We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their XS70 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 4.0 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."

 

Product Features:

 

PCIe Gen 4x4 interface with read speeds up to 7,300MB/s and write speeds up to 6,800MB/s

Compatible with PlayStation 5 for additional storage expansion

Unique heatsink design provides maximum heat dissipation and thermal management

NVMe 1.4 support allows for higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption

Available in massive storage capacity options ranging from 1TB to 4TB

Supports DRAM Cache Buffer for improved sequential read/write and random read/write performance

Supports LDPC and RAID engine technology for enhanced data integrity and stability

Small form factor M.2 2280 (80mm) allows for easy installation in laptops and small form factor PC systems

Free download of SP ToolBox to easily obtain disk information such as self-monitoring analysis report, extent