We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their P34A60 PCIe 3x4 M.2 2280 1TB SSD for testing and reviewing.

 

 

About Silicon Power:

 

"Founded in 2003 by a group of enthusiastic data storage industry experts, Silicon Power is committed to delivering outstanding product and service quality. Headquartered and with our own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, we have become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. As an international player with four branch offices around the globe, we continuously strive to offer the perfect data storage solution for all requirements of modern digitalized life. With a strong focus on combining innovative technology and award-winning design, we live up to our brand promise to reliably preserve and protect your most valuable data.

Because memory is personal."

 

A Fundamental PCIe Gen3x4 That Goes Further

 

The P34A60 is an affordable storage solution that doesn't skimp on performance. It's designed for novice users, DIY system builders, purpose-built system manufacturers, and simply those who are looking to upgrade their PC. But with a PCIe Gen3x4 interface, which means four lanes are used for transmitting and receiving data simultaneously, read speeds up to 2,200 MB/s, and write speeds up to 1,600 MB/s, this SSD is anything but basic.

 

NVMe 1.3 + HMB = Optimum Performance

 

The P34A60 supports NVMe 1.3, which demands better performance vectors than AHCI (Advanced Host Controller Interface), including scalable bandwidth, increased IOPS, and low latency. In addition, HMB (Host Memory Buffer) architecture, which allows the host driver to allocate system memory (RAM) for exclusive use by the SSD, results in higher efficiency. It's this teamwork that provides optimum performance.

 

Your Data In Good Hands

 

The P34A60 is engineered with LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) coding, a powerful error correction code (ECC) algorithm, to keep data secure. Furthermore, End-To-End (E2E) data protection, to ensure that accessed and retrieved data are correct from start to finish, and a RAID engine, which provides an acceptable level of fault tolerance, work to enhance data integrity for greater reliability and stability.

 

A System Upgrade With Room For More

 

With an M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor, the P34A60's compact size allows for easy installation in laptops, small form factor PC systems, and some ultrabooks. And with up to a massive 2TB capacity option, it's an easy upgrade that can greatly expand your system's storage potential while also saving space for other components.

 

Capacity

512GB

 

Dimensions

22.0 x 80.0 x 3.5mm

 

Weight

8g

 

Interface

PCIe Gen3x4

 

Performance Read(max.)

up to 2,200 MB/s

 

Performance Write(max.)

up to 1,600 MB/s

 

MTBF (est)

2,000,000 hours

 

Operating Temperature

0?- 70?

 

Shock Resistance Test

1500G/0.5ms

 

Certification

CE, FCC, BSMI, Green dot, WEEE, RoHS, KCC

 

System Requirement

Computer with M.2 slots supporting PCIe interface and one of the following operating systems: Windows 8.1 or Windows 10

 

Warranty

5 years

 

 

In this review we will concentrate upon another mainstream PCIe Gen3 x4 M.2 SSD from Silicon Power, available with 256GB/512GB/1TB and 2TB capacities. The manufacturer does rate this drive with read speeds of up to 2200MB/s, while the writes are rated up to 1600MB/s, which should be more than enough for most users. The drive does also support NVMe 1.3 standard, while the HMB (Host Memory Buffer) allows the host driver to allocate system memory as buffer (RAM), allowing more sustained high transfer rates.

 

The product is shipped inside a very compact cardboard enclosure with a small window, that also highlights the total drive capacity, along with the 5-year warranty period:

 

 

 

Some more product details can be spotted on the back, such as the power rating, details on the service centers but also the product serial number and internal code name:

 

 

 

Inside the box, we will only find a transparent plastic mold, in which the drive is held secure:

 

 

 

The frontal area of the drive is completely covered by a large sticker that holds the full internal code name, the drive capacity, the product series but also the serial number:

 

 

 

On its back, there are no other mounted components:

 

 

 

After removing the sticker, we will spot another DRAM-less IC solution, with four 3D TLC NAND Flash packages, manufactured by Micron:

 

 

 

The SM2263XT controller from Silicon Motion is a 4-channel SKU built on the TFBGA288 package:

 

 

 

The 64-layer 3D TLC NAND ICs do carry the 29F01T2ANCTH2 code name, from Micron; we have found the same ICs with the previously tested Patriot Memory P200, but that was operating on a SATA 6Gb/s interface:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

 

CPU: Intel I5 9700K Retail

CPU Cooler: Deepcool Captain 240 EX RGB AIO

Motherboard: Gigabyte Z370 AORUS Ultra Gaming

RAM: Patriot Memory Viper RGB Series DDR4

Video: KFA2 GeForce GTX 1060 OC 6GB

Power Supply: Cooler Master 850W

SSD: OCZ Vector 150

Case: Cooler Master ATCS 840

 

 

The drive has arrived unformatted:

 

 

For testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS; here is the total remaining free space afterwards:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive:

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

PCMark 8

Blank SSD

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

PCMark 7

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

PCMark 8

Filled SSD

 

 

 

The mainstream PCIe Gen 3x4 P34A60 mainstream SSD from Silicon Power does offer good all-around performance and does not drop to very slow speeds when the cache fills up completely, as we could notice from the HD Tune Pro write test. When copying large files continuously to the drive, we haven’t seen drops of under 90MB/s, which is great for a TLC-based drive, while the 512GB capacity should be enough for a boot drive.

 

 

The drive implements NVMe 1.3 standard along with HMB (Host Memory Buffer) that allows allocating more cache from the system, but the performance will differ from case to case, depending on the load of the system. The DRAM-less SM2263XT solution from Silicon Motion does come with LDPC error correction, E2E data protection and RAID engine for enhanced data integrity and stability.

 

The 512GB drive, as tested, can be found online for a very low price of just 76 Euros!

Silicon Power P34A60 PCIe 3x4 M.2 2280 512GB SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

 

 

We would like to thank again to Silicon Power for making this review possible!