We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their US70 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 2TB 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."

 

Race Into The Future: PCIe 4.0

Offering a standard data transfer rate that's double that of the previous 3.0 version, the US70 PCIe Gen 4x4 with 3D NAND flash memory and NVMe 1.3 support is exactly what combative gamers, competitive overclockers, professional designers/editors, and high-end business users crave. With incredible read and write speeds up to 5,000MB/s and 4,400MB/s, respectively, the US70 is nearly 10 times faster than traditional SATA III SSDs. It provides next-level specs that will be competitively relevant for the future, while also being backwards-compatible with PCIe 3.0 too.

Long-Lasting Performance With NVMe 1.3 Support

The US70 packs the storage capacity, either 1TB or 2TB, to put its unmatched performance to good use. Featuring 3D NAND flash memory stacks, the Total Bytes Written (TBW) is substantially improved to meet the demanding needs of storage applications with ease. TBW for the 1TB version is 1,800TB and 3,600TB for the 2TB version. NVMe 1.3 support allows for higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption to maximize the power and lifespan of this SSD.

Powered By Multiple Technologies For Optimum Performance

The US70 supports SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer to improve sequential read/write and random read/write performance. It is engineered with low density parity check (LDPC) coding and an ECC algorithm to ensure accuracy of transmission and reliability of data access. Featuring E2E data protection and support for TRIM commands, the US70 efficiently manages reusable space and significantly reduces hard drive wear out. And if all that's not enough, our proprietary S.M.A.R.T. software enables operational monitoring of the SSD at any time.

Wear leveling

Wear leveling equalizes the wear of each NAND flash block, avoiding damage or data loss caused by excess use.

Over-Provision (OP)

The built-in over-provision (OP) increases the SSD's reserved space and reduces NAND flash wear to ensure reliability and stability as well as achieve an optimal lifespan.

Bad Block management (BBM)

A bad block management (BBM) mechanism detects and marks bad blocks to avoid storage in those blocks and eliminate access errors. And, even if errors do occur in new blocks during an erase, this mechanism can move the data to other effective blocks to prevent data loss resulting from the failed erase.

A Powerful System Upgrade With Room For More

With an M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor, the US70's compact size allows for easy installation in small form factor PC systems. Coupled with its massive storage capacity options, blazing speed, and numerous advanced technologies, it makes for an easy upgrade that will significantly improve your system's performance and storage potential, while also saving space for other components.

 

Capacity: 1TB, 2TB

Dimensions: 22.0mm x 80.0mm x 3.5mm

Weight: 8g

Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4

Performance Read(max.): up to 5,000 MB/s

Performance Write(max.): up to 4,400 MB/s

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

Operating Temperature: 0°C - 70°C

MTBF (est): 1,700,000 hours

Shock Resistance Test: 1500G/0.5ms

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

 

In this article we will concentrate our view upon the 2TB version of the US70 PCIe Gen 4x4 SSD from Silicon Power, featuring rated speeds of up to 5000MB/s regarding reads and up to 4400MB/s regarding writes, while the included Phison PS5016-E16 controller comes with multiple reliability and performance functions.

 

The 2TB version of the drive has arrived inside a very compact cardboard packaging, with a transparent casing in which the drive is held secure:

 

 

 

On the back, we will note some details on SP Worldwide Service Center, but also the supported standards, the internal code name of the product and serial number:

 

 

 

The plastic layer helps protect the drive during transit and to prevent bending:

 

 

 

On the frontal area of the drive we will find a large sticker covering the components; here we will note the drive model, product internal code name, the drive capacity but also the serial number:

 

 

 

On the back we will observe two BiCS4 96-layer TLC flash packages but also a DRAM 512MB cache IC:

 

 

 

After removing the top sticker, we will discover two additional, NAND packages, the main controller but also a secondary DRAM cache IC:

 

 

 

The two DDR4 ICs carry the H5AN8G8NCJ code name:

 

 

 

The Phison PS5016-E16 controller was manufactured on a 28nm process and comes with plenty of power in order to process ECC. The controller comes with no less than eight NAND channels with 32 CE targets, supports DDR4 RAM caching and was designed to operate on the PCIe 4x4 interface. As extra features incorporated, we will remind NVMe 1.3 support, LDPC error correction, Wear Leveling but also Over-Provision technologies:

 

 

 

The NAND IC packages are marked TABHG65AWV, which represent 512GB of Toshiba 96-Layer BiCS4 3D TLC:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a Ryzen 5 5600X 6-core CPU, two Trident Z RGB 3200MHz 8GB memory modules with 16-18-18-38 XMP 2.0 timings, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Patriot Memory P200 512GB 2.5’’ SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR B550GTA motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 10 OS build as well.

The drive has arrived unformatted, but for testing purposes, we have formatted it NTFS:

 

 

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

 

PCMark 8

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Blank SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

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

 

PCMark 8

 

Anvil [Read]

 

Anvil [Write]

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

 

 

 

 

The US70 PCIe Gen4x4 drive from Silicon Power does trade punches with the products we have tested before from the same category and in many cases, it did succeed to stay on top! The 2TB version of the product comes with a 3600TB rating and 5 years warranty, so you do not have to worry about endurance even when performing storage intensive activities. US70 thanks to its firmware and controller does make use of technologies such as LDPC, TRIM, SLC caching, DRAM cache buffer, End-to-End Data protection in order to keep a high sustained write data rate for longer and also has wear leveling in order to have a similar usage throughout all internal cells.

 

By using HD Tune Pro write test, we can see how the drive behaves when SLC cache has been filled; we can see a quite abrupt drop, but the drive can recover fast and will continue to write at high speeds:

 

 

 

The Silicon Power US70 drive can be found online for about 343 Euros, the most affordable 2TB version in PCIe Gen4x4 format, so it should be on your shortlist when building a computer or upgrading one with existing PCIe Gen4 support.

Silicon Power US70 PCIe Gen4x4 M.2 2280 2TB SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

 

 

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