison Products 

Today we put the SK hynix Gold P31 up against the best mainstream SSDs on the market, including the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, WD_Black SN750, Crucial P5, Intel SSD 670p, and Silicon Power XD80. We also threw in the Seagate FireCuda 530 and Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite for good measure.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Like the 1TB SK hynix Gold P31, the 2TB model is pretty snappy at loading game levels. It not only outperformed the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, WD_Black SN750, and Crucial P5, but it also edged ahead of the Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom dataset. We copy a 50GB dataset including 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Whether you’re copying files on the SSD or just reading them back, the SK hynix Gold P31 should perform very well. In our testing, the Gold P31 scored third in the copy test and did very well when reading back our large test file.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

The SK hynix Gold P31 beat the Samsung and WD_Black in the light workloads during the quick test, but it couldn’t keep up with the Intel SSD 670p and Silicon Power XD80. 

The much longer Full System Drive benchmark is more taxing. The P31 traded blows with the XD80, but it still fell behind the highly-tuned Intel SSD 670p and the wickedly-fast Seagate FireCuda 530.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The Gold P31’s ATTO results at a queue depth of 1 (QD1) reveal fast performance across most block sizes. The drive struggled with 1MB blocks, but it returned to nearly full speed when tasked with even larger blocks. 

The P31’s performance in random workloads is respectable, but it isn’t quite as responsive as we hoped to see. The Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite and Intel SSD 670p are both faster during this 4K random workload.

Sustained Write Performance & Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

According to our measurements, the SK hynix Gold P31 has a large 185GB hybrid SLC cache and 12GB static cache, both of which are roughly twice the capacity of the 1TB models. 

After the workload filled the SLC cache at a rate of 3.2 GBps, post-cache write speeds degraded to 1.4 GBps for the remainder of the test. We let the drive sit idle, but it didn’t recover any of the dynamic cache within the allocated 30-minute window. Instead, it only recovered the small static cache.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The 2TB SK hynix Gold P31 proved to be very power efficient, putting the rest of the comparison pool to shame with its exceptional efficiency score. The Gold P31’s average power consumption and peak consumption were the lowest in the group. It was also very conservative at idle, consuming just 353mW with ASPM disabled. 

The SK hynix Gold P31 should perform throttle-free during most tasks, but very large sequential write workloads might trigger throttling if it doesn’t have active cooling or a heatsink. At idle in a 24 degree Celsius (C) room, the SSD reported temperatures of roughly 38-42C. After writing roughly 400GB of data to the SSD, write performance started to gracefully degrade after surpassing the thermal throttle point (83-84C according to the SSD’s S.M.A.R.T. data).

Test Bench and Testing Notes 

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs. 

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Looking back on SSD design over the years, we have seen the trend of manufacturers trying to achieve complete vertical integration not only to gain better profit margins but also to deliver a much more competitive, better-performing product. From the low power DDR4 DRAM, the high-density 128L 4D NAND flash, and the extremely-efficient NVMe SSD controller, SK hynix’s Gold P31 is built from the company’s own components through and through. This has helped the company develop and nearly perfect a high-end PCIe 3.0 x4 SSD.

While SK hynix hasn’t competed in the retail market for a few years, the Gold P31 is out to break the mold. You don’t need eight channels to saturate a PCIe 3.0 x4 link as long as the flash is fast enough. With Quartz NVMe controller leveraging only half of the channels of a conventional high-end SSD, but at a much faster flash I/O speed, the Gold P31 sips power and sets new efficiency records. Charge trap flash is looking to be the way to go.

Although Intel is sticking to the floating gate design for at least one more go, when Intel’s 144L QLC flash products hit the market, Micron will be migrating to replacement gate technology on the company’s next generation of NAND to avoid scaling issues at 128L and beyond. By the same token, Kioxia is not too far off with 112L BiCS5, which ups the performance a bit with a 4-plane die design and also utilizes CuA. Also, Samsung’s next-gen 136L V6 V-NAND TLC is just around the corner with a fast 2-plane design. Regardless of what the future holds, SK hynix is the first manufacturer with an SSD with NAND of such a high layer count and great bit density. 

When it comes to its performance, SK hynix’s Gold P31 delivers the goods. SK hynix’s Gold P31 will load your games, copy and read back your files, and handle whatever kind of workload you throw its way in a responsive manner. That’s not something you can say so easily in today’s SSD market with DRAMless and QLC NAND-based SSDs prevalent. The only drawback to the Gold P31’s performance is its SLC cache design.

While SSDs like Crucial’s P5 or Phison’s E12S and E16-based SSDs, or even Samsung’s SSDs, all recover their respective caches fairly rapidly to maintain responsiveness for the end-user, the Gold P31 takes much longer to recover its cache space (similar to Adata’s XPG SX8200 Pro). Fortunately, it delivers some very competitive sustained performance that bests even WD’s Black SN750. So, while the SSD may not write at over 3 GBps right away after filling the cache, its performance should have you covered even under rather heavy abuse.

SK hynix’s Gold P31 touts market dominance as the first retail SSD product to launch with 128L NAND flash. With SK hynix’s newest NAND reaching incredible bit density, the Gold P31 can hit the market at a very low cost. Listed at just $75 and $135 for the 500GB and 1TB models, respectively, the Gold P31 is a fantastic value that will make you think twice about spending that extra $25-$50 on the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. 

For those looking for a refined and proven reliable product that has improved generation after generation and stood the test of time within the machines of the masses, Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus may still be worth it to you, though. When it comes to Samsung’s SSD’s it’s about premium design from the black PCB, nickel-coated IHS, and copper heat spreader to the AES 256-bit encryption support. Not to mention that the company’s Magician software sets the standard for SSD Toolboxes. It’s worth the premium for those who can afford it. But SK hynix looks to undercut their competition.

The lack of OPAL compliant encryption isn’t much of an issue for gamers, but SK hynix still has some work to do on the SSD’s design at the smaller capacities. At roughly the same price, Adata’s SX8200 Pro offers nearly the same performance and comes with arguably better looks.  

SK hynix’s Gold P31 is very well suited for those looking to up their laptop storage to not only gain capacity, but to gain battery life, too. While Adata’s SX8200 Pro performs well against the Gold P31 in benchmarking, the SK hynix is much more power-efficient, which will lead to longer off-the-charger sessions. But, while I want to say that the Adata is the better buy for desktops and the SK hynix for laptops, the much stronger write performance and ultra-high efficiency from the SK hynix Gold P31 make it the better choice for many users, including me, who do a lot of file copying. Depending on the current street price of both drives, the SK hynix Gold P31 may also be noticeably cheaper.

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The Silicon Power’s XD80 comes armed with a Phison E12S SSD controller, BICS4 TLC, and a heatsink. This combo delivers solid, cool performance at an affordable price point, making the PCIe 3.0 x4 drive a good value for those looking to save a few bucks over premium drives.

The XD80 competes against other mainstream SSDs like the Crucial P5, WD_Black SN750, and Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus. In addition, the drive features a unique design for a Phison-based SSD — it's one of only a few slim PS5012-E12S-based designs with TLC flash that still retains a single-sided M.2 form factor, even for the 2TB model.

The XD80 also features a pre-installed thin aluminum heatsink that hardly adds to the XD80’s thickness, perhaps even making it suitable for some laptops. Based on our testing, the XD80 equipped with a heatsink fit into a relatively recent Dell ultrabook in our testing without clearance issues, which is an important consideration if you’re looking for a laptop drive.

Specifications

The Silicon Power XD80 is available in capacities of 256, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB, each priced aggressively low at roughly $0.11 to $0.13-per-GB. The company rates the XD80 for up to 3.4/3.0 GBps of sequential read/write throughput and upwards of 500,000/600,000 random read/write IOPS over its PCIe 3.0 x4 interface. It has a 52GB SLC cache, though, so real-world sustained write performance will be slower than the spec if you write more than 52GB as one operation. We’ll show what that looks like on the following page.

The XD80 comes backed by high endurance ratings within its five-year warranty and should be suitable for heavy content creation. The 2TB model can endure 1,600 TB of written data within its warranty period (400TB higher than the Samsung 980 Pro). Moreover, it serves up this impressive endurance with less factory overprovisioning than competing drives, at roughly 7.4% vs 10%, giving you a bit more usable storage capacity than other SSDs.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power provides a very basic SSD Toolbox. With it, you can monitor the capacity used, the total bytes written to the drive, and temperature as reported by the SSD’s S.M.A.R.T. data. It also has a built-in diagnostic scanner. 

A Closer Look

As mentioned, the XD80 comes in an M.2 2280 single-sided form factor – even at the 2TB capacity. It features a grey-colored, pre-applied aluminum heatsink. Silicon Power claims the heatsink reduces temperatures by up to 20%. The XD80 also supports low-power ASPM and ASPT for cooler, more efficient operation.

Phison’s PS5012-E12S PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD controller is a quad-core, NVMe 1.3-compliant design that leverages two Arm Cortex R5 CPUs clocked at 666 MHz alongside lower-clocked dual co-processors. Phison’s third-generation Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) ECC, a RAID engine, and end-to-end data path protection ensures reliability and consistency. The drive supports S.M.A.R.T. data reporting and Trim, but it doesn’t support AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

The controller has DRAM for buffering the FTL mapping tables, interfacing with 4Gb of DDR3L from Xi'an UniIC Semiconductors for the task. The controller also interfaces with Kioxia’s BiCS4 96L TLC flash. Our 2TB XD80 packs thirty-two 512Gb dies that are spread among four NAND packages. This flash operates at 533 MTps and has a dual-plane design.

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Comparison Products

We put the Silicon Power XD80 up against some of the Best SSDs on the market, including the Samsung 970 EVO Plus, Team Group T-Create Expert, Crucial P5, Intel SSD 670p, and WD_Black SN750. We also threw in some PCIe 4.0 competitors, including the Samsung 980 Pro and Mushkin Gamma, for good measure.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The WD_Black SN750 and Crucial P5 are among the slowest in this test, but the Silicon Power XD80 was even slower as it lagged the group by 1-2 seconds overall. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom dataset. We copy a 50GB dataset including 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The XD80 did well transferring around large files. It wasn’t as fast as Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus or the Gen4 SSDs, but it traded blows with the WD_Black SN750 and Crucial P5, making it plenty fast in its own right.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

The XD80 did well in the Quick System Drive benchmark, scoring second place and edging out ahead of the QLC-powered Intel SSD 670p while landing just below the Samsung 980 Pro. However, the XD80 quickly fell to third from the last place in the Full System Drive benchmark. Although outpaced both the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and WD_Black SN750, the XD80 couldn’t keep up with Crucial’s P5 or Intel’s SSD 670p when the workloads became more intense.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / CrystalDiskMark

ATTO and CrystalDiskMark (CDM) are free and easy-to-use storage benchmarking tools that SSD vendors commonly use to assign performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how each device handles different file sizes.

The XD80’s read speed at QD1 ranked among the slowest in the group in Crystal Disk Mark.

Random read and write speeds were respectable at a queue depth of one, but weren’t quite as lightning-fast as some competing drives. The XD80 delivered very high random IOPS results when pressured with reads and writes at a queue depth of 256, although those results don’t reflect our results with real-world benchmarks. 

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

On our first pass, we found that the XD80 has a dynamic SLC cache spanning roughly 52GB,  and it averaged a write speed of 3.1 GBps. However, the following write tests carried out during our idle round sequence showed that the SLC cache expanded up to 70-72GB. After the cache filled, write speeds degraded to 1,150MBps on average until the drive filled completely. Usually less than a minute is enough time for the XD80 to recover its whole cache.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

The XD80’s efficiency under load is average, managing to edge ahead of the P5 and T-Create Expert. It also demonstrated low idle power consumption, sipping under half a watt with ASPM disabled.

At idle, the XD80 ranged from 28 to 33 degrees Celsius, which is fairly cool compared to some of the SSD’s we’ve tested. Under load, the XD80 reached peak temperatures of 69C after writing roughly 500GB of data, which is 6C below its 75C thermal throttling point. 

Test Bench and Testing Notes

We use a Rocket Lake platform with most background applications such as indexing, windows updates, and anti-virus disabled in the OS to reduce run-to-run variability. Each SSD is prefilled to 50% capacity and tested as a secondary device. Unless noted, we use active cooling for all SSDs.

Conclusion

The Silicon Power XD80 is a well-performing M.2 NVMe SSD that offers a lot of value for your dollar. While it lagged in the game loading benchmark, the XD80’s Phison’s E12S and Kioxia’s BiCS4 TLC flash makes for a responsive SSD in most workloads.

At the time of publication, Silicon Power’s 2TB XD80 is listed at just $220. That makes it cheaper than the WD Blue SN550, Sabrent Rocket Q, Corsair MP400, and many other DRAM-less and QLC SSDs, which is surprising for an SSD with a heatsink and TLC flash paired with high-end endurance ratings. But, while it is priced well against low-end contenders, it performs very well alongside the likes of Crucial’s P5 and the WD_Black SN750. All of which makes it a great value if you like the design.

Although it is not quite as fast as the newest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSDs, the Silicon Power XD80 makes for a fairly solid choice for affordable, fast, and cool storage. Not only did it perform well in burst-oriented application testing and file transfers, but its performance also held strong and nearly kept up with the Crucial P5 during sustained writes, which is fantastic considering its much lower price point. If you are looking to save a few bucks on your next M.2 SSD purchase, the Silicon Power XD80 is worth considering.

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The Enmotus FuzeDrive P200 SSD takes an unconventional approach to increase SSD performance and extend lifespan by leveraging the power of AI to deliver up to 3.4 GBps and class-leading endurance. According to the company, artificial intelligence isn’t just about robots and decrypting future business trends — it can also enhance your SSD and tune it to your usage patterns, thus unlocking more performance and endurance. 

Enmotus builds the FuzeDrive P200 using commodity hardware but says the drive delivers more than six times more endurance than most QLC-based SSDs through its sophisticated AI-boosted software and tiering techniques. In fact, a single 1.6 TB drive is guaranteed to absorb an amazing 3.6 petabytes of write data throughout its warranty. The company’s FusionX software also allows you to expand your storage volume up to 32TB by adding another SSD or HDD (just one). All of this will set you back the same cost of a new Samsung 980 Pro with a faster PCIe interface, though, ultimately making this drive attractive only for a niche audience.

Innovative AI Storage 

Traditional SSDs, like Sabrent’s Rocket Q, come with QLC flash that operates in a dynamic SLC mode. While this provides fast performance and high capacity, it has drawbacks that primarily manifest as low endurance. 

However, QLC flash can operate in the full 16-level, low-endurance QLC mode or operate in a high-endurance SLC mode, which is advantageous for Enmotus’s FuzeDrive P200 SSD. By operating Micron’s flash solely in high endurance SLC mode, the flash’s endurance multiplies - its program-erase cycle rating increases from roughly 600-1,000 cycles to 30,000 cycles. The main reason being that in SLC mode, the flash can be programmed in just one pass, whereas QLC takes 3+ cycles to fine-tune the cell charge.

The 1.6TB FuzeDrive P200 comes with 2TB of raw flash, but not all of it is available to the user. This is somewhat similar to Intel’s Optane Memory H10 and soon-to-be-released H20, but instead of the complication of relying on two separate controllers and storage mediums, the P200 uses only one controller and one type of flash. The FuzeDrive leverages the advantages that both dynamic and high endurance SLC modes have to offer by splitting the device into two LBA zones. The first LBA range is the high endurance zone, and it sacrifices 512GB of the raw flash to provide 128GB of SLC goodness (4 bits QLC -> 1-bit SLC), but the user can’t access this area directly. The remaining QLC flash in the second LBA zone operates in dynamic SLC mode and is made available to the end user. The 900GB model comes with a smaller 24GB SLC cache.   

The company’s intelligent AI NVMe driver virtualizes the zones into a single volume and relocates data to either portion after analyzing the I/O. In this tiering configuration, a large RAM-based table is set up in memory (roughly 100MB) to track I/O behavior across the whole storage device. Most active and write-intensive data is automatically directed to the SLC zone, and inactive data is moved to the QLC portion with minimal CPU overhead compared to caching techniques. Movements are done only in the background, and only one copy of the data exists. The NVMe driver manages the data placement, while the drive uses a special modified firmware to split it into two separate LBA zones.

Specifications

Enmotus’s FuzeDrive P200 comes in 900GB and 1.6TB capacities. Both fetch a pretty penny, priced at $200 and $350, respectively, roughly matching the price of the fastest Gen4 SSDs on the market. The FuzeDrive P200 comes with a Gen3 NVMe SSD controller, so Enmotus rated it for up to 3,470 / 3,000 MBps of sequential read/write throughput and sustain up to 372,000 / 402,000 random read/write IOPS.

But, while Samsung’s 980 Pro may be faster, it only offers one-third the endurance of the P200. Enmotus rates the 900GB model to handle up to 750 TB of writes during its five-year warranty. The 1.6TB model is much more robust — It can handle up to 3.6 petabytes of writes within its warranty, meaning the P200 comes backed with the highest endurance rating we’ve seen for a QLC SSD of this capacity.

Software and Accessories

Enmotus provides Fuzion, a utility that monitors the SSD and enables other maintenance tasks, like updating firmware or secure erasing the SSD. The software is available from the Microsoft Store and will automatically install and update the driver for the device. The company also provides the Enmotus-branded Macrium Reflect Cloning Software to help migrate data to the new SSD, as well as the FuzionX software for more complex tiering capability. 

When adding a third device into the mix, such as a high-capacity SATA SSD or HDD (NVMe support under development), you can use FusionX software to integrate it into the P200’s virtual volume. The SLC portion of the P200 SSD will retain the volume’s hot data, the QLC portion will retain the warm data, while the HDD stores cold data.

A Closer Look

Enmotus’s FuzeDrive P200 SSD comes in an M.2 2280 form factor, and the 2TB model is double-sided solely to place a second DRAM IC on the back of the PCB. The company uses a copper heat spreader label to aid with heat dissipation. The controller supports ASPM, ASPT, and the L1.2 sleep mode to reduce power when the drive isn’t busy.  

As mentioned, Enomotus builds the FuzeDrive P200 with commodity hardware - Phison’s mainstream E12S PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3-compliant SSD controller and Micron QLC flash, but the firmware is specifically designed to enable splitting the drive into two distinct zones - one high endurance, one low endurance. The controller has dual Arm Cortex R5 CPUs, clocked at 666MHz, and a DRAM cache. The controller interfaces with two Nanya 4Gb DDR3L DRAM ICs at 1600 MHz for fast access to the FTL mapping tables. 

There are four NAND packages on our 2TB sample, each containing four 1Tb Micron 96-Layer QLC packages. For responsive random performance and solid performance in mixed workloads, the flash has a four-plane architecture and interfaces with this eight-channel controller at speeds up to 667 MTps. To ensure reliable operation and maintain data integrity over time, the controller implements Phion’s third-generation LDPC ECC and RAID ECC along with a DDR ECC engine and end-to-end data path protection. 

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Comparison Products 

We’re comparing the FuzeDrive P200 to some of the best SSDs available. For PCIe 4.0 competitors, we include the top-notch WD Black SN850 and the more affordable Silicon Power US70. We also threw in a Samsung 970 EVO Plus, Crucial P5, and Intel SSD 670p. Additionally, we have a few SSDs with the same hardware as the P200, but with full dynamic SLC caching instead — the Sabrent Rocket Q and Silicon Power’s UD70, two much more affordable contenders. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

The FuzeDrive P200 delivers responsive game loads and rivals some of the faster SSDs on the market. It even outpaced the Rocket Q and UD70 this round, showing that the static SLC layer does its job well in this type of application. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom dataset. We copy a 50GB dataset, including 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos, to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

The FuzeDrive P200 is speedy during file transfer operations, outperforming the cheaper SSDs in the group, but it couldn’t quite keep up with Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus or the PCIe Gen4 competitors. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

PCMark 10’s Quick System Drive Benchmark shows that the P200 delivers roughly the same user experience as the other E12S and QLC-based SSDs in the group, but the drive proved to be exceptionally impressive when we hit it with the heavier Full System Drive Benchmark. Not only did it outpace the Rocket Q and UD70, but it also outperformed the P5 and 970 EVO Plus. Intel’s SSD 670p and the PCIe Gen4 SSDs are still more responsive, though, due to aggressive tuning for this type of workload.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool, while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

At a queue depth (QD) of one, which helps quantify the snappiness of the drive in everyday tasks, the FuzeDrive P200 lags slightly in sequential read performance with smaller chunks of data but ramps up to full speed from the 4MB block size. Performance increases once we ramp up to higher queue depths, with the P200 peaking at 3,478 / 2,981 MBps of sequential read/write throughput.  

The P200’s random read and write performance is solid for a PCIe 3.0 SSD, rivaling many of the faster SSDs in the market. Peak random performance exceeds the company’s official ratings at a QD of 128, too. The P200 pushes out 378,000 / 476,000 random read/write IOPS when we hammer it with a ridiculously heavy workload, beating the Intel SSD 670p. 

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds. 

The FuzeDrive P200 uses some of its flash in static SLC mode while most of its flash runs in full dynamic SLC mode, so we expected it to come with a much smaller SLC cache than the UD70 and Rocket Q. 

However, the P200’s cache absorbed 510GB of data at 3 GBps before performance degraded. After the cache filled, the average write speed fell to just 200 MBps. This makes for solid performance in most consumer applications but may not be up to muster for most power users and enthusiasts, even though the drive does rebound quickly. After just a minute of idle time, the SSD recovered 160GB of its dynamic SLC cache. 

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle, while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Enmotus’s FuzeDrive P200 is an efficient SSD that seems to run more efficiently due to its multiple namespaces. It sipped the least amount of power under load, and its peak power consumption was also lower than competing drives. While the vanilla Rocket Q and UD70 SSDs scored roughly 240 MBps-per-watt, the P200 led with 259 MBps-per-watt.  

The drive also remained cool during testing. On our test bench with no airflow at 23 degrees Celsius, the P200’s temperatures were well within expectations. At idle, it hovered in the high 30 degree Celsius range. When taxed with a few hundred GB of drag n’ drop file transfer operations, the P200 peaked at 74-76 degrees Celsius temperatures and we didn’t detect any thermal throttling.

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Enmotus’s FuzeDrive P200 is an innovative storage device that delivers solid performance and has great potential for home lab and virtualized applications. The benefits of the P200’s SLC implementation extend beyond ‘just’ having extremely high endurance.

Most of the workloads flow directly through the SLC portion of the flash, allowing the FuzeDrive P200 to deliver faster-than-average performance in many of our benchmarks — even when compared to traditional SSDs with full dynamic SLC caching. This technique even helps increase power efficiency under load. As a result, the P200 is among the most efficient PCIe 3.0 SSDs we’ve tested.

The FuzeDrive P200 does suffer from slow sustained write performance; you just can't get around that with QLC flash. The drive slowed to a mere 200 MBps during our extended write testing, while drives like the 980 Pro can write at 1.7 GBps for long periods of time. As a result, while the P200 delivers up to an astounding 3.6 PB of endurance, you’ll have to be patient during extended-duration file transfers, which might not be the best fit for the professional crowd. The P200 does recover quickly, though, so it bounces back well after extended sessions of heavy abuse.

One could argue that you could heavily overprovision a QLC SSD and get similar results. For instance, you could configure a 2TB SSD to just 1.6TB in an attempt to reach similar endurance levels as the P200, but based on some quick napkin math, that's not quite possible. The gains from heavy overprovisioning simply aren’t enough to outweigh the extreme levels of higher endurance provided by the SLC zone in conjunction with the AI NVMe driver.  

Enomotus’s overall goal with the FuzeDrive P200 SSD is to provide a balance of performance, endurance, and capacity at a significantly lower price point than a single high-capacity SSD. While we think the company could be on track for greatness, they don’t quite have a winner yet at current prices. 

The software capability is part of the cost of this purchase, and for those looking for this type of solution, it can be an awesome product. However, Enmotus is banking more on the value of its software than the hardware behind it, so the FuzeDrive P200 isn’t for everyone. That’s especially true for gamers, who often splurge on a new GPU but only save pennies for storage and don’t often write hundreds of terabytes of data to their storage device in a year.   

Enmotus is a solid proof of concept and a stepping stone for something better in the future. The high cost of the device offsets its mainstream appeal, though. If you’re looking at the P200 for the hardware alone, it is overpriced, especially compared to the fastest NVMe SSDs on the market (which the FuzeDrive P200 is not). The benefits of Enmotus’s SSD technology should scale well as larger SSDs hit the market, though, and pairing the tiering technique with faster SSD controllers and flash could make for more competitive drives in the future. 

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Silicon Power has launched a new series of DDR4 memory kits under the company's Xpower gaming brand. Consumers will be happy to know that the Zenith memory kits are available in both RGB and non-RGB flavors.

Designed to compete with the best RAM on the market, the Zenith and Zenith RGB come bearing a 10-layer PCB that's passively cooled with an iron-grey aluminium heat spreader. Regardless of the format, the memory module stands 38.5 mm tall so compatibility with air coolers shouldn't be an issue. In the case of the Zenith RGB, it features an user controllable RGB light bar that plays nice with with the four major motherboard brands, including Asus Aura Sync, Gigabyte RGB Fusion, MSI Mystic Light Sync, and ASRock Polychrome Sync.

Silicon Power commercializes the Zenith and Zenith RGB in a single module and dual-channel packages. The first is available from 8GB to 32GB, while the latter spans from 16GB (2x8GB) to 64GB (2x32GB).

Memory frequency options on the Zenith and Zenith RGB are very limited. Consumers can only pick from three data rates: DDR4-3200, DDR4-3600 or DDR4-4133. Silicon Power didn't reveal the entire specification sheet for the memory kits so only their CAS Latency (CL) value is known.

The DDR4-3200 and DDR4-3600 memory kits arrive with CL16 and CL18, while the DDR4-4133 memory kit features CL19. The voltage requirement for the DDR4-3200 and DDR4-3600 memory kits is 1.35V and 1.4V on the DDR4-4133 memory kit. They support XMP 2.0 so setup is a breeze.

Silicon Power backs its Zenith and Zenith RGB memory kits with a limited lifetime warranty. The company didn't reveal the pricing or availability for the new memory though.

Silicon Power’s UD70 oozes value and is a perfect option for tight-budgeted gamers and ordinary everyday office users. The UD70 comes with a potent combination of Phison’s E12S PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD controller and Micron’s latest QLC flash, making it quite similar to the Sabrent Rocket Q we reviewed last year. 

The UD70 delivers solid performance for a PCIe 3.0 SSD, has an inexpensive price tag, and comes with hardware encryption support. But due to its rather weak sustained write performance, it’s not too appealing to the prosumer crowd.

Specifications

Silicon Power’s UD70 comes in capacities of 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB and is priced as low as $0.10 per GB. The 2TB model is rated for peak speeds of up to 3.4/3 GBps of sequential read/write throughput, while the 500GB and 1TB models write a little slower at up to 1.0 GBps and 1.9 GBps, respectively. The entire series is rated for up to 250,000/650,000 random read/write IOPS. 

These peak performance ratings are measured within the SLC cache, though. The UD70 features a large dynamic SLC cache that spans one-quarter of its capacity, but the cache will shrink as you fill the drive, or grow as you free up space. As such, because the SSD comes armed with QLC flash, that sustained performance won’t last long after you begin filling the SSD with data. 

The UD70 comes backed by a five-year warranty and supports standard data integrity mechanisms like end-to-end data protection, LDPC ECC, and RAID-like parity protection. These mechanisms help enable reasonable endurance ratings for a low-end device with QLC flash — our 2TB sample can absorb up to 530TB of writes within its warranty period. The drive also comes with optional support for hardware-accelerated AES 256-bit encryption, enabling responsive and secure data storage.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power also includes access to the company’s SSD toolbox. While not as robust or polished as some of the bigger brands, SP Toolbox enables end-users to monitor the SSD’s SMART data and run diagnostic tests.

A Closer Look

Silicon Power’s UD70 comes in a compact single-sided M.2 2280 form factor at all capacities, enabling broad compatibility. Like the US70, the UD70 isn’t the best-looking M.2 SSD we’ve come across. The blue PCB and red-themed sticker clash, and the compliance marks and barcodes detract from the aesthetic even more.

At the heart of the UD70 is a Phison PS5012-E12S PCIe 3.0 x4 8-channel NVMe 1.3 complaint SSD controller. The E12S utilizes dual Arm Cortex R5 CPUs clocked in at 666 MHz and leverages CoXProcessor 2.0 technology (dual coprocessors) to help maintain a consistent latency profile during write workloads.

The controller is built on a 12nm node and uses a smaller physical design than its predecessor, the original E12, downsizing from a 16x16 mm to a 12x12mm package, but retaining the same performance. This enables more flexible NAND placement to allow for up to four NAND emplacements on a single side of the PCB, while the original could only handle up to two.  

The controller leverages active state power management (ASPM) and autonomous power state transition (ASPT). The company dubs these features a ‘dual self-cooling system,’ but this tech is found in most of the other NVMe SSDs on the market.

The controller caches its FTL metadata with a single 4Gb Kingston DDR3L DRAM chip on our 2TB review sample. The controller interfaces with sixteen dies of Micron’s 1Tb N28A 96-layer QLC flash that operate at 666 MTps. Each die is split into four virtual planes, as Micron’s design leverages a tile-based architecture for both performance and reliability. Micron claims the floating gate architecture provides better data retention than most charge trap flash designs. 

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Comparison Products

We compared the Silicon Power UD70 to some of the best SSDs on the market. With a nearly identical design, Sabrent’s Rocket Q is the UD70’s closest competitor in the pool, but we also threw in some faster Gen3 SSDs like WD’s Black SN750, Crucial’s P5, and the Samsung 970 EVO Plus. We also added our top value PCIe Gen4 picks into the mix, too - Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite and the Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Lagging the Sabrent Rocket Q by roughly half a second, Silicon Power’s UD70 has the slowest load time of our comparison pool. It’s not too much slower than the fastest competitors like the Gammix S50 Lite or Samsung 970 EVO plus, both of which were 2-3 seconds faster.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with a custom dataset. We copy a 50GB dataset including 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file.

Given enough free space, the UD70 delivers adequate large file copy performance in light of its price point. It was also very competitive with the fastest PCIe Gen3 SSDs during the file reading portion of the test.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Test

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

PCMark 10’s Quick System Drive benchmark revealed that, during light workloads, the UD70 is one of the most responsive SSDs in our test pool. It struggled with PCMark 10’s heavier Full System Drive benchmark, though, as it fell from second down to last place.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The UD70’s sequential read/write results were similar to the 970 EVO Plus at a queue depth (QD) of 1, which represents most daily usage for desktop PCs. The UD70 hit peak sequential read/write speeds of roughly 3.5/3GBps during our burst testing at higher queue depths.

The UD70’s random write latency is impressively low, and even lower than the US70’s read response times. However, the UD70 wasn’t quite as fast at higher queue depths as the Samsung 970 EVO Plus or Crucial P5.

Sustained Write Performance and Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

Like Sabrent’s Rocket Q, the Silicon Power UD70 has a large dynamic SLC cache that spans one-quarter of the drive’s free space, and the cache is tuned for the bursty workloads common to most desktop PCs. The UD70 wrote data at a rate of 3 GBps until the SLC cache absorbed 526GB of data. Beyond that, the UD70 wrote at a pace of just 200 MBps. When left idle, the UD70 recovered its cache capacity at a reasonable rate of roughly 200GB every five minutes.

Power Consumption and Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Silicon Power’s UD70 is a very power-efficient SSD. It scored fourth place in our efficiency chart and exhibited among the lowest power consumption under load and at idle. The UD70 typically won’t need much cooling. We wrote over 500GB of data to the UD70 in one copy operation, and peak temperatures measured roughly 75 degrees Celsius with no thermal throttling.

Conclusion

Like the US70, Silicon Power’s UD70 isn’t a winner in the looks department, but it makes up for it in value. As a low-cost value-oriented NVMe SSD, Silicon Power optimized the UD70 for typical light desktop PC workloads. It is very responsive and kept up well in most workloads, that is, as long as the workload fell within its cache.

In our application testing, the UD70 traded blows with some of the best SSDs. It was also competitive during file copy operations, too. The UD70 hit its rated read/write throughput specifications at roughly 3.5/3 GBps, but saturating the device’s SLC cache revealed that its write speeds can tank drastically — at just 200 MBps, its post-cache write performance was slower than any of the TLC-based competition. Fortunately, the cache recovers at a reasonably fast rate.

Although the company backs it with a solid five-year warranty, with half the endurance of most TLC-based competitors, Silicon Power’s UD70’s endurance is a weakness. The UD70 faces tough competition at 1TB with Crucial’s P5 being only $10 more and the WD Blue SN550 being $5 cheaper. However, priced at just $196, the 2TB capacity is quite the steal. At under $0.10 per GB, it is one of the cheapest M.2 NVMe SSDs on the market, making it an affordable buy for those with tighter-budgets. Plus, the UD70 carries the added benefit of an AES 256-bit hardware encryption engine for those who need the added security.

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Silicon Power’s US70 is one of the cheapest PCIe 4.0 SSDs on the market, offering up to 5GBps of throughput for those just looking to speed up their computing experience by upgrading from a slow SATA SSD, or worse, an HDD. Not only is it fast, but it is also rated to endure up to 3.6PB of writes. However, despite all the value it offers, it lacks quite a bit in the looks department.

Silicon Power’s US70 is a generic E16-based SSD with Kioxia’s 96L TLC flash. The company designed the SSD to deliver near-bleeding-edge Gen4 performance, but that was before the release of recent beasts like WD’s Black SN850 and Samsung’s 980 Pro. Still, while not quite as fast as those newer models, it’s much cheaper and comes packing some hefty endurance ratings that place it up there as one of the most enduring consumer SSDs you can buy – its endurance rating is three times higher than both the WD Black SN850 and Samsung 980 Pro. 

Specifications

The US70 is available in limited capacities of 1TB and 2TB with street prices of $175 and $320, respectively. Silicon Power’s US70 is rated to deliver up to 5/4.4 GBps of sequential read/write throughput and can sustain 750,000 random read/write IOPS.

Unlike some SSDs that leverage static or hybrid cache architectures, Silicon Power’s US70 comes with a large dynamic SLC write cache that spans one-third of the device’s available capacity. Silicon Power’s US70 quickly and predictably flushes its cache to enable consistent performance not only days after your last workload but also within only minutes.

With Phison’s fourth-generation LDPC ECC, the US70 is not only backed by a five-year warranty, but Silicon Power rates the US70 to endure up to three times as many writes as Samsung’s 980 Pro at both capacities. The US70 supports Trim,  S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, and has secure erase capability, but it lacks AES 256-bit hardware encryption.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power supports the US70 with a very basic SSD toolbox that isn't comparable to the sophisticated level of Samsung’s Magician or WD’s SSD Dashboard. Silicon Power’s SSD Toolbox allows you to monitor the device’s health and temperature as well as run some simple diagnostic tests.

A Closer Look

Silicon Power’s US70 comes in an M.2 2280 double-sided form factor at each capacity, meaning there are components on each side of the PCB, preventing it from being used in the most ultra-slim devices that require single-sided SSDs. The US70 is definitely lacking aesthetically with an unappealing sticker over top of the components, and the blue PCB is hard to match with other components.

Silicon Power’s U70 leverages Phison’s PS5016-E16 PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 SSD controller. This quad-core controller incorporates dual 28nm Cortex R5 CPUs and CoXProcessor 2.0 technology to enable fast and consistent write performance and better efficiency. The controller affords the US70 end-to-end data path protection, Active State Power Management (ASPM), Autonomous Power State Transition (APST), and the L1.2 ultra-low power mode with support for thermal throttling if needed.

Unlike cheaper alternatives like Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite, the controller in the US70 leverages a DRAM buffer for FTL table mapping. There are two SK hynix 8Gb DDR4 DRAM ICs clocked at 1,600 MHz on our 2TB sample, one on each side of the PCB, while the 1TB model should come with half of that.

The US70 has a total of four NAND packages, two on each side of the PCB, with each package containing eight 512Gb dies of Kioxia’s 96L TLC (thirty-two in total). The flash interfaces with the controller at speeds of 800 MTps over eight NAND channels. The flash features a dual-plane architecture for higher interleaving performance.

We tested the Silicon power US70 against the best SSDs on the market. With the Samsung 980 Pro leading the pack and Sabrent’s Rocket NVMe 4.0, Rocket Q4, and Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite also sporting PCIe 4.0 x4 interfaces, there’s some fast competition in this round-up. We also included some PCIe Gen3 performers, like Samsung’s 970 Evo Plus, Crucial’s P5, WD’s Black SN750, and the Rocket Q. Additionally, we threw in a SATA Seagate FireCuda 120 for good measure.

Comparison Products

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

Final Fantasy XIV Shadowbringers is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

With a total time of 10.91 seconds, the US70 scores sixth place in this game benchmark, falling behind not only Samsung’s 980 Pro and the very responsive Adata XPG Gammix S50 Lite also the Samsung 970 Evo Plus, Crucial P5, and WD Black SN750. It did outperform the Sabrent SSDs, edging out ahead of the Rocket NVMe 4.0 by a hair.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom blocks of data. Our 50GB dataset includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. Our 100GB dataset consists of 22,579 files, with 50GB of them being large movies. We copy the data sets to new folders and then follow-up with a read test of a newly-written 6.5GB zip file and 15GB movie file.

Silicon Power’s US70 delivers exceptional file transfer and read performance that places it as one of the faster SSDs on the market. Scoring second in both our 50GB and 100GB copy tests, the US70 boasts very impressive performance. The US70 delivered respectable results even when reading back our large test files, taking third place in those tests.

Trace Testing – PCMark 10 Storage Tests

PCMark 10 is a trace-based benchmark that uses a wide-ranging set of real-world traces from popular applications and everyday tasks to measure the performance of storage devices. The quick benchmark is more relatable to those who use their PCs for leisure or basic office work, while the full benchmark relates more to power users.

Once again, the US70 delivers impressive performance with scores that place it second in both the Quick and Full System Drive benchmarks. The large dynamic SLC cache and massive write performance help it advance over most PCIe Gen3 NVMe SSDs, but it is not quite on the same level as Samsung’s latest and greatest.

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 10, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

Silicon Power’s US70 performs very similarly to that of Sabrent’s Rocket NVMe 4.0, completing the benchmark in a total time that lagged the Sabrent by just one second. With a simple dual-core controller, Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite delivers faster results and completed the benchmark roughly a minute and a half faster than the Phison E16-powered SSDs.

Synthetic Testing - ATTO / iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool while ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. Both of these tools give us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The Silicon Power US70’s sequential performance at a queue depth (QD) of 1 proves very strong, and it delivers some of the best performance we have seen with peak performance of roughly 5/4.3 GBps of sequential read/write throughput. The US70's responsiveness in random workloads is also up there with some of the best, but it's not quite as fast as Samsung’s 980 PRO nor Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite at a QD of 1. At a QD of 128, the US70's performance peaks at roughly 600,000 / 565,000 random read/write IOPS.

Sustained Write Performance & Cache Recovery

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSDs implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data.  Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated. We also monitor cache recovery via multiple idle rounds.

Silicon Power’s US70 can absorb over 333GB of data at a rate of 4.2-4.3 GBps before slowing down, making it a speedy SSD in write workloads, which is a big advantage for large file transfers. It also recovers very predictably, flushing the SLC cache at a rate of 16GB every 30 seconds. 

Power Consumption & Temperature

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is an important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a laptop upgrade. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, ultimately saving energy.

We also monitor the drive’s temperature via the S.M.A.R.T. data and an IR thermometer to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Phison’s E16 NVMe SSD controller is a revamped E12 model with a Gen4 PHY, which helps speed up its bandwidth considerably, but it isn’t as efficient as newer Gen4 designs with faster-operating flash. Samsung’s 980 Pro attains top marks in power efficiency, while the US70 scores sixth place overall due to high average power consumption and even higher peak power consumption. The US70's Idle power draw could be optimized slightly, but it's fairly low when ASPM is enabled.

Idle temperatures range from 36-38 degrees Celcius, which is lower than Crucial’s P5 and WD’s Black SN850. Still, when we hit the drive with a bunch of reads and writes, controller temperatures can rise to temperatures of over 80C, which could trigger thermal throttling without proper cooling, such as enough airflow or a heatsink. 

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Top-tier SSDs like Samsung’s 980 Pro or WD’s Black SN850 perform at another level due to their new grounds-up designs and even faster flash. Even so, Silicon Power’s US70 is a fast PCIe 4.0 x4 SSD that delivers responsive speeds for its price point.

Compared to the Samsung or WD Black, the US70 is an excellent value for those who don’t necessarily need bleeding-edge performance but still want responsive performance and the ability to brag about their PCIe Gen4 SSD. The US70 is a perfect match if you're looking for a new scratch disk to edit your 4K and 8K media, and it's also a great fit for gamers.

Silicon Power’s US70 traded blows with other Phison E16 competitors at an average of $25 cheaper for the 1TB model, and a substantial $80 cheaper than a drive like Sabrent’s 2TB Rocket NVMe 4.0. Not only does it offer the same level of performance as those more expensive models, but it also offers the same level of endurance. 

In fact, the 1TB drive can withstand up to 1.8 petabytes of writes, and the 2TB model can absorb a staggering 3.6 petabytes, all within the no-strings-attached five-year warranty. As such, the US70's reliability rating beats both Samsung and WD, and you don’t need to register your device for warranty coverage like you have to with Sabrent’s SSDs.

For those looking to save a few bucks over the best, the US70 makes a great alternative pick, but if you're looking to save even more, Adata’s XPG Gammix S50 Lite is also a great pick that can’t be overlooked. The Adata is still our top value pick, but Silicon Power’s US70 makes that choice hard. At $140 for the 1TB model and $260 for the 2TB model, the Adata is much cheaper, and it's high-speed random performance even outperformed the US70 in SPECworkstation 3’s testing, but at a much lower price point. In the end, the amount of money you spend dictates the amount of speed you get.

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If you've purchased yourself an AMD X570 or B550 motherboard along with an accompanying Ryzen 3000 CPU, it'd be a shame not to use its PCI-Express 4.0 storage capabilities. There aren't all that many options available yet, but now, Silicon Power is joining the fray with its new US70 M.2 SSD.

PCIe 4 NVMe SSDs boast truly absurd speeds. Whereas PCIe 3.0 SSDs capped out at about 3500 MB/s, the US70 is capable of read and write speeds of up to 5000 MB/s and 4400 MB/s, respectively. That's not fully saturating the PCIe 4.0 bandwidth yet, but for now, most affordable controllers simply haven't evolved to that point yet.

With built-in wear leveling, bad block management, over-provisioning, SLC caching, and TRIM commands it's up to speed with all the latest features one can expect from an SSD.

Capacities only include 1 TB and 2 TB models. The US70 features 3D NAND, although it's not exactly clear what kind of NAND is baked into it. Given that it uses SLC caching, it clearly isn't SLC NAND, so we're leaning towards TLC NAND as a cost/performance effective option. It's also not clear which controller this SSD uses.

The SSD doesn't come with a built-in heatsink, and given its speeds, we reckon this will be among the more affordable PCIe Gen 4 SSDs available. It will come with a 5-year warranty.

Silicon Power’s entry-level P34A60 offers up to 2.2/1.6 GBps of sequential read/write performance and comes at rock-bottom pricing. That makes it a great value and the NVMe interface is much faster than SATA drives for light use, and while it's not the perfect drive for gaming, it’s close. 

The P34A60 is a step down from Silicon Power's P34A80 that we recently reviewed. Unlike that model, the P34A60 doesn’t come with a Phison E12 NVMe SSD controller. Instead, it boasts an entry-level DRAMless Silicon Motion SM2263XT NVMe SSD controller.

While the SM2263XT doesn’t use DRAM, it still serves up multi-GBps transfer speeds and is responsive due to host memory buffer (HMB) technology. This NVMe feature uses some of the host’s memory for caching the drives Flash Translation Layer (FTL) data, ultimately keeping performance competitive at a lower price point. The only drawback to HMB is that these drives exhibit a bit more latency than DRAM-based SSDs, particularly when they are under heavy load. However, the lower-cost design saves the company a few bucks, which it then passes on to the consumer.

Specifications

Silicon Power’s SP34A60 comes in three capacities of 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB. The 1TB model is the best bang-for-your-buck at just $95, but the 256GB and 512GB models are priced very aggressively at $33.99 and $56.99, respectively. Silicon Power will release a 2TB model in early 2020.

As a PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe 1.3 device, the SP34A60 delivers performance figures of up to 2.1/1.2 GBps of sequential read/write throughput at the 256GB capacity, and up to 2.2 /1.6 GBps at the 512GB and 1TB capacities. All of the capacity points deliver up to 240,000 IOPS of random read performance and 250,000 write IOPS. 

Standard features include secure erase support via the Format NVM command, Trim, and S.M.A.R.T. data reporting. To ensure data integrity, the P34A60 features end-to-end data protection, a RAID engine, and Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) ECC. This also ensures competitive endurance ratings. At up to 600TB of write endurance at the 1TB capacity, it matches Samsung’s 970 EVO Plus. It also has a five-year warranty, but that only applies if you haven't exhausted the write endurance.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power provides an SSD Toolbox for download on the company’s website. It allows you to monitor your SSD’s S.M.A.R.T. data and view its health and endurance status.

A Closer Look

The P34A60 comes in an M.2 2280 form factor and our 512GB sample is single-sided, meaning the components are all on one side of the PCB. The SMI SM2263XT NVMe 1.3 SSD controller is accompanied by Intel 64-Layer TLC flash.

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Comparison Products

We put two mainstream contenders, the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro and MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro (similar to the P34A80), up against the P34A60. As direct competition, we threw in the Crucial P1, WD Blue SN500, and a Crucial MX500 SATA SSD. We also added in Intel Optane 905P and a 6TB WD Black HDD for reference. 

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Loading your favorite games is a relatively light task for any SSD; most perform similarly. At a total load time of 19.5 seconds, the P34A60 put up a great result that is a step ahead of most SATA SSDs.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow-up with a reading test of a newly written 6.5GB file.

The P34A60's read performance is limited due to the lower-power and less feature-packed controller. But by virtue of its TLC NAND, it scored ahead of the Crucial P1 with its QLC NAND flash, and even beat the WD Blue SN500 in read and copy performance. It even outperformed the BPX Pro during the 50GB copy, which, in essence, outperformed its more expensive brother, the P34A80, at the 512GB capacity point.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

In terms of total responsiveness, the P34A60 can handle almost any consumer workload you throw at it. It scored similarly to the SN500 and offers a clear advantage over any SATA device. 

Trace Testing – SPECworkstation 3

Like PCMark 8, SPECworkstation 3 is a trace-based benchmark, but it is designed to push the system harder by measuring workstation performance in professional applications.

In prosumer tasks, the P34A60 scored the lowest of the NVMe group. It did, however, pull off a better total completion time than the Crucial P1 with higher average bandwidth and peak performance. 

Synthetics - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

In ATTO, we tested the P34A60 at a queue depth (QD) of 4. It delivered better small file performance than the WD Blue SN500 and Crucial P1. Peak results came in at 2.1 GBps read and 1.7 GBps write. It couldn't keep up with the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro or Intel Optane 905P, however.

Synthetic Testing - iometer

The iometer storage benchmarking tool is advanced and highly configurable. Vendors often use this utility to measure the performance of their devices.

Iometer shows similar peak values of about 2.1GBps read and 1.7GBps write. The P34A60's performance is responsive and ranks just behind the Adata at a QD of 1. Peak performance comes in at about 220,000/175,000 read/write IOPS. 

Sustained Write Performance & Temperature

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement a write cache, which is a fast area of (usually) pseudo-SLC programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We use iometer to hammer the SSD with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the write cache and performance after the cache is saturated.

When possible, we also log the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

Silicon Power’s P34A60 features a dynamic SLC write cache. We wrote 67GB of data before write speeds degraded. Once performance faltered, the drive fell from 1,650 MBps of write throughput down to an average of 140 MBps. When transferring a few hundred GB of data, temperatures hit a peak of 67 degrees Celsius with an ambient of 25 degrees Celsius (static air cooling).

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state more quickly, which ultimately saves power.

The P34A60 came in first place in our efficiency tests. The drive averaged 2.5W of power consumption during the 50GB transfer and peaked at just over 3.5W. Due to HMB, however, idle power consumption is a bit higher than most SSDs.

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Silicon Power’s P34A60 is an entry-level M.2 NVMe SSD that it does a pretty good job for its price point. The single-sided 512GB drive is slim enough for most devices and even features a black PCB, which is something we usually only see on higher-end SSDs. 

In light workloads, like web browsing and office use, the P34A60 should be more than enough, and it could even hold up under amateur video and photo editing workloads. Most importantly, the drive will load up your favorite games significantly faster than any HDD and be much more responsive than even a standard SATA SSD. File transfer performance is often superior to SATA SSDs, too. 

Unfortunately, the drive comes without DRAM, so sustained performance suffers significantly once the write cache fills up. However, competing drives like the Crucial P1 write even slower once the cache fills, and the drive comes with DRAM, highlighting the importance of different types of flash memory. In the end, the P1's QLC flash is still slower than the P34A60's TLC flash.

If you're searching for a lower-budget SSD, the P34A60 is a solid pick. It’s cheaper than the WD Blue SN500, Crucial P1, and Intel 660p, and offers similar performance. It also boasts a five-year warranty and significantly higher endurance ratings than QLC SSDs, making it a compelling package for value seekers. 

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Capable of SATA-like speeds and available in capacities of up to 2TB, Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro Portable SSD is both speedy and spacious. It even features encryption software for enhanced data security when you’re on the go. It’s also priced quite competitively, although it isn’t without its quirks.

Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro is marketed as quite a durable device. The company says it’s military-grade shockproof, with a design that was inspired by a WWI-era German Junkers F.13 transport plane. And with military design in mind, it is quite secure with 256-bit encryption software for added security.

Specifications

The Bolt B75 Pro is available in capacities of 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. It utilizes a USB 3.2 Gen 2 type-C interface to deliver speeds of up to 520/420 MBps read/write. 

The drive features a standard three-year warranty, but lacks an official endurance rating at the time of writing. It is both Mac and PC compatible, as the Bolt B75 pro comes formatted as exFAT out of the box. Note, though, that our testing was completed with the drive formatted as NTFS.

Software and Accessories

The Bolt B75 Pro comes with two one-foot long USB cables, one type-C to type-C and the other type-C to type-A. Both power the device off the USB bus.

Silicon Power’s SP Widget software is compatible with this drive and available for download. With it, you can configure backups, enable the AES 256-bit encryption, and more.

Closer Look

The Bolt B75 Pro measures 124.4 x 82.0 x 12.2 mm and weighs in at 105 grams. The sleek aluminum casing features a multi-side power indicator light.

The drive is easily disassembled via four Philips head screws. But while the housing is sleek it’s a bit less durable than we expected. The exterior features a lightweight aluminum-alloy finish, which we were able to bend rather easy. This is unlike much tougher LaCie externals drives we’ve tested in the past. 

Opened up, we find inside houses a SATA-to-USB PCB featuring an ASMedia ASM234cm bridge chip and a SATA SSD that is secured using double-sided adhesive foam. Once we dig a bit deeper, we see that the Bolt B75 Pro is powered by a Silicon Motion SM2258XT SATA controller and Intel 64L TLC NAND flash. Being a Silicon Motion XT controller, that means this SSD does not feature any DRAM, which helps to help keep down cost, but can also negatively impact performance.  

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Comparison Products

Today, we throw Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro up against a few other external SSDs and an external HDD that we have recently tested. As the slowest competitor, we include the LaCie Mobile Drive 2TB HDD. Next, we include the Kingston HyperX Savage EXO and SanDisk Extreme, both USB C external SSDs that operate at SATA speeds. Additionally, we included two faster options, the Lexar SL100 Pro, a USB 10Gbps product, and Samsung’s Thunderbolt 3 powered X5 external SSD. 

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

DiskBench is a storage benchmarking tool that allows us to test the transfer or copy performance of a storage device with real data. We test external drives with three file transfers that consist of 25GB of photos (10GB of iPhone jpgs and 15GB of RAW photos from a Canon 6D), 50GB of movies, and 25GB of documents. First, we transfer each folder from a 1TB NVMe SSD to the external device; then we follow up by reading a 3.7GB 7-zip file and a 15GB movie back from the device. 

Unlike Kingston’s HyperX Savage EXO, the Bolt B75 Pro delivers some respectable results for a flash-based external. Write performance is just behind the SanDisk Extreme by a few seconds and leaps and bounds better than what the LaCie Mobile Drive can withstand. The Bolt was able to write at a rate of 449-487 MBps. During file reads, it comes in third overall, edging out over the other SATA based externals. 

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

In PCMark 8, Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro wasn’t able to surpass the HyperX Savage EXO. But still, it proved itself to be quite fast for application use. With a total score of 4,913 points and an average bandwidth of 195 MBps, it ranks fifth overall and is significantly better than what any HDD could deliver.

Synthetics - ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

The Bolt B75 Pro hit its rated speeds and then some here. In reads, it hit a max of 567 MBps and while writing, it hit 507 MBps. This is similar to the SanDisk Extreme and HyperX Savage EXO.

Synthetics - iometer

iometer is an advanced and highly configurable storage benchmarking tool that vendors often use to measure the performance of their devices.

Results from sequential performance testing in iometer match that of ATTO. Speeds of 560/510 MBps read/write were achieved. With a fourth-place ranking, random performance is pretty decent too. At a queue depth of one, Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro is capable of up to 4,300 IOPS read performance and has the second-highest write performance, 16,500 IOPS. Also, peak random figures come in at 22,000 / 39,000 IOPS read/write.

Write Saturation and Temperature

Write speed and temperature are two important and inter-related metrics for external devices. We threw in this one last test to measure the performance of the drive over a 15-minute window, writing to the full span of the drive. When possible, we also log the temperature of the drive via the S.M.A.R.T. data to see when (or if) thermal throttling kicks in and how it impacts performance. This test also reveals if the drive has a pseudo-SLC cache, which is a small portion of faster-programmed flash that absorbs incoming write workloads. Bear in mind that results will vary based on the workload and ambient air temperature.

For the first twelve minutes and forty-five seconds of writing, the Bolt B75 Pro wrote at a rate of 485 MBps for a total of 375GB. Beyond that, however, write speed decreased significantly. Once the dynamic SLC cache is full, write speed averaged 70 MBps, with lows as low as 5-6 MBps. 

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 Silicon Power’s Bolt B75 Pro aims to offer up speedy flash in plentiful capacities in the form of a sleek and durable external storage. And it is quite cheap for an external SSD. But, like some other recent “Pro” type storage products we have reviewed, it doesn’t quite live up to that name.

One disappointing aspect was its encryption method. Based on Silicon Power’s Widget software, it works on a per-file or per-folder basis, uses up system resources, and takes a long time to encrypt. This is not as streamlined as what Samsung or Seagate have configured for their externals, which encrypt on a drive level. Using the latter method,  entering just one password unlocks the whole device and everything works instantly.  

Aesthetically, sure,the Bolt B75 Pro is made of an aluminum alloy and is advertised as military-grade. However, the Bolt B75 Pro isn’t as rugged as the company would lead you to believe. It’s better than plastic, but the casing can bend and twist rather easily. It’s also advertised as being scratchproof, but a dull pair of scissors seems to nick and scratch the casing without much effort. The drive looks good but isn’t so tough. Nor does it feature any sort of weather, water, dust, or crush resistance ratings like some more portable solutions like SanDisk’s Extreme and Extreme Pro. 

When using the Bolt B75 Pro, its performance is mixed. While we recorded average flash-based read and write speeds when transferring files to and from the external SSD, extended write testing showed things can go downhill fast. As we demonstrated, the DRAMless SSD powering the Bolt B75 Pro can degrade to speeds slower than a hard drive, just 70MBps on average after the dynamic pSLC cache exhausts due to its DRAMless architecture. 

However, when putting the drive under some consumer workload traces in PCMark 8, the storage test revealed some fairly competitive application and game load performance. So, if you don’t plan on writing hundreds of gigabytes of data often, then the write slowdowns will happen extremely rarely if at all. But, for those actual pros or prosumers who need to write large batches of files fast, look to alternatives or even toward building an external yourself. 

Current pricing places the Bold B75 Pro just ahead of what most SATA SSDs cost by a few dollars. This doesn’t make it the best deal in external storage, though it is quite competitive for an external SSD. Depending on the capacity, opting for a better-quality DRAM-based SATA SSD and an external enclosure may be a more valuable route if you are looking for more consistent performance. Or, spend a bit more and get a higher performance external SSD like the Samsung X5.

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Silicon Power, a Taiwanese manufacturer, today announced a new SSD: The P34A60. Unlike a solid handful of recent SSDs we’ve seen come out, this one only works on the ‘older’ PCI-Express 3.0 bus instead of the newer 4.0 specification, but it does utilize all four lanes the M.2 slot has access to.

The unit supports NVMe 1.3, and will read at up to 2200 MB/s and write at up to 1600 MB/s. The unit also comes with ECC features and low-density parity check functionality.

Being an M.2 SSD based on the 80mm long specification, next to fitting in almost all modern desktops, it will also fit in quite a few modern laptops.

Capacities available include 256GB, 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB. The units also support RAID functionality, so pairing them up for increased performance or increased redundancy is certainly an option.

At the time of writing, pricing has not yet been announced. Given that this unit does not run on the new PCI-Express 4.0 standard, we wouldn’t expect it to be all too pricey.

Power Up Your Storage

Silicon Power has saddled its latest SSD with the fairly generic moniker of PCIe Gen3x4, so we'll be referring to it by part number, P34A80, instead. Today we’re testing the 1TB capacity and at this size, performance is quite impressive. With rated 3.4/3 GBps sequential read/write speeds, this snappy little guy will speed up your system without a doubt, and it's cheaper than most of its competition.

Silicon Power’s P34A80 features Phison’s E12 NVMe controller, paired with Toshiba’s BiCS3 64L TLC NAND flash. Just as with many of the SSDs we have seen with this combination of components before it, like the the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, the P34A80 is quite the capable device. Aside from the impressive rated sequential speeds, it also sports up to 390K and 450K IOPS read and write on our 1TB sample.

The P34A80 is available in capacities from 256GB to 1TB at this time. The company has a 2TB SKU, which Silicon Power says will be available sson. At 109.99 for our 1TB sample, or just $0.11 per GB, this drive is quite affordable. The 512GB and 256GB models aren't that much pricier, at $0.12 and $0.15 per GB respectfully. At these prices, the Silicon Power P34A80 simply screams value, and should be a top consideration if you're concerned about balancing speed and price.

The Silicon Power drive comes with all the performance you could ask for from a high-end TLC based SSD, and  at a similar cost to those QLC based SSDs like the Intel SSD 660p and Crucial P1. What’s not to love?

Well, in order to bring such low prices to the market, there were some corners that Silicon Power cut. Luckily for consumers, there are no deal-breakers. While not officially stated on their website at this time, the P34A80 does come with endurance ratings. Typically, we would expect endurance ratings of ~380TBW, 800TBW, and 1700 TBW for the 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB Phison E12 powered devices. But Silicon Power seems to be more conservative in their ratings.

Specifications

The 256GB model is rated for up to 125TBW, and this figure doubles as capacity doubles, meaning 250 TBW on the 512GB model and 500 TBW of endurance on our 1TB model. This is low for a TLC drive, but most don’t write more than 20GB-30GB of data a day to their devices, so running out of endurance isn’t as likely as you running out of warranty time first. Speaking of which, the Silicon Power P34A80 comes backed by a 5-year warranty, rather than a 3-year warranty like some of the other Phison E12 based SSDs we have reviewed recently.

As well, the P34A80 boasts standard features like S.M.A.R.T. data reporting, TRIM, and support for Format NVM /secure erase commands, but does not come with OPAL or Windows BitLocker support.

Software and Accessories

Silicon Power has an SSD toolbox available for download on their website. You can use it to monitor your device's health, performance, and even secure erase. But at the time of writing, V3.0.1.0 doesn’t seem to support the P34A80.

A Closer Look

Silicon Power’s P34A80 comes in an M.2 2280 form factor. Our 1TB sample is double-sided, meaning components are on both sides of the PCB. Unlike most M.2 SSDs out now, the PCB isn’t black, instead, it is blue. The company threw a dark sticker over top of the drive, but with a scan code and other distracting elements on it, it is well…rather distracting. Something labeling the opposite side would easily remedy.

As mentioned earlier, the Phison E12 NVMe controller is powering this SSD and there are four Toshiba BiCS3 NAND packages in all. Also, there are two 512MB DDR4 DRAM package for the controller to use for caching the File Translation Layer (FTL). Once formatted in Windows, the end user has 953GB of free space to use.

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1TB Performance Results

Comparison Products

We put the P34A80 up against its near twin, the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro as well as a few other top contenders. From Samsung, we’ve added results from the 970 EVO Plus and 970 Pro. We also included the WD Black SN750 and Adata XPG SX8200 Pro. And for final reference, we’ve added in the Crucial P1, and entry-level NVMe SSD based on QLC NAND and the mainstream SATA SSD, the Crucial MX500.

ATTO

ATTO is a simple and free application that SSD vendors commonly use to assign sequential performance specifications to their products. It also gives us insight into how the device handles different file sizes.

Silicon Power’s P34A80 mirrors the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro in performance here. With speeds of almost 3.5/3.0 GB/s read/write, it hits its rated specs with ease. Only the Samsung 970 EVO Plus capable of surpassing its write speed, although some of its competitors were a bit faster with smaller file sizes during this test.

CrystalDiskMark

CrystalDiskMark (CDM) is a simple and easy to use file size benchmarking tool.

Crystal Disk Mark confirms the sequential performance of 3.4/3GB/s, just like we saw in ATTO. This performance is at a high QD, however, and is unrealistic. Dialing things back down to a queue depth (QD) of 1, we see that the P34A80 is capable of just 2 GBps read and write speed.

As well, we see that 4K performance hits 382K/496K IOPS read/write at a QD of 64. This is very high performance, but it doesn’t help us gauge the device’s real-world application performance. For that, we look to smaller QDs, like 1-4. At QD1, where 80-90% of your workloads will land, the P34A80 delivered over 13K IOPS read and 43K IOPS write, which lands it in fifth place overall. QD2-4 show it is on par with most other devices.

Sustained Sequential Write Performance

Official write specifications are only part of the performance picture. Most SSD makers implement an SLC cache buffer, which is a fast area of SLC-programmed flash that absorbs incoming data. Sustained write speeds can suffer tremendously once the workload spills outside of the SLC cache and into the "native" TLC or QLC flash. We hammer the SSDs with sequential writes for 15 minutes to measure both the size of the SLC buffer and performance after the buffer is saturated.

Because it has a Phison E12 NVMe controller at its heart, we know the Silicon Power P34A80 features an SLC write cache. After testing, we can see that it is capable of absorbing up to 24GB of data at 3GBps before performance degrades to native direct to TLC write speeds. This matches the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, although it does so without the extra overprovisioning. After the cache fills, write performance will degrade to just over 1GBps until it has a break to recover. Here it ties for fourth place overall.

Game Scene Loading - Final Fantasy XIV

The Final Fantasy XIV StormBlood benchmark is a free real-world game benchmark that easily and accurately compares game load times without the inaccuracy of using a stopwatch.

Like most Phison E12 powered SSDs, the P34A80 isn’t a leader in this test, rather it lands dead last in our comparison pool among SSDs. This leaves a 3-second gap between it and the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, our fastest flash-based device in the comparison. So, overall, while it is in last place, a difference in three seconds isn’t too significant, and the Silicon Power drive is still much faster than an HDD.

Transfer Rates – DiskBench

We use the DiskBench storage benchmarking tool to test file transfer performance with our own custom 50GB block of data. Our data set includes 31,227 files of various types, like pictures, PDFs, and videos. We copy the files to a new folder and then follow up with a read test of a newly-written 6GB file.

Our 1TB Silicon Power P34A80 was able to copy our 50GB file folder at a rate of 281MBps. This is about the same as the BPX Pro, but overall ranks it as the slowest NVMe SSD in the group. It is, though, twice as fast as the SATA based MX500 here. As well, during the 6GB file read test, it scored second place, just behind that of the Samsung 970 PRO.

Trace Testing – PCMark 8 Storage Test 2.0

PCMark 8 is a trace-based benchmark that uses Microsoft Office, Adobe Creative Suite, World of Warcraft, and Battlefield 3 to measure the performance of storage devices in real-world scenarios.

The Silicon Power P34A80 achieved an overall score of 5,103 points and an average bandwidth of 705MBps here. The Silicon Motion SM2262EN powered Adata XPG SX8200 Pro managed to squeeze out a little more application performance on this test, but the P34A80 is still a high-end contender and lands in fifth place overall, just behind the Samsung 970 EVO Plus.

SYSmark 2014 SE

Like PCMark, SYSmark uses real applications to measure system performance. SYSmark takes things much further, however. It utilizes fourteen different applications to run real workloads with real data sets to measure how overall system performance impacts the user experience. BAPCo's SYSmark 2014 SE installs a full suite of applications for its tests, which includes Microsoft Office, Google Chrome, Corel WinZip, several Adobe software applications, and GIMP. That also makes it a great test to measure the amount of time it takes to install widely-used programs after you install a fresh operating system.

Similar to what we saw with PCMark 8, in SYSmark 2014 SE the Silicon Power P34A80 ranks between the Samsung 970 EVO Plus and the WD Black SN750 again.

Power Consumption

We use the Quarch HD Programmable Power Module to gain a deeper understanding of power characteristics. Idle power consumption is a very important aspect to consider, especially if you're looking for a new drive for your laptop. Some SSDs can consume watts of power at idle while better-suited ones sip just milliwatts. Average workload power consumption and max consumption are two other aspects of power consumption, but performance-per-watt is more important. A drive might consume more power during any given workload, but accomplishing a task faster allows the drive to drop into an idle state faster, which ultimately saves power.

With an average power consumption of 2.88 watts, Silicon Power’s P34A80 it ranks sixth in our power efficiency test. It hits a max of 5.11W, which isn’t too high. At idle it consumes 621 milliwatts with ASPM disabled, but once enabled this amount decreases significantly to just 50mW. Overall, it is a bit more power hungry than the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, but is still rather well regulated.

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Conclusion

Silicon Power’s latest PCIe 3.0 x4 M.2 NVMe SSD lacks a creative name, but that doesn’t mean it is any less worth looking into. As a matter of fact, it should be high up on your list if you are in the market for a new SSD today. It’s actually a great buy.

Performance is just as expected, given it's powered by Phison’s E12 NVMe controller and Toshiba BiCS3 TLC NAND flash. That's an established pairting that we've seen in drives before, to there wasn’t much mystery around how it would perform. In our testing, it basically mirrored the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro, another E12 powered SSD, and delivered high-end performance overall. While its write speed degrades to 1GBps, this is significantly better than that of some others like the Intel 660P or even any SATA SSD.

The P34A80 comes backed with a 5-year warranty, which is great to see. But, because of its lower prices, endurance takes quite the hit. At 500TBW, our 1TB P34A80 has slightly lower endurance than that of the Adata XPG SX8200 Pro, WD Black SN750, and Samsung 970 EVO Plus, and about a third the endurance of the MyDigitalSSD BPX Pro. That's definitely something to keep in mind if you plan on regular workloads that hammer the drive with lots of writes.

Aesthetics could use some improvement too. While Silicon Power’s P3485 model features a small and quite attractive looking heatsink overtop, like many other products out there, the P34A80 we have here today could use some better looks. Placing a product SKU overtop is not the way to impress customers looking to put their drive in a windowed case. Likewise, the lack of up-to-date software support is an issue, which we hope the company will correct soon.

But, these minor qualms can't overshadow the P34A80’s value. Silicon Power’s P34A80 is a high-performance device, but its prices aren’t reflective of such. At just $0.11-0.15 per GB, depending on capacity, the drive is even cheaper than the QLC based SSDs at some capacities.

I’d recommend this over similarly priced QLC drives like the Intel 660P or Crucial P1 any day of the week. You get higher performance and endurance for essentially the same price. Again, what’s not to love about that?

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A recent entry into the enthusiast DRAM market, Silicon Power did solid work to produce its P/N SP016GXLZU320BDB DDR4-3200 kit. With the same type of lifetime limited warranty, similar pricing, and a performance edge so miniscule as to be inconsequential compared  to its closest competition, buyers will probably pick their brand based on aesthetics. On that front, you should of course go with what you like, but the XPower Turbine makes a strong case for itself in the looks department, too.

Silicon Power put its toe in the door of the enthusiast DRAM market just a few months ago, so it will probably forgive us for thinking of it as a storage device firm. So new is its XPower Turbine RGB DDR4 that the firm didn’t even have boxes printed for its 2x 8GB kit when it sent our samples. The package inside still had space for two DIMMs however, and an updated photo from one of its sellers shows that the lack of dual-channel-kit packaging has since been resolved.

What you’ll get in a single¸slightly revised version of the above boxes are two DDR4-3200 DIMMs with mid-tier CAS 16 timings, each topped with a white light diffuser and wrapped in a brushed aluminum heat spreader, for around $92 USD. Unfortunately, it’s not currently available for a realistic price in U.K.

The full set of  primary timings are 16-18-18-38, and the modules require 1.35V to assure those timings are stable at its DDR4-3200 XMP. Buyers who suddenly find out too late that their boards can’t support that XMP will still get a reasonable DDR4-2666 configuration, and those who figure out too late that their Core i3-8350K is limited to DDR4-2400 should be pleased to note that the modules are also programed for that. While these fallback settings are all superior to the DDR4-2133 offered by some of Silicon Power’s competitors, we still think it best to figure out what your hardware can support before ordering new parts.

Silicon Power does not provide any download links for RGB software, but instead relies on applications provided by motherboard makers to support their own RGB lighting. Aura Sync, RGB Fusion, Mystic Light Sync and Polychrome Sync are all listed as compatible, and the Aura Sync for our motherboard worked as expected.

Comparison Hardware and Test Configuration

We compared Silicon Power’s XPower Turbine RGB to our most-recent 2x 8GB DDR4-3200 C16 kits from Teamgroup, Adata, and Gigabyte, using Fractal Design’s Celsius S24 to keep Intel’s Core i9-9900K processor cool at a fixed 4.80 GHz frequency on Asus’ Maximus XI Hero . Toshiba’s OCZ RD400 NVMe SSD and MSI’s GTX 1080 Armor OC reduce non-DRAM bottlenecks.

Overclocking and Latency Tuning

XPower Turbine RGB falls only slightly behind our top DDR4-3200 C16 overclock. DDR4-3600 should be easy for most of these kits to reach, apart from the Delta Tuf Gaming RGB, and the three top contenders all reached at least DDR4-3733.

We excluded DDR4-4000 from our benchmark results since none of these kits could reach it. The lowest (quickest) stable timings for the XPower Turming RGB are like those of the Adata and Aorus kits, apart from the Adata kit’s ability to run DDR4-3466 at C16 rather than C17.

Benchmark Results

Three kits that have the same DDR4-3200 16-18-18 XMP values provide identical bandwidth in Sandra, though the latency measurements appear far flung.

XPower Turbine RGB edges out its competitors by ultra-narrow margins in F1 2015 and 7-Zip, which are our two benchmarks for which memory performance has the greatest impact.

Final Thoughts

With the performance race so close that nobody could likely be bothered to chose any of these kits based solely on that metric, aesthetics and pricing will likely drive their buying decision. We added our recently-tested DDR4-3200 C14 results to the performance baseline just to show how narrow the margins are for kits priced around 60% higher.

The big loss comes to Aorus RGB Memory, since the kit we tested last year is still stuck with last-year’s pricing. Of course the Aorus kit also has the aesthetic benefit of including two dummy modules (to make all four slots appear filled), but at this price most users could simply by two of the other kits and bump up from 16GB to 32GB in the process.

As for the XPower Turbine RGB, it costs $3 more than the cheapest kit in a value chart where that small a difference can still impact outcomes. Of course, most buyers will spend at least $5 to get the kit that best matches their preferred appearance, and for RGB buyers the XPower Turbine RGB could be a treat.

Photo Credits: Tom's Hardware

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With 15 years of storage experience under its belt, Silicon Power will finally branch out next year into the highly competitive gaming market. With the launch of the brand's Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4 memory kits announced today, the Taiwan-based manufacturer aims to captivate eSports professional players and gaming enthusiasts.

Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4 modules are built with a 10-layer PCB and rely on a low-profile metallic heatsink for passive cooling. With a height of 37mm, there should be minimum compatibility issues with large air CPU coolers. The modules are also equipped with controllable RGB lighting that is supported on the majority of motherboards including Asus' Aura Sync, Gigabyte's RGB Fusion, MSI's Mystic Light Sync and ASRock's Polychrome Sync ecosystems.

Silicon Power offers the Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4 memory kits in dual-channel configurations with capacities of 16GB (2x 8GB) and 32GB (2x 16GB). At the moment, the kits are available in three frequencies: 3200MHz, 3600MHz and 433MHz. Surprisingly, Silicon Power failed to mention the complete timings and only revealed the CAS Latency. 

The Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4-3200 kit comes with a CAS Latency of 16, while the DDR4-3600 and DDR4-4133 kits have a 19 CAS latency. Silicon Power highlighted that the DDR4-4133 kit operates at a voltage of 1.4V.

Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4 memory kits come equipped with Intel's Extreme Memory Profile (XMP) for a fast and painless setup. They are backed by a limited lifetime warranty. 

Silicon Power didn't clarify pricing or availability for the Xpower Turbine RGB DDR4 memory kits. Its product page says it'll be on sites includes Amazon and Newegg, but we don't see them listed yet. 

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Silicon Power announced two NVMe SSDs, the first for the company, based on the Phison PS5008-E8T DRAMless controller. Both drives share the same specifications and come with identical components from what we can tell. One carries a three-year warranty and the other comes with a five-year warranty. 

This is the first Phison PS5008-E8T retail product announcement that we've seen, and it comes on the heels of several companies shipping the PS5008-E8 armed with a DRAM cache. The E8T controller makes up for the lack of a DRAM to cache the table map by using a small amount of your host system memory (your RAM) to map the location of data on the flash. Support for Host Memory Buffer was added to Windows 10 in the Fall Creators Update in the last quarter of 2017.

Silicon Power didn't give us many performance details about the two new NVMe SSDs. The only performance numbers listed are sequential reads at 1,600 MB/s and sequential writes at 1,000 MB/s. The performance increase with each capacity increase, but we suspect the 1,600/1,000 rating is only for the largest model, 512GB. The P32A80 and P32A85 ships in three sizes, 128GB, 256GB, and 512GB.

The company does list a number of features for this series, such as being the "perfect SSD for Ultrabook Upgrades", easy installation, and the warranty for each model. The feature that caught us off guard is the mention of RAID. We've yet to see the HMB feature supported on Intel's PCH chipset RAID or in the new vROC system that uses the CPU as a RAID controller with support for RAID 0, 1, and 5. RAID with HMB-enabled SSDs should work with Microsoft's Storage Spaces, a pure software array. This is an area we will have to explore in the future.

Silicon Power didn't list any recommended prices or dates for availability.

Features & Specifications

We've discussed DRAMless SSDs for the last few years, but they are finally coming to market. If you've cruised Newegg's SSD section in the last couple of months, the 240GB Hyundai Sapphire stood out. It's the lowest-priced 2.5" 256GB-class SSD on the market, and at $50, it sells for $20 less than other products. We stumbled across Hyundai at CES and quickly arranged for a sample.

The NAND fabs dream of the day when flash is a part of every OEM system. CPU performance, the amount of system memory, and storage capacity are the big three marketing points for desktop PCs. Flash has gained market share in notebooks, but the percentage of desktops shipping with SSDs is still abysmal. It's a hard sell to convince a casual user to pay more for 256GB of flash than they would pay for a 1TB HDD. It will be easier to market solid-state drives as more casual users become aware of the benefits, but that doesn't mean they will pay significantly more for the technology in a low-cost notebook selling at a large retailer. 

In 2015, we learned that OEM system builders had asked the SSD industry to deliver 256GB SSDs in volume for $30 to $40 per unit. At that price, the system builders can promote flash without adding to the cost of the system. In a market where margins are less than $100 per system, any added expense cuts into the profit.

The solution is to streamline the entire SSD for the lowest price point, which begins with the controller. Products like the Samsung 850 series utilize 8-channel SSD controllers. Faster NAND propelled 4-channel controllers into competition with regular 8-channel SSDs, but with lower R&D and manufacturing overhead. Two-channel designs are the next phase. They take advantage of advanced manufacturing processes that include a small amount of SRAM memory inside the controller, which helps eliminate the need for DRAM.

Hyundai Technology is not the same company that builds automobiles, nor is it the previous parent company of Hynix. General Procurement, Inc. (out of Santa Ana, CA) licenses the Hyundai name. The company is new to flash-based products but also sells notebooks along with USB and SD cards. The company makes several general claims about the advantages of its solid-state drives over HDDs, like increased multitasking performance, energy efficiency, file transfer speeds (via Dynamic Write Acceleration), and reliability. Some of the claims don't line up with our initial DRAMless SSD findings.

Hyundai Technology offers both Cobalt and Sapphire SSDs. Both share the same product specifications and warranty information. There is very little data about either series on the website or Newegg's product page.

Specifications

Hyundai Technology lists the Sapphire in four capacities that range from 120GB to 960GB. To date, we've only spotted the Sapphire in 120GB and 240GB capacities.

The Sapphire 240GB sample we received uses the Marvell 88NV1120 controller. The controller is attractive to vendors because it's a DRAMless part designed to reduce manufacturing and component costs. The product page lists the NAND as 2D TLC / 3D TLC without any technical specifications. We suspect this drive will have a variable BOM (Bill Of Materials), so customers will receive "luck of the draw" components. 

On its website, the company lists the sequential read/write performance at 500/300 MB/s. Newegg lists the sequential write performance as 423 MB/s, slightly higher than the Hyundai website, but the retail package lists 430 MB/s. Random performance is not listed on either site or the package. To gain further insight into the Hyundai Technology Sapphire we turned to the Marvell website and our notes from a private meeting that took place in June 2015.

Marvell 88NV1120 Controller Features

The drive uses Marvell's ARM-based 88NV1120 2-channel dual-core controller. This is the first time we've tested the new Marvell controller. It's a fascinating part that can operate in either SATA AHCI mode or NVMe mode over a PCIe 3.0 x1 connection. The NVMe variant uses the 88NV1140 model name.

• SATA 6Gb/s support
• 2 channel / 4 CE
• TA DevSlp support
• Dual-core Cortex R5 CPU’s
• Embedded SRAM with hardware accelerators to optimize IOPS performance
• ONFI3 and Toggle2 NAND support
• 3rd Gen LDPC NANDEdge error-correction: 15nm TLC and 3D NAND support using LDPC technology to boost endurance and reliability
• BGA SSD and M.2/2.5 slim form factor support with thermal optimization and small package size
• 28nm low-power CMOS process

Marvell’s specifications state the company designed the controller for Toshiba NAND, so the Sapphire most likely uses 15nm planar TLC. We've yet to see Toshiba's 3D NAND, called BiCS, in a consumer SSD. We do know that Apple uses the flash in the latest iPhone products. 15nm planar TLC costs less than BiCS, so the low price point verifies our assumption without a firm confirmation.

Pricing And Availability

The Hyundai Sapphire was sold out at the time of writing. Just a few days before, we found the 240GB drive at Newegg selling for roughly $55 and the 120GB model for roughly $40. The drive seems to come and go on Newegg regularly. That's to be expected given the low price point. The $71.99 OCZ TL100 240GB (another DRAMless product) is the closest non-refurbished 256GB-class SSD on Newegg.

Warranty And Endurance

Hyundai Technology covers the Sapphire with a five-year warranty. The company doesn't list any endurance specifications, and that may be something to worry about.

At Computex 2016, a flash controller manufacturer warned us about DRAMless SSDs shipping with low-endurance planar TLC NAND. 1xnm planar NAND has far less endurance than 3D NAND. The vendor told us that some of the new NAND only has 100 P/E cycles.

"Since they are designed for low-cost OEM systems they just have to survive the warranty cycle. In many cases that is one year."

Marvell's 3rd generation LDPC technology increases the endurance far beyond 100 program/erase cycles per cell, but if you write a lot of data, you will want to keep an eye on drive wear. Gamers with large Steam libraries that automatically update may be among the most susceptible. 

Monitoring endurance and other SMART attributes may be an issue with this drive. We couldn't find a single program that could read the amount of data written to the flash or the amount of data sent from the host. We tried CrystalDisk Info, SSD-Z, SSD Life, and HDD Sentinel. DRAMless SSDs may require more wear leveling, and they certainly increase the amount of write amplification because they only cache a small amount of flash translation layer on the tiny embedded SRAM. Without a monitoring utility, using this drive is like driving a car without a fuel gauge.

Product Packaging

Hyundai put together an attractive package for the Sapphire, but it lacks basics that we like to see, like warranty information. Nearly all these drives will sell through online retailers until Hyundai gains some brick and mortar exposure. Before that happens, retailers will step in and insist upon warranty information on the package. Many retailers have policies that require such information.

A Closer Look

The Marvell 88NV1120 2-channel controller is tiny compared to the 8-channel controllers we often test. A third party packaged the flash, so we don't get to see the Toshiba part numbers. There are four packages total, two on each side. The drive uses all four CE per channel for maximum performance in the 240GB capacity.

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

MORE: All SSD Content

Comparisons & Benchmarks

Comparison Products

There are only a handful of retail brand-name DRAMless drives. Newegg lists several low-cost drives from Asian companies like Silicon Power, Kingspec, KingDian, and others. At least one of these companies has a reputation for selling products with variable BOMs. That means every component is interchangeable, including the controller and NAND, even if the product comes to market with the same model number.

We tested the Hyundai Technology Sapphire against brand name products with verified components. The Corsair Force LE 200 240GB uses a Phison S11 DRAMless controller. We covered the OCZ TL100, SanDisk SSD Plus and SanDisk Z410 in our 11-Drive DRAMless SSD Roundup article. These products use NAND from Flash Forward, which is SanDisk and Toshiba's joint venture.

Sequential Read Performance

To read about our storage tests in-depth, please check out How We Test HDDs And SSDs. We cover four-corner testing on page six of our How We Test guide.

The Hyundai Sapphire performs like a traditional SSD during relatively simple workloads. The sequential read test results are similar to any modern SATA 6Gb/s SSD. The Sapphire suffers a slight dip at queue depth (QD) 1, but performance increases as the workload intensifies.

Sequential Write Performance

The Sapphire has a strong SLC caching algorithm that allows the drive to recover in the very brief idle time between each run. We see the low QD1 performance again, but it increases as we scale the workload. The slope spurred us to go back and check the chipset dynamic speed settings to ensure they were still disabled. There are two separate controls; host-based and device-based. It appears that the drive may implement its own aggressive power reduction features. We disable the host settings on many of the tests to find the maximum performance, rather than simply allowing the chipset to reduce performance. 

Random Read Performance

"Hard disk replacements" is a marketing term for DRAMless SSDs. The Hyundai Sapphire has poor random read performance compared to other SSDs, but it still delivers a 200x QD1 random read increase over the best consumer HDDs. The Sapphire's performance scaling is slow in this workload. It nearly reaches 14,000 IOPS at QD32.

Random Write Performance

We are very impressed with the SLC cache algorithm that Marvell designed for this controller. The two SanDisk DRAMless SSDs suffer inconsistent performance because the SLC buffer fills quickly and takes much longer to flush the data.

80 Percent Mixed Sequential Workload

We describe our mixed workload testing in detail here and describe our steady state tests here.

Mixed sequential workloads pose a threat to performance in DRAMless designs. The controller has to access a wide range of map data, but it only stores a small amount of it in the SRAM cache. Companies have worked on compression technology to store more of the map in the limited memory capacity, and that seems to be one of the key technology features that increase performance.

80 Percent Mixed Random Workload

Sequential data requires less mapping data than random data, so map updates are less frequent. With random data, the drive accesses the map much faster because each new request requires a new map read or write. The Sapphire suffers from low random write performance, which has an impact on the mixed workload performance. Even with only 20% writes, the increased latency pulls down overall performance. 

Sequential Steady-State

The vendors did not design DRAMless drives for heavy usage. We still ran the steady-state tests, but mainly to look for any stability issues. All the drives passed with varying degrees of success. You will not want to run any of these products at (or near) full capacity. This is the undocumented SSD hurdle. SSDs with a lot of free space provide a pleasurable user experience, but filling the drive hurts performance. The LBA table map grows as you populate the drive with data. DRAM and SRAM are faster than NAND, so with a smaller cache, you have less usable space before drastically decreasing the performance of the drive. Therefore, we've yet to see a 1TB DRAMless SSD, although companies promise such devices are coming soon.

Random Steady-State

It's possible to drive many of the DRAMless SSDs down to very low IOPS during a severe workload. This causes the drive to stutter or hang. The system reacts like an old HDD system that has to wait for the drive to spin up after it transitioned into sleep mode.

PCMark 8 Real-World Software Performance

For details on our real-world software performance testing, please click here.

The Hyundai Sapphire provides inconsistent performance. In some application tests the drive performs well compared to the others, but in other tests, it falls well short of the competition.

Application Storage Bandwidth

We average the results and present the data as a single throughput value. The Hyundai Sapphire falls short of the other DRAMless SSDs, but we expected this result after viewing the low mixed random performance. Random performance plays a significant role in the user experience, and there is a direct link between mixed random performance and real-world applications. 

PCMark 8 Advanced Workload Performance

To learn how we test advanced workload performance, please click here.

It's difficult to measure DRAMless SSD performance because there are so many factors at work. The TLC drives rely heavily on SLC cache burst performance, and the dynamic cache capacity varies based on the amount of data on the drive. The previous workloads we conduct before the measurement also have an impact on test results.

We only want to examine the moderate workloads where the drives have ample idle time between each test. We test the drives near full capacity to increase the stress and background operations. The sequential steady-state test data confirms the low performance, but in this version, we see the impact on application performance.

None of the drives perform all that well, but it's important to remember that these products are HDD replacements and not designed to replace existing SSDs. The results are around 5x better than a high-performance HDD.

Total Service Time

The Hyundai Sapphire 240GB delivers the best DRAMless user experience, but that's not to say it will satisfy enthusiasts and power users with the performance. There is a larger increase in service time during each recovery pass than we see high-performance SATA SSDs like the Samsung 850 series and SanDisk Extreme PRO.

Responsiveness Test

All of the drives are very close in this new test. The Hyundai Sapphire is only slightly less responsive than the Corsair Force LE 200. The Sapphire does require more power to complete the same scripted tasks.

Notebook Battery Life

The storage system plays a larger role in notebook battery life than most users assume. All modern system components are built for bursty workloads, so the component drops into a low power state after the burst passes. This is also true for the storage, but with SSDs, there is more to storing data than reading and writing. The drives have to perform background activity to manage data, spread it across the NAND die to increase performance, and then shuffle the data from time to time to ensure retention without voltage drift errors. The extra data manipulation often consumes more power than the initial write. We don't measure power consumption in snapshots because it doesn't show the ongoing power consumption that actually drains notebook battery life.

The Hyundai Sapphire delivers a 305-minute battery time on our Lenovo Y700-17, which is one of the worst scores we've measured with a SATA SSD. We did not expect this. Marvell has used the 28nm manufacturing node for several years now. The process was expensive to implement, and Marvell made a big deal about using the technology to reduce power consumption compared to other products, some of which still use a 5xnm process.

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MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

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Conclusion

For many of our readers, the Hyundai Sapphire won't even appear on the shopping radar for personal use, but we all have people to buy for from time to time. The Sapphire sticks out at Newegg due to the large price difference against the competition, at least when it's in stock. For two months, we saw the drive during our SSD price audit we use to create our Best SSDs monthly column. The drive intrigued us, but it became a project after stumbling on Hyundai Technology at CES.

We didn't know what to expect because there isn't a lot of public information available about the Sapphire. For all we knew, the drive had an older SandForce controller. I'm glad we did take the time to test the very low-cost drive because it gave us a fresh look at the growing DRAMless market. There are several new products at Newegg and Amazon from Asian companies entering the US market with low-cost SSDs. I suspect many of those products use DRAMless designs, but there is no guarantee that what ships today will be the same configuration that ships tomorrow. The Asian SSD market and media don't hold the companies to the same high standards as we do in North America and Europe. All the companies building products for China and other less developed countries do not use the same tactics, but the bar is much lower.

Hyundai Technology is a US-based company, so we hope it doesn't play the same game as the imported products. Retailers import all SSDs, but company practices often change by region. Having a trusted low-cost SSD provider will go a long way with end users. When it comes to SSDs, many of the more established brands have let us down over the years. Once the trust is lost, it's difficult to recover, regardless of price. We will have to keep an eye on Hyundai and see if the company can build a solid reputation in the SSD market.

The Sapphire isn't a bad SSD for the price. It ships with a five-year warranty and is very cheap. Hyundai didn't try to advertise the drive for anything more than it is. That goes a long way. The drive is not a performance powerhouse, but it’s a good SSD for your parents to surf the web with and check email.

MORE: Best SSDs

MORE: How We Test HDDs And SSDs

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On Tuesday, Silicon Power updated the Thunder T11 series, a line of external SSDs that connect via Thunderbolt. The company says this external storage solution is ideal for professionals who attach importance to speed performance, such as photographers, videographers, video gamers and professionals.

"Featuring advanced Thunderbolt technology and exceptional product design, SP Thunder T11 has acquired great attention and support from worldwide professional designers and Apple fans since its debut last year," states the PR. "Thunder T11 also proved its superiority with the recognition from red dot award: Product Design 2014, which is the most influential and prestigious design award all over the world."

The Thunderbolt-equipped SSDs feature an aluminum enclosure designed to protect files at a fraction of the weight. The drives have read speeds of up to 380 MB/s and write speeds of up to 340 MB/s. And thanks to Thunderbolt's 10 Gb/s connection, files are piped to and from the user's desktop three times faster than a USB 3.0 external hard drive.

"Thunder T11 is not only the lightest but also the smallest Thunderbolt SSD on the market. Featuring extremely small and featherweight design, Thunder T11 is half the size of ordinary storage devices and only weighs 65g (2.30 ounces)," states the product sheet.

The specs show that these Thunderbolt-based SSDs measure just 2.91 x 2.44 x 0.60 inches, and is offered in Starlight Blue and Silver colors. The Thunder T11 is also now sold in two capacities: 120 GB and the new 240 GB model. The drives are even bus powered via the Thunderbolt interface, so there's no worrying about plugging a power adapter into an electrical outlet.

For more information about the new external SSD, head here.

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Looking for a storage solution for your Thunderbolt-equipped desktop or laptop? Silicon Power has the ideal product for customers who need something fast and portable: the Thunder T11 solid state drive. The device is certified by both Intel and Apple, allowing customers to use it on a Thunderbolt-equipped Windows-based or Mac OS system.

"Thunderbolt technology can come in small palm size packages for true mobility," said Jason Ziller, Intel's Director of Thunderbolt Marketing. "We are pleased with Silicon Power's support for Thunderbolt technology and bringing Thunderbolt mobile storage to the next level for professional consumers."

Silicon Power believes that the Thunder T11 is the lightest and smallest Thunderbolt-based SSD on the market, measuring 74 x 62 x 15 mm and weighing a mere 0.1433 pounds. The drive arrives only in a 120 GB capacity, encased in a silver aluminum casing with "an incredible cooling system." And because it's based on NAND Flash, the drive should be completely noise free.

"Featuring extremely small and featherweight design, Thunder T11 is half the size of ordinary storage devices and only weighs 65g," reads the company press release. "Moreover, Thunder T11's Aluminum enclosure is designed to protect your files at a fraction of the weight but more importantly it offers an incredible cooling effect. In addition, Thunder T11 is entirely silent during the operation, which is particularly critical to users who work in a noise-sensitive environment."

Despite the theoretical 10 Gb/s connection speed, the new Thunderbolt drive has read speeds of up to 380 MB/s and write speeds of up to 340 MB/s. Other features include a bus-powered design (Thunderbolt provides the power), support for Windows 8/7/XP, support for Mac OS 10.3.x or later, a three year warranty, and certification for CE, FCC, BSMI and a few others.

The actual pricing and availability weren't provided, but typical outlets include Amazon, Newegg, Frys, PC Connection, Adorama and MicroCenter.

Silicon Power introduced a new external hard drive, the Stream S03, which has a unique folding design. That doesn't mean the device actually folds, but instead sports a form factor that looks as if the device were a black magazine folded neatly into a rounded portable carrying case with a matte finish.

"[It's] inspired by the concept of page folding as a way of keeping the precious and meaningful moments," the company said. "S03’s unique folding design emphasizes the idea of instilling more human touches into the storage device."

The external drive is based on USB 3.0, and features a multicolor LED in the asymmetric page-fold corner. If the drive is plugged into a USB 3.0 port, then the LED shines blue. If plugged into a USB 2.0 port, the LED will switch to red. It's all in the little details.

"SP Stream S03’s matte finish provides solid protection against fingerprints and stains," the company said. "Inheriting the streamline design from the Stream Series, S03 is built with the curved corners and ergonomics chamber on both sides, allowing users to handle with ease."

The curvy drive is offered in two flavors: 500 GB and 1 TB. It also comes with a hibernation mode to save power, and a new version of the company's free SP Widget software that provides seven major backup and security functions, such as 256-bit AES file and folder encryption. Its overall size is 4.822 x 3.05 x 0.523 inches, and it weighs a mere 0.31967 pounds.

For more information about the new Stream S03 external drive, head here. Silicon Power partners here in the United States include Amazon, Newegg, Micro Center, Frys.com, Adorama and PC Connection.

If you're looking for a portable hard drive with a little style, Silicon Power has launched the Diamond D20, powered by the high performance of USB 3.0 connectivity.

For now, the Diamond D20 external drive arrives only in a 500 GB capacity, but with access to the company's free SP Widget software featuring seven major backup and security tools. Unfortunately, the company didn't provide actual availability and pricing, but participating retailers typically include Amazon, Newegg, Frys and several others.

Silicon Power's primary design focus with the Diamond D20 is seemingly on style and portability. It sports a light-weight, ultra-slim form factor for easy carrying like shoving it into a pocket. The solid aluminum metal casing even features a carbon-like texture, rounded corners and an anti-scratch surface, protecting the drive against bumps and ugly dings.

"The SP D20 can make you free from worrying about fingerprints, scratches or dents when carrying it around," the company said. "Coated in contrasting colors of black and white, the D20 is elegantly simple and exquisite. The D20 creates a new sense of digital fashion trend, ideal for those who looking for storage on the go."

Additional product features include an LED that indicates power on and data transfer activity, a power-saving sleep mode, and a three-year warranty. When connected to a USB 3.0 port, it offers transfer speeds up to 5 Gb/s wereas a USB 2.0 connection only allows a max speed of 480 Mb/s. This external drive weighs a mere feather-like 0.297 pounds and measures just 4.856 x 3.070 x 0.413 inches.

For more information about Silicon Power's new external drive, head here. It's compatible with Windows 8 down to Windows XP, Linux 2.6.31 or later, and Mac OS 10.5 or later (only USB 2.0 currently supported).

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On Wednesday Silicon Power introduced the newest member of its SSD portfolio, the SP Velox V50. The company claims it sports "the latest controller technology" so your desktop or laptop feels brand new after replacing that tired, clunky mechanical hard drive. The Velox V50 is available now in 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB capacities at participating online retailers.

This new 2.5-inch SSD connects via a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) interface, providing read speeds up to 530 MB/s and a surprisingly low 200 MB/s maximum write speed. But the company is seemingly banking on a combination of firmware and a unique, advanced controller circuit design that will allow the SSD to maintain long-standing IOPS performance under extended periods.

On the specs front, the new SSD supports TRIM command and Garbage Collection technology. It's also NCQ and RAID ready, and uses ECC technology to guarantee data transmission reliability. Other features include a built-in SMART monitoring system, low power consumption (which is especially important in laptops), and no HDD annoyances like seek errors, latency delays and platter-based noise.

The overall dimensions of the new Velox V50 are 3.93 x 2.75 x 0.374-inches, and it weighs roughly 0.138 pounds. It has a vibration resistance test score of 20G and a shock resistance test score of 1500G maximum. It's offered in Iron Grey only, and arrives with a three-year warranty.

For more information about Silicon Power's new Velox V50 SSD, head here. Online retailers that will carry this drive include Amazon, Newegg, Adorama, Micro Center, PC Connection and Frys. So far the Velox V50 isn't appearing on the listed vendors, but Amazon is currently listing a number of other Silicon Power alternatives.

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Silicon Power expands its lineup of SATA 3 SSDs with the addition of the 9-mm Velox V55 and the 7-mm Slim S55 2.5-inch SSDs. The company claims that both offer incredible performance at an affordable price, the former best suited for desktops and larger laptops and the latter "Slim" model ideal for Ultrabooks and ultra-slim notebooks.

"Dedicated to providing high quality products for the budget minded consumers, SP is proud to present V55 and S55," the company said. "[They] are ideal for computer enthusiasts, gamers and multitaskers wishing to take their computing experience to a new level; they can boot a computer in seconds and load applications in a much shorter time."

The Velox V55 arrives in 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB capacities, connecting via a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) interface. Performance ranges depending on the benchmark, but the max read speed ranges between 510 MB/s and 550 MB/s, and the max write speed ranges between 440 MB/s and 470 MB/s. Features include a built-in SMART monitoring system, support for TRIM and Garbage Collection, NCQ and RAID support, and more.

The Slim S55 is offered in 60 GB, 120 GB and 240 GB capacities. Again, depending on the benchmark, the  max read speed ranges between 510 MB/s and 550 MB/s, and the max write speed ranges between 440 MB/s and 470 MB/s. The features are identical to the Velox V55 model, only this SSD is thinner and lighter, weighing just 74g compared to the Velox's weight of 79g.

Both SSDs are offered in black and sport a sleek aluminum case. The company didn't provide pricing and availability, but Amazon is currently selling the Velox V60 120 GB model for $130 and the 240 GB model for $240. The Slim S60 SSD is also on sale at Amazon for $145 for the 120 GB model and $170 for the 240 GB model. The V55 and S55 SSDs should appear soon.

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Silicon Power said on Tuesday said that it has added a new model to its line of 7-mm 2.5-inch Slim Series of SSDs. Called the Slim S50, it supposedly packs an all new controller that is "unlike any other solution in the market". Coupled with the latest firmware and advanced controller circuit design, the company said the SSD enables stable IOPS performance under an extended period.

The specifications provided by Silicon Power don't really offer any insight into the controller aspect, only that the SSD provides read speeds up to 530 MB/s and (seemingly slow) write speeds up to 200 MB/s via a SATA 3 (6 Gb/s) connection. The drive has been implemented with ECC technology to guarantee reliable data transmissions, and support for both TRIM and Garbage Collection technology.

"The SP S50 is more reliable and durable than tradition hard drives," the company said. "Weighing only 63 grams with a mere 7-mm thickness, the S50 is one of the lightest of its kind and is the ideal solution for users looking to upgrade their ultra slim notebook and desktop."

Silicon Power said the SSD is NCQ and RAID ready, and features a built-in SMART monitoring system. The drive itself measures 100- x 69.85- x 85-mm, and comes in four capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB. It's also backed by a three-year warranty, and is also both anti-vibration (20G) and shockproof (1500G Max), the company said.

So far the drive hasn't shown up on Silicon Power's list of retailers (Amazon, Newegg etc), so stay tuned for pricing and availability.

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Silicon Power introduced on Tuesday the newest edition to its Diamond series of 2.5-inch portable hard drives, the Diamond D03. This drive's biggest selling point is likely its USB 3.0 interface which enables a speedy transfer rate of up to 5 Gb/s. Connected to a USB 2.0 port, it's still rather spunky, pushing data at speeds of up to 480 Mb/s.

"Following the modern and sophistication design of the Diamond series, the new D03 expresses urban fashion with geometric design and is lined with an urban checkered pattern," the company said. "The Diamond D03 is covered in a solid aluminum metal structure providing better durability and heat dissipation than the standard plastic case."

The specs claim that it weighs only 147g, making it 30-percent lighter than your standard mechanical hard drive. It also measures 75.5 x 117.55 x 14-mm, making it easy to slip in your pocket or laptop bag while on the go. Even more, the surface is specially treated to resist scratches and fingerprint marks to reduce the occurrence of dents and other damages from daily usage.

The Diamond D03's list of features also include a built-in LED status indicator allowing users to instantly identify power supply and activity status. It's even equipped with a power-saving hibernation mode for customers who keep their external drives plugged in for long periods of time (guilty). Finally, owners can download the free SP Widget software which offers seven major back-up and security functions like 256-bit AES file and folder encryption.

The Diamond D03 is available in 500 GB, 750 GB and 1 TB capacities, and is backed by a three year warranty. The actual device specs are listed below:

- Dimensions：75.5 x 117.55 x 14 mm
- Weight：147g
- Standard Compliance：USB 3.0 / 2.0
- Data Transfer Rates:
    Max. 5 Gb/s (USB 3.0 Mode)
    Max. 480 Mb/s (USB 2.0 Mode)
- Power Supply：DC 5V (Power supplied through USB)
- Operating Temperature：5℃~ 55℃
- Storage Temperature：-40℃~ 70℃
- Supported Operating Systems：Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP, Windows 2000, Linux 2.6.31 or later, Mac OS 10.5 or later (only USB 2.0 currently supported)
- Color：Black
- Three-year warranty

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September is just about over, and before you know it, you'll be beating up kids for their candy on Halloween night, then stuffing your face full of turkey just weeks after that. During all that excitement, you'll need to figure out what kind of holiday gift to purchase for that special someone before time runs out.

Silicon Power has a solution for the geek at heart, perfect for that faceless nerd sitting on the other side of Skype or that geeky ghoul dazed and drooling in front of a brightly lit LCD screen parked in a dark (dungeon) office downstairs.

Enter the LuxMini 720 and Touch 830, two festive sticks of flash dressed up in red, white and silver. They're limited edition, so that designation itself should perk up any collector of gadgets. Even more, the Touch 830 model sports Chip on Board (COB) packing technology, supposedly making it waterproof, vibration proof and dust proof.

"LuxMini 720 limited edition is built-up in an exquisite metallic case with silky touch," the comp[any said. "The combination of holiday red and joyful festival patterns genuinely gives out a sense of warmth in this winter. It’s the ideal gift choice for your special someone."

The Touch 830 features a stainless steel casing in titanium black, and is carved with "exquisite" seasonal icons, creating a sense of Northern European holiday spirits, the company said. Sounds like these two sticks are quite exquisite.

Silicon Power is offering both drives in 8 GB and 16 GB capacities. Every SP flash drive product guarantees a lifetime warranty as well as SP Widget application software which provides seven major back up and security tools.

On the pricing front, these holiday editions didn't appear on Amazon and Newegg, but the non-decorative LuxMini 720 16 GB model costs $9.99 on Newegg, and the Touch 830 16 GB stick is roughly the same price. So far it's unknown if Silicon Power plans to charge extra for the Limited Edition versions, so stay tuned.

Regardless, here is a list of features and the tech specs of each:

LuxMini 720 Limited Edition Product Features
-  The exquisite aluminum surface casing
-  Plug and play, no additional power source required
-  SP Widget free download, providing 7 major back-up and security function
-  No driver needed except for Win 98/ 98SE
-  Compliant with RoHS requirements

LuxMini 720 Limited Edition Product Specification
-  Dimensions: 54.6mm x 16.8mm x 7.2mm
-  Weight: 10g
-  Interface: compatible with USB 1.1 and 2.0
-  Support OS: Windows XP/Vista/7, Mac OS 10.3.x, Linux 2.6.x
-  Durability: 10,000 insertion/removal cycles
-  Color: Holiday Red
- Lifetime Warranty

Touch 830 Limited Edition Product Features
-  Stainless steel casing for a distinct shine
-  Waterproof, vibration-proof and dust-proof
-  Utilizes Chip-On-Board (COB) advance packaging technology
-  True plug and play, no external power required
-  Compliant with RoHS requirement
-  SP Widget free download, providing 7 major back-up and security function

Touch 830 Limited Edition Product Specification
-  Dimensions: 35.0 x 12.3 x 3.5 mm +/-0.3mm
-  Weight: 4g
-  Interface: Universal Serial Bus 1.1 & 2.0 compatible (USB)
-  Durability: 10,000 insertions (minimum)
-  Support OS: Windows 7, Windows Vista, WinXP, Win2000, Mac 10.3.X above, Linux 2.6.X above
-  Operating Temperature: 0°C ~ 70°C
-  Storage Temperature: -40°C ~ 85°C
-  Color: Titanium Black
-  Lifetime Warranty
 

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Silicon Power said on Friday that its Sky Share H10 drive is now available in 500 GB and 1 TB capacities. It's an external 2.5-inch HDD with an integrated battery, and designed to store and share files to laptops, iOS and Android mobile devices on-the-go. Connectivity is accomplished either via USB 3.0 or over an 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi connection.

The gadget was actually one of ten listed in our Best of Computex 2012 back in June. The overall design, according to the company, is based on the concept of touch. The circular curvature surrounding the power switch signifies that once it is activated, data transmission can be shared as free and simple like ripples. Up to eight devices can be connected simultaneously, making it a makeshift, pocket-sized media server for streaming pictures, video and music.

Silicon Power said the Sky Share H10 includes built-in 2T2R antenna to provide 1.5 times faster wireless data transfer than similar products in the market. The specs reveal that the gadget will actually transfer data wirelessly at speeds up to 300 Mb/s, and up to 5 Gb/s over the USB 3.0 connection. It uses a built-in rechargeable 2600 mA/h Lithium Battery, offering up to 5 hours play.

The overall device dimensions are 133 x 86 x 23.5-mm, and the gadget weighs a mere 255g, making it rather easy to carry while on-the-go. Even though the gadget can support up to 8 gadgets at a time, the Sky Share H10 can only accommodate three iPads simultaneously. The apps for iOS and Android are free – laptops and desktops merely use a web-based interface to access the files over a Wi-Fi connection.

Currently the drive isn't appearing on Silicon Power's website, so stay tunes for actual availability and pricing. In the meantime, here's the actual list of specs including formats supported by the iOS and Android apps:

- Capacity: 500 GB, 1 TB
- Dimension: 133 x 86 x 23.5-mm
- Weight: 255g +/- 5%
- WiFi Interface: IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Standard
- Built-in 2T2R Antenna, up to 300 Mb/s
- Built-in USB 3.0 (Compatible with USB 2.0), Up to 5 Gb/s Transfer rate (USB 3.0 Mode)
- WiFi connection: up to 8 users
- WiFi Connection range: up to 100 Feet
- Power Supply: DC 5V/2A (Power supplied through AC-to-DC adapter)
- Battery: Built-in 2600 mA/h Lithium Battery (Up to 5 hours play)
- Operating Temperature: 5℃ ~ 45℃
- Storage Temperature: -10℃ ~ 70℃
- Wireless security: WPA+WPA2
- Operation system: Support Win 7, Win XP, Win Vista, Mac OS X (10.5.X+), iOS 4.2+, Android 2.3+
- Supporting devices: iPod, iPhone, iPad, Android smart phone, Android Tablet, Notebook, PC, Mac
- Browsers: Support Safari 5 or later version, Webkit (Android), Internet Explorer 8 or later version, Firefox, and Google Chrome
- File system: FAT32/NTFS
- Supporting File type:

iPhone/iPad App (free download):
Video: .M4V, MP4, .MOV
Photo: JPG, BMP, PNG, GIF
Music: MP3
Document: DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF

Android Smart phone App (free download):
Video: .M4V, MP4
Photo: JPG, PNG
Music: MP3, WMA
Document: DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF

Web UI: (For Laptop, Tablet, Smart phone…etc)
Play any file supported by your device applications

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On Friday Monster Digital announced the launch of its Daytona Series of 2.5-inch solid state drives, measuring just 7-mm thin and offering up to 480 GB of storage space. Pricing starts at $99.99 USD, and they're available now on Amazon, Fry's Electronics and PC Mall.

While the actual specs are unavailable, the company claims the drives offer read speeds up to 550
MB/s and write speeds up to 515 MB/s. They're packaged in a "super thin" 7-mm universal fit stainless steel case and consume less than 5W in an active state, and less than 200mW in an inactive state.

The new line of SSDs arrives in four flavors: 90 GB ($99.99), 120 GB ($109.99), 240 GB ($229.99) and 480 GB ($479.99). Features include airtight data security via 256-bit AES encryption, Reduced Write Amplification and Over Provisioning, and support for TRIM. All four drives come with a 3-year warranty.

Monster Digital is also selling a version of its 120 GB, 240 GB, and 480 GB Daytona drives featuring a Do-It-Yourself (DIY) "Easy Installation Kit." This bundle includes easy-to-follow cloning software, an SATA 3/USB 3.0 adapter, a 3.5-inch drive bay adapter, a quick start guide and even a screwdriver. The upgrade kit versions will cost $134.99 (for 120 GB), $234.99 (for 240 GB), and $484.99 (for 480 GB).

"With our new Daytona Series, we are providing an easily accessible, high-speed option for reliable storage with significantly lower energy consumption and silent operation compared to conventional HHD drives," said Monster Digital CEO Jay Tandon. "They are the ideal choice for people who want the very best performance and efficiency. Our new Daytona drives are especially well suited to laptops."

As of this writing, Monster Digital had not updated its website to reflect the new Daytona series.

Meanwhile, Silicon Power is offering two new models in its Slim series of 2.5-inch solid state drives, measuring just 7-mm thin. Presented in a chic aluminum metal body, the Slim drives are ideal for upgrading that boring old HDD to a faster, more power efficient SSD. The two new versions include the black Slim S60 and the champagne gold Slim S70, both in 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB capacities.

The specs reveal that the Slim S60 provides reads speeds up to 550 MB/s and write speeds up to 500 MB/s. Silicon Power notes that the golden Slim S70 model sports the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller with synchronous NAND flash and the new optimized firmware, thus it cranks out read speeds up to 557 MB/s and write speeds up to 507 MB/s.

Outside that major difference, the two models are seemingly the same although the company points out that the Slim S70 features a random 4K write speed of up to 86000 IOPS. Both feature a SATA 6 Gbps interface, TRIM command and Garbage Collection technology, a built-in SMART monitoring system, DureWrite and wear leveling to extend endurance, and more.

"Built in a slim and stylish enclosure, the new SSD unleashes the full potential of the 6 Gbps SATA III interface to further expand computing experiences and mobility," the company said. "Unlike the standard 9.5mm SSD, SP Slim series features a new slim 7mm form factor for easy integration into the latest mobile computing platforms."

Silicon Power did not provide availability and pricing details although the drives can be purchased through Amazon, Newegg, Frys, Micro Center, Adorama and PC Connection in the United States.

_{Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback}

Silicon Power has announced a new entry in its line of external hard drives: the Diamond D01. It joins the company's current Diamond D05 and Diamond D10 drives which sport a SuperSpeed USB 3.0 interface. However this new model is only USB 2.0 compatible, presumably making it somewhat cheaper than its older brothers. It's also as small as a smartphone, weighing only 0.32408 pounds.

"Coated in metallic black, SP Diamond D01 is lined with multiple geometric patterns, creating a sense of metropolitan chic style," the company said. "With the solid aluminum metal structure and the anti-scratch surface, SP D01 can make you free from worrying about your hard drive being scratched or dented when carrying it around."

According to the spec list, the drive features an LED that indicates power on and data transmissions. It also sports a scratch resistant surface, a power-saving sleep mode, and capacities of 500 GB, 750 GB, and 1 TB. It also comes with the SP Widget free download software, providing 7 major back up and security tools.

"Compared to other portable hard drives, SP Diamond D01 is literally light in weight as well as in size, making it easier to carry. However, smaller size doesn’t have to mean smaller storage," the company said, adding that the overall HDD size is 2.97 x 4.62 x .55 inches. It also comes with a 2-year warranty, and gets power through the USB 2.0 interface (no external power adapter needed).

The Silicon Power website lists the Armor A70, Armor A50 and Armor A10 drives as compatible with USB 2.0 and later. For consumers with USB 3.0 ports, Silicon Power offers the Armor A80, the Stream S20 and S10, and the Diamond D05 and D10. The Diamond series seems focused on pattern-based aesthetics whereas the Stream is streamlined, contoured and highly colorful. The Armor series is the most visually bland of the bunch.

So far pricing and actual availability for the new D01 external drive is unknown, so stay tuned.

 UPDATE: A USB 3.0 version is "coming soon."

_{Contact Us for News Tips, Corrections and Feedback}

Silicon Power said on Tuesday that its new 2.5-inch Velox V70 SSD will re-write everyone's SSD experience thanks to a powerful combination of new built-in Toggle/Synchronous flash, an advanced controller and firmware. It's also coated in metallic gold, bringing a rich, pretty sparkle to the dull innards of your desktop (unless it's already lit up like a Christmas tree, of course).

"Unlike the traditional SSD, Velox V70 features optimized firmware and advanced Toggle/Synchronous NAND flash while utilizing the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller," the company said. "With faster computer startup time and application launch time, V70 can greatly change your SSD experience and is ideal for professional users for video & audio editing, gaming and multiple tasking."

The specs report that the SSD has a maximum read speed of 557 MB/s and a maximum write speed of 507 MB/s. It also features a random 4K write speed of up to 86000 IOPS, a SATA III 6 Gb/s connector (backwards compatible to SATA II 3 Gb/s), support for TRIM and Garbage Collection technology, and a built-in SMART monitoring system. It's equipped with DuraWrite and wear leveling, and is implemented with ECC technology to guarantee data transmission reliability.

"Apart from the accelerated transferring rate, V70 is also a more durable and reliable storage device. It is able to endure more write cycles and significantly expands the life-span of your SSD," Silicon Power said, adding that it comes with a three year warranty.

The Velox V70 SSD arrives in capacities of 60 GB, 120 GB, 240 GB and 480 GB. Actual availability and pricing is unknown at this point, so stay tuned or keep checking back with your favorite online retailer to see if the drive is available.

At Computex Taipei last week, Silicon Power was showing off Sky Share, a new series of wireless storage devices. Sky Share allows users to stream and share media with up to eight devices wirelessly and comes with support for Android, iOS, as well as a regular web UI. There's also support for listening to music in the background while you do something else, such as read a document.

The Sky Share line includes two models, the Sky Share F10, which is based on NAND flash, and the H10, which is based on a regular HDD. The F10 is available in 32GB and 64GB models, while the H10 is a little bit larger and available in 500GB and 1TB options.

The drives come with support for  Wi-fi n with WPA+WPA2, and a 2600mAh battery to power the whole show. It can be recharged via USB 3.0 and measures in at 134.2 x 78.6 x 23.5 mm with a weight of 255g.

Unfortunately, no word on pricing or release just yet, but we'll keep you posted.

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microSDHC Cards For Mobile Devices

Fast memory cards are needed not only in professional equipment like DSLR cameras, but they're increasingly being used in consumer devices like compact cameras, camcorders, MP3 players, hand-held game consoles, and cell phones, too. This accelerating uptake is caused by the rapidly increasing number of features of these devices. The more features, the higher the demands on the memory card. For example, consider recording and playing back HD video on a smartphone. For stutter-free operation, significant data transfer speeds are required. In order to go beyond video snippets a few seconds long, the storage capacity of a memory card also needs to be sufficiently large.

Considering those criteria and adding compatibility, reliability, and robustness, the SD card quickly emerges as the memory card of choice, which also helps to explain its 80% market share.

The physically smallest variant of the SD card is the microSD card, measuring a mere 11 mm x 15 mm x 1 mm (0.43” x 0.59” x 0.04”). Add a host adapter, and a microSD or microSDHC card can be used like a SDHC card.

For this comparison test, we're focusing on the microSDHC subcategory of the microSD form factor, which offers much larger capacities, and thus more versatility in multimedia applications. While a microSD card tops out at 2 GB due to its FAT16 file system, a microSDHC card can store up to 32 GB on its FAT32 file system, depending on the model.

We asked all major memory card manufacturers to submit samples of their microSDHC-based products. We received a wide range of cards, with capacities ranging from 4 GB to 32 GB, and thus covering the whole range of the microSDHC specification. We also noticed plenty of different performance points. SD cards are grouped into several performance classes, which denote the minimum recording rate of the cards. The lowest performance class, Class 2, stores data at a minimum of 2 MB/s. Our test candidates, however, start at performance Class 4, which features a worst-case write speed of 4 MB/s. Class 6 cards achieve at least 6 MB/s, while Class 10 cards switch up the rating a bit, pushing 10 MB/s non-fragmented sequential writes.

Adata microSDHC Class 6 (Class 6, 8/16 GB)

Taiwan-based Adata offers a wide range of memory products, ranging from RAM and USB sticks to SSDs and memory cards. For this test, we received two Class 6 microSDHC cards: an 8 GB card and a 16 GB card. Adata also offers a 4 GB model, but does not include an adapter with any of its cards. Adata places no restrictions on the use of the cards and recommends them for all mobile devices, claiming full compatibility to the SDHC spec.

Adata's microSDHC Class 6 cards feature a life-long warranty and claim up to 20 MB/s read speed and up to 9 MB/s write speed, which is very close to what we measured. The 16 GB version achieves 18.6 MB/s sequential reads and 10 MB/s writes, exceeding the manufacturer’s claims with that latter figure.

The 8 GB card shows a read speed of 18.2 MB/s, almost as fast as its larger brother, but excels in writes: 12.1 MB/s is not only significantly faster than the larger card, but other benchmarks show that the 8 GB card is one of the fastest Class 6 cards, whereas the 16 GB card is a more or less a mid-range card.

Kingston microSDHC Card (Class 10, 4/8/16 GB)

Memory specialist Kingston offers microSDHC cards in the Class 4 and Class 10 categories. Our three test candidates, capable of storing 4, 8, and 16 GB, belong to the latter group.

Kingston also offers a Class 10 card able to hold 32 GB, but did not send us a sample. Kingston advertises compatibility with the SD 2.00 card spec and offers a lifetime warranty. We appreciate that Kingston includes a host adapter, which allows using microSDHC cards in SHDC card readers.

Kingston conservatively claims 10 MB/s write performance, which is the minimum for Class 10. Our benchmarks show that the 16 GB card especially is quite fast. While it matches both of the smaller Kingston cards in sequential read speed, it bests them in nearly all other benchmarks. This is particularly evident in the sequential write benchmark, where the 16 GB card achieves 19.2 MB/s, while both of the other Kingston cards only demonstrate a measly 9.5 MB/s. The two lower-capacity Kingston cards wind up in the lower average of the 15-card field, but the 16 GB model is definitely one of the fastest cards.

Lexar High-Speed Mobile microSDHC Card (Class 6, 16 GB And Class 10, 32 GB)

Lexar segments its memory card product range, which consists of microSDHC cards, SD cards, Compact Flash cards, and Memory Stick cards, into application categories like photo, video, gaming, and mobile devices. The microSDHC cards belong to the latter category and are referred to as High-Speed Mobile microSDHC. We tested the largest two models, which belong to different classes. The 32 GB flagship model belongs to Class 10 and the 16 GB model is labeled Class 6. Lexar offers 10-year warranties on both and includes a USB card reader.

Lexar's website does not divulge performance data other than the class rating. But there is no need to be apprehensive about what these products can achieve, as both of them perform admirably, falling into the upper mid-range.

The 16 GB card achieves 18.6 MB/s sequential read speeds, which is the best performance within the class. Its write speed is 10.2 MB/s. We expected (and realized) even more performance from the 32 GB Class 10 card: sequential read and write rates of 21.3 and 21.4 MB/s, respectively. These values, however, do not top the speed king, SanDisk's Mobile Ultra.

MemoryStar microSDHC Card (Class 6, 16 GB And Class 10, 8/16 GB)

MemoryStar offers a palette of microSDHC cards in Class 2, 4, 6, and 10 trim, covering every base mentioned in the SD 2.00 specification. The company sells models between 4 GB and 32 GB. Each sports a 10-year warranty and an SDHC adapter is included. We received three cards: one Class 6 card (16 GB) and two Class 10 cards able to store 8 and 16 GB.

Our benchmarks predictably show a performance gap between the Class 6 and Class 10 cards. More so here than with the other vendors, however, the gap is really pretty significant. On one hand, the two Class 10 cards are equally fast (aside from a few discrepancies attributable to measurement tolerances). These two cards are among the fastest cards tested, achieving 21.6 MB/s sequential reads and 21.5 MB/s sequential writes, outclassing the competition.

In stark contrast to that, the MemoryStar Class 6 card is not only significantly slower than its Class 10 siblings, but even trails the other Class 6 cards in most respects. The only exception to this general trend is sequential write performance, which is acceptable at 12.6 MB/s. In sequential read tests, however, the card trails all other Class 6 cards by moving 13.1 MB/s.

Patriot LX Series microSDHC (Class 10, 16 GB)

Patriot offers a wide range of memory cards in various formats. The company has also established its reputation as a manufacturer of SSD drives. Its portfolio of microSDHC cards ranges from Class 2 to 10, and from 4 to 32 GB. Patriot sent us a LX-series card, rated for Class 10 performance and capable of holding 16 GB of information. It comes with a SDHC host adapter.

In our benchmarks, the Patriot card establishes itself as a respectable mid-range product that does not exhibit any particular weaknesses. However, it's not a performance leader, as sequential read speeds of 20.8 MB/s fall at the trailing end of its class. While sequential write performance of up to 12.2 MB/s is still quite good, it's really only modest compared to faster Class 10 cards from Kingston and MemoryStar.

SanDisk microSDHC (Class 4, 8 GB) And Mobile Ultra microSDHC (Class 4, 16 GB)

The US-based manufacturer SanDisk is, according to its press releases, the largest manufacturer of flash-based products in the world. Befitting this position, SanDisk offers a complete portfolio of memory cards. The company presents the microSDHC cards on its site’s Mobile Memory section, aiming them at owners of smartphones.

The Mobile Ultra microSDHC card is intended for transferring files between a mobile phone and a PC, which is why it comes with a USB card reader. We tested both the 8 GB SanDisk microSDHC card and the 16 GB SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC. According to the manufacturer, both are Class 4 products.

Class 4 is a real understatement for the Mobile Ultra microSDHC model. Defying its designation, our test sample ran rings around many of the Class 10 cards and exhibited good to excellent read and write performance in all benchmarks. Clocking in at 22.8 MB/s, it even took the lead in our sequential read test. However, it is not quite as fast in the sequential write benchmark, achieving 15.8 MB/s. The card also demonstrates very strong random read and write performance, again winning first place in these categories.

The 8 GB SanDisk microSDHC cannot quite live up to the results demonstrated by its fast Mobile Ultra brother. It really is a Class 4 card, clocking in at 11.6 MB/s sequential reads and 6.1 MB/s sequential writes. Compared to other Class 4 cards, it is fairly slow. Interestingly, the Class 4 Silicon Power microSDHC memory card exhibits precisely the same speed in all benchmarks.

Samsung microSDHC Plus 8 GB (Class 6, 8 GB)

According to Samsung, its microSDHC Plus card can survive 24 hours immersed in water. It can withstand a load of up to 1.6 tons. It can tolerate shocks. And it can purportedly weather radiation and endure magnetic fields of up to 10 000 Gauss. Being a Class 6 card, it should also perform reasonably well. Samsung bundles an SDHC adapter with this card.

In our benchmarks, Samsung's microSDHC Plus 8 GB performs modestly. Its sequential read performance hits 17.6 MB/s, which is almost on par with the Class 6 candidates from Adata and Lexar. Sequential write performance is competitive at 11.8 MB/s, putting this model in the middle of the pack.

Silicon Power microSDHC Memory Card (Class 4, 32 GB)

Silicon Power covers everything from Class 2 to 10 with its lineup of microSDHC cards. The company also offers capacities between 4 to 32 GB. For the purposes of this round-up, we received a 32 GB Class 4 card.

None of Silicon Power's documentation advertises maximum speeds. Like most competing products, this 32 GB card comes with an SDHC adapter, too.

All of our 15 test candidates achieve speeds that exceed the minimum performance level of their respective class designations. Case in point, Silicon Power's microSDHC card achieves 11.7 MB/s in sequential reads and 5.9 MB/s in sequential writes. Still, that's rather slow compared to other Class 4 cards.

As a side note, SanDisk's microSDHC offering shows the very same performance values in all benchmarks.

Comparison Table And Test Configuration

Test System

Benchmark Results: Throughput

Rather homogenously, the tested microSDHC cards achieve sequential read speeds closely matching their speed class. At the lower end, there are two Class 4 cards, followed by five Class 6 cards that perform very similarly with the notable exception of MemoryStar's microSDHC card. Fortunately for North American customers, that product isn't available here, so you don't have to worry about it.

A similarly coherent picture emerges from the seven Class 10 cards. The speed difference between the fastest and the slowest Class 10 model is only 1.5 MB/s.

The big surprise from this test is the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC, which takes the performance crown with its 22.8 MB/s sequential read speed in spite of being labeled Class 4.

The sequential write benchmark is dominated by both Class 10 MemoryStar cards, which are in a performance category of their own (but unavailable in the U.S.). Only the Kingston 16 GB card can come close to keeping up. The bulk of our review samples, however, exhibit write performance between 10 and 12 MB/s.

Benchmark Results: Random Reads And Writes

Random reads of 512 KB blocks yield the very same ranking as sequential reads. Once again, the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC is the fastest card at 21.8 MB/s.

Reducing the block size for the random read test to 4 KB significantly impacts performance, which tops out at a mere 3.4 MB/s, achieved by the Samsung and Adata Class 6 cards. There is almost no difference between queue depths of one and 32 when it comes to memory cards.

Randomly writing 512 KB blocks is not a strong suit for microSDHC cards. The three cards that perform best are the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC, the Adata microSDHC Class 6, and the Samsung card.

Benchmarking random 4 KB writes yields a rather pathetic picture, with the throughput of all but two test candidates dropping to zero-point-zero-something MB/s. In other words, that's just a few KB/s. Only the SanDisk microSDHC card and the Silicon Power card stand out with a queue depth of one. Unfortunately, that's still just over 1 MB/s.

Which microSDHC Card Is Right For You?

All of the microSDHC cards we tested perform as their vendors advertise. As a result, prospective buyers can be confident in the performance each of these models delivers. 

The packaging tells you what class within the SD 2.0 specification your favorite card belongs to, indicating the minimum data transfer rate you can expect from it. We did not find a single performance disappointment. To the contrary, we found one sleeper. Although it's advertised as a Class 4 card, SanDisk's Mobile Ultra microSDHC matches the performance of the Class 10 cards we tests, going so far as to win the sequential read speed metric.

Only few manufacturers ship microSDHC cards without accessories. A SDHC adapter, which allows you to read the microSDHC card in a SDHC card reader, is included with nine of the 15 tested cards. Comparatively rare are USB readers, which are included with both Lexar cards and the SanDisk Mobile Ultra microSDHC. You'll predominantly come across USB readers when buying microSDHC cards that are not exclusively intended for mobile devices, but also for data exchange with a PC. However, none of the 15 tested cards include both adapters. The other extreme, no accessories at all, is rare: only the Adata cards and the other SanDisk model do not include any adapter at all.

Silicon Power Company has extended its product line with their announcement of the Marvel M01 USB 3.0 flash drive. To meet the consumer needs, the M01 will be available in 8 GB, 16 GB and 32 GB storage capacities. The dimensions are 60.6 x 18 x 8.1 mm (2.374 x 0.7087 x 0.3189 inches) with a weight of 10 grams. The main draw of this flash drive is its USB 3.0 interface, but it is backwards compatible with USB 2.0 and 1.1 interfaces.

The flash drive is made of durable aluminum solid casing that is also fingerprint- and scratch-proof. In addition, the M01's strap hole allows you to attach your USB drive to your favorite keychain or necklace, allowing you to have your most prized data with you at all times. The icy blue color scheme adds a nice touch to the drive, along with the built-in LED indicator light for power on and data transfer status.

Every Silicon Power flash drive product comes with a lifetime warranty and SP Widget application software, which provides 7 major back up and security tools. The consumer also receives a free 60 day trial of Norton Antivirus 2011.

Tuesday Silicon Power revealed a new 2.5-inch SATA SSD, the E20. The drive reportedly uses a proprietary technology that allows for read speeds up to 250 MB/s and write speeds up to 230 MB/s, surpassing similar SSD speeds on the market today.

Silicon Power's E20 offers a variety of features including built-in DDR2 DRAM Cache Memory, circuit current sensors, Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology (S.M.A.R.T.) support, and TRIM Command and Garbage Collection Technology support.

"With E20’s built-in DDR2 DRAM Cache Memory, even during continuous intensive-write situations, computers shall lag no more," the company said. "This feature not only enhances SSD’s read and write performances, it also extends SSD’s lifespan."

The new SSD will also utilize built-in ECC to guarantee data reliability, and use the company's "wear-leveling" technology to expand its lifespan. Other notable features include low power consumption, resistance to shock and vibrations, noiseless operation, no latency delay and no seek errors-- typical SSD benefits.

The E20 will arrive in four capacities: 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB. Unfortunately, Silicon Power did not provide pricing or availability, so stay tuned.

Does USB 3.0 Stick Out On Thumb Drives?

USB 3.0 is finally here. More and more motherboards incorporate an additional controller to support the fast interface. Storage vendors are releasing new USB 3.0 products almost weekly. We decided to look at the impact this new interface will have on thumb drives by comparing it with USB 2.0 and eSATA.

480 Mb/s Not Enough?

480 Mb/s is the gross transfer speed of USB 2.0, which translates into 60 MB/s. Effectively, however, USB 2.0 devices max out at around 35 MB/s and, depending on file size, selected partition, and format, you'll probably see less than that.

While USB 2.0 performance is sufficient for occasional use, it bottlenecks power users. We don't want to wait around moving multi-gigabyte archives at 35 MB/s or less. There are a number of different scenarios you could conceive where USB 2.0 is simply insufficient, but the simple truth is that performance is usually perceived as inadequate if the waiting extends beyond just a few minutes.

USB 3.0 to the Rescue

With 5 Gb/s gross throughput, USB 3.0 provides ten times the bandwidth of USB 2.0. We released an introductory article on SuperSpeed USB 3.0 in June 2009, looked at the implications on insufficient platform bandwidth in March 2010, and provided a first roundup on USB 3.0 enclosures just recently.

Now it’s time to look at what USB 3.0 does for thumb drives. To get the full picture, we decided not only to include USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 performance, but also two products that support eSATA, which goes up to 3 Gb/s gross bandwidth and may still challenge USB 3.0.

USB 3.0 Basics And Applications

The USB 3.0 standard is also referred to as SuperSpeed USB. This was necessary because USB 2.0 was promoted as High-Speed USB several years ago. Here is an overview on the nominal throughput of all popular peripheral interfaces:

* 8b/10b Encoding

While the connectors for USB 1.1 and USB 2.0 are identical, USB 3.0 requires nine, rather than only four, wires. The five additional wires are necessary for SDP transmission based on shielded differential pairs of wires. USB 3.0 greatly resembles SATA, providing data both in upstream and downstream directions.

Fortunately, USB 3.0 is backward compatible with USB 2.0, as the five additional contacts are placed deeply within the connector. Plug a USB 3.0 connector into a USB 3.0 port and you’ll get the 5 Gb/s connect. Inserting the connector only half-way or attaching a USB 2.0 device will result in 480 Mb/s USB 2.0 speed. USB 3.0 also supports 900 mA per port, rather than USB 2.0’s 500 mA. This is a blessing for portable storage devices that require a bit more power to operate. With USB 2.0, some devices would only work with Y-type cables to access power from two USB 2.0 ports.

USB 3.0 Applications

The most obvious candidates for USB 3.0 are external and portable storage products, such as hard drives or flash-based thumb drives. All of these can immediately benefit because the 35 MB/s bottleneck vanishes. Even low-cost hard drives reach 50 MB/s today, 2.5” mobile hard drives are crossing the 100 MB/s line, and 3.5” desktop hard drives are somewhere between 100 and 150 MB/s these days. Clearly, USB 3.0 allows all conventional hard drives to operate without throughput bottlenecks. Fast USB 3.0 drives might also be interesting for mobile operating system installations, such as a maintenance system on a thumb drive.

Silicon Power eSATA/USB SSD (eSATA, USB 2.0, 32 GB)

Our eSATA/USB drive was one of the first products to seriously beef up throughput for thumb drive products. This 32 GB product employs four-channel flash memory internally, and achieves read throughput of up to 65 MB/s and 42 MB/s for writes.

The device supports eSATA as well as Micro USB. However, Micro USB throughput will be limited at under 30 MB/s, which isn’t what you’d expect from a modern USB 2.0 drive. Thus eSATA remains the better choice, especially if you’re spending more money on a high-speed drive.

OCZ Throttle (eSATA, USB 2.0, 8 GB)

OCZ’s 8 GB Throttle thumb drive is very similar to the Silicon Power model I described on the last page. However, OCZ is faster on USB 2.0, and it provides stronger I/O performance. The Throttle appears to have been throttled, having now disappeared from OCZ’s Web site. We’re sure OCZ will follow up with a suitable USB 3.0 drive soon.

Super Talent USB 3.0 RAIDDrive (USB 3.0, 64 GB)

This is one of the first USB 3.0 thumb drives we received in our test lab. Super Talent offers the RAIDDrive, the self-encrypted SuperCrypt, and the Express Drive. All utilize the USB 3.0 interface. The RAIDDrive is available at 32, 64, or 128 GB, but be prepared to fork out at least $250 just for the 32 GB model. The 128 GB model more than doubles this.

However, Super Talent gives a lot in return. As the name indicates, the drive is built on a RAID stripe set based on two flash memory channels designed to increase throughput on USB 3.0. Super Talent published a performance expectation document in which the vendor talks about capabilities and performance requirements. It claims to reach more than 300 MB/s, but there’s a catch.

First of all, you might need the 128 GB model to ever see this throughput. The 32 GB and 64 GB models are more limited. You’ll more likely see results like those found in the benchmark section of this article: up to 178 MB/s on an X58 platform with an NEC USB 3.0 controller on a PCI Express slot.

Super Talent went a step further by offering a modified driver that replaces Microsoft’s mass storage driver for the RAIDDrive. It is the first and most important step to increase performance, but it’s also part of the catch. The driver effectively makes throughput CPU-dependent. On our Core i7-920 reference system, we can't reach those rated 300 MB/s speeds, as the CPU simply is too slow. Super Talent even refers to overclocking as a possible way of increasing RAIDDrive performance.

The Super Talent driver refused to work on our storage test system under Windows 7 Ultimate. The PC wouldn’t even boot anymore after installation. We had no choice but to recover to a system restore point to start over. A separate test run on a Core i7-870 system returned 220 MB/s maximum read throughput, but this didn’t solve the issues on our reference system. Plug-and-play device detection would reset the driver to the Microsoft default and the system didn’t survive a restart.

Be that as it may, the RAIDDrive still provides performance that’s so far ahead of conventional USB 2.0 and eSATA thumb drives that the driver shouldn’t matter too much. There’s little competition, and we doubt that your system infrastructure can provide sustained 170 MB/s write rates to accept data from the RAIDDrive. Even when looking at write throughput, we’re seeing between 2x and 4x increases compared to USB 2.0 hardware. The RAIDDrive runs hot, reaching 55°C after intensive operation, so be sure not to cover it.

USB 3.0 Controller And Test Setup

USB 3.0 Controller: Gigabyte GA-USB3.0

There aren’t many USB 3.0 controllers on the market. NEC’s 720200 is effectively the dominant product, and it’s often used as an onboard component for enthusiast class motherboards or add-on cards, such as Gigabyte’s GA-USB3.0. This is a x1 PCI Express 2.0 solution, so it offers plenty of bandwidth when connected to systems that support PCI Express 2.0. Keep in mind that all Intel platforms are still limited to PCI Express 1.1 for all non-graphics PCIe ports. This limits bandwidth to 250 MB/s each way.

The NEC chip is considered expensive at roughly six dollars. Asmedia, VIA, and Texas Instruments are close to finalizing their own products. This will have a positive impact on pricing and help make USB 3.0 a mainstream commodity item. Although the $29 for the GA-USB3.0 card isn’t bad for end users, $6 is a major cost item for on-board motherboard components.

Test Setup

Benchmark Results: Access Time And I/O Performance

The eSATA drives show the quickest access time, although results between 0.15 ms and 0.54 ms are quick enough for most people.

Write access time is much longer on the eSATA and USB 2.0 drives but extremely quick on USB 3.0.

The RAIDDrive does very well in our file server benchmark. A conventional 3.5” hard drive delivers less than 200 I/O operations per second. Quick SSDs can be a few times faster than the RAIDDrive.

Benchmark Results: Throughput

The bad news is that Super Talent’s driver did not work on our storage reference test system. The good news is that the drive is extremely fast, with a minimum sequential throughput very close to the 177.8 MB/s maximum. This tells us that the drive delivers constant performance. The eSATA drives are much slower at around 80 MB/s, and the USB 2.0 options aren’t too impressive. Still, the Super Talent RAIDDrive reaches extremely high scores at more than 36 MB/s using USB 2.0.

This is a new workload to look at. What happens if you read and write from and to a drive at the same time. 1 MB and 512 KB blocks are read and written sequentially (66% read / 33% writes) at a 50% read/write distribution.

Combined read and write operation results in a combined bandwidth of 38 MB/s on the RAIDDrive using USB 3.0 and less than half that on the other drives via eSATA. USB 2.0 returns even lower performance numbers on all drives.

Write throughput is typically the way to crush a thumb drive’s performance, and this holds true with the RAIDDrive. All that’s left of the nearly 90 MB/s maximum is 50.4 MB/s minimum throughput. However, this is as much as the other drives reach in best case scenarios, and most eSATA or USB 2.0 solutions are limited at less than 30 MB/s.

If we compare the minimum throughput, then you realize that the USB 3.0 RAIDDrive delivers at least 2.5x more write throughput than USB 2.0 or eSATA drives. This is probably most important if you frequently need the drive to store large amounts of data.

Conclusion

The fact that Super Talent’s USB 3.0 RAIDDrive delivers really high performance comes as no surprise. Comparing USB 3.0’s 5 Gb/s to the 480 Mb/s of USB 2.0 equals a 10x bandwidth improvement. Hence, it’s reasonable to assume that USB 2.0’s net throughput of up to 35 MB/s should potentially increase tenfold as well with USB 3.0, resulting in roughly 350 MB/s. We’ll know for sure when future products allow us to find out.

Drivers Required for Super Talent

For now, we’ll have to take Super Talent’s word that its 128 GB RAIDDrive can actually break the 300 MB/s barrier. The 64 GB model we reviewed is a little slower. Reaching 200+ MB/s of throughput requires a dedicated driver that replaces Microsoft’s mass storage driver. Unfortunately, the driver didn’t work properly on our storage test system, forcing us to benchmark without it. This isn’t too much of an issue for two reasons. First, some users might not always have the drivers handy, and secondly, the performance we saw likely requires you to upgrade your system and environment anyway if you want to take full advantage of it.

CPU Horsepower Required

There’s more you have to know. Reaching maximum throughput requires your system to be really fast. As a matter of fact, CPU performance is increasingly having an impact on high-performance storage devices, as we reported in the article Does Power Saving Technology Kill SSD Performance? In this article, we saw decreased throughput after switching off the processor’s power-saving mechanisms. A similar effect might have slowed down Super Talent’s new USB 3.0 high-flyer on our default test rig, as we were stuck with 178 MB/s. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so.

Conclusion: Native USB 3.0 Still Worth It

The RAIDDrive is one of the first USB 3.0 thumb drives. There are certainly more to come. Its performance is impressive regardless of whether or not it can reach the promoted 300 MB/s. Even at almost 180 MB/s for reads and 90 MB/s for writes, the RAIDDrive requires your storage to be fast enough to keep its speedy pace.

Hard drives are anywhere between 60 and 150 MB/s and network storage is typically limited by gigabit Ethernet (about 100 MB/s). In any case, the RAIDDrive USB 3.0 can almost triple write performance and increase read performance at least fivefold over USB 2.0.

Class 6+ SDHC Cards Compared

SD and high-capacity SD cards (SDHC) are important components in our digital lives. Most digital cameras, GPS devices, car infotainment solutions, and other consumer gadgets rely on this memory card format, in part because capacities have increased as prices have plummeted. However, enthusiasts don’t want just any memory card. They want the best one.

Secure Digital (SD) is based on the MultiMediaCard (MMC) format. The main difference between the two is a white protection switch that comes with all modern SD and SDHC cards, which is part of what makes SD cards thicker than MMC cards. Although most SD cards use MBR partitions and are preformatted with FAT32, it is possible to use all kinds of formats supported by your host devices. Also, pay attention to the SD version. SD 1.0 and 1.1 support up to 2GB. Any card 4GB and over is based on SDHC. Card readers supporting SDHC/SD 2.0 are downward compatible, but you can't use an SDHC card in an older SD 1.0/1.1 device.

The miniSD and microSD formats exist for small, portable devices, such as smart phones. But reduced dimensions come at the expense of decreased performance. SD memory cards are rated by speed categories determined by the SD Association. The common x-ratings, as in 60x for 60 times CD-ROM speed (60 x 150 KB/s = 9,000 KB/s) still apply, but the division into classes has also become popular. Class 2 means 2 MB/s, Class 4 stands for 4 MB/s, Class 6 for 6 MB/s, and so on.

The cards we look at in this article are Class 10, with one exception. Be aware that the class rating doesn’t tell you the maximum throughput, only the minimum sustainable transfer rate. We received 8GB and 16GB product samples from Lexar, Samsung, SanDisk, Silicon Power, and Transcend.

Lexar Professional (8GB, 133x)

We asked for a Class 10 SDHC card for this review and received a Lexar Professional 133x instead. In practice, these are equivalent, though.

Only 4GB and 8GB capacity points are available, but Lexar includes an Image Rescue software bundle. This allows users to recover images that have been deleted or made inaccessible through modification of the partition. As long as the data isn’t physically overwritten, Image Rescue should help recover all of your photo files.

This card is rated for 133x, but it's still able to reach 20 MB/s. This turns out to be almost exactly what we measured. Read throughput falls between 18.2 and 19.7 MB/s, and writes are executed at 12.4 to 18.6 MB/s. Finally, this is the only card except SanDisk’s Extreme model that delivers substantial I/O performance—in case you want to use the memory card to host an operating system.

Samsung Plus MB-SP4G (8GB SDHC, Class 6)

Samsung does sell memory cards as retail products, but you'll have to hunt for them. We found them under camera accessories on European sites, and it appears that this product is not yet available in the U.S.

The MB-SP4G is referred to as an SD Plus card, with Plus suggesting that it is more durable than other products when it comes to mechanical and magnetic influence. The specs say that you can bend the cards with up to 60 N and apply a torque of up to 900 Nm (663 lb-ft). The cards also withstand up to 50 G, and are waterproof thanks to a protective epoxy molding compound. Samsung utilizes metal instead of a plastic SD card housing to achieve this higher durability. The firm says the card is even resistant to X-ray radiation, withstanding up to 4,000 Gauss.

All of this is great, but the card is a Class 6 model that doesn’t deliver on the promise of being 25% to 40% faster than the competition. The price for Samsung's solid design is performance. The 8GB Samsung Plus MB-SP4G card is limited to a maximum of 16 MB/s throughput, Still, it consistently maintains at least 15 MB/s for reads, keeping it close to the competition. Writes are clearly slower, even though Samsung outperforms the Class 6 specification (6 MB/s).

SanDisk Extreme (16GB SDHC, Class 10)

SanDisk’s Extreme series is now available at up to 32GB and rates as Class 10-compliant (10 MB/s). The 16GB sample we received delivers reads between 25 and 27 MB/s and writes at 22.6 to 24.7 MB/s. Please note that most USB 2.0 card readers aren't capable of matching the performance potential of the SanDisk Extreme card. We had to get an ImageMate by SanDisk to reach more than 20 MB/s.

The card lists on SanDisk’s Web site at $195.99, but you can also get the 32GB model for $388.99 or the 8GB for $119.99. SanDisk provides a lifetime warranty on its Extreme cards, and the company offers a compatibility tool on its site to help customers select the right memory card for their devices.

As usual, SanDisk's product is fast and expensive. This and the Lexar are the only two SDHC cards that deliver hard drive-like I/O performance. This is clearly the fastest product in our roundup, and hence receives our Best of Tom’s Award.

Silicon Power SDHC Class 10 (16GB)

Our next card is Silicon Power’s 16GB Class 10 SDHC. Like Samsung's card, the Silicon Power product is also backed by a lifetime warranty, but the manufacturer is more specific with technical details.

There is a specified operating range of -25°C to 85°C and up to 95% humidity. You can also opt for Class 2, Class 4, or Class 6 versions of the card, but the Class 10 model definitely is the fastest. Also, 4, 8, and 16 gigabyte capacities are available.

We measured read performance between 18.3 and 19.7 MB/s and sequential writes between 10.2 and 18.7 MB/s. SanDisk and Transcend provide a bit more performance, but they cost more. Compared to other vendors, the roughly $100 price point for the 16GB model appears on-target .

Transcend Ultimate SDHC Class 10 Card (8GB, 16GB)

Transcend sent us two SDHC Class 10 cards, a 16GB and an 8GB model. The specification section on Transcend's site specs these cards at 10,000 insert/eject cycles and operational temperatures between -25°C to 85°C. The card should be available for less than $100, and Transcend provides a 30-year warranty.

We found the 8GB model's throughput slightly lower than the 16GB version, but the difference is too small to consider when purchasing. Access time is almost the same for both cards (1.2 to 1.3 ms), and the difference in throughput might only be noticeable if you need to write large amounts of data onto the cards within a short time.

The 8GB card is faster when it comes to I/O operations, but both cards don’t deliver sufficient IOPS to host an operating system.

Test Setup And Access Time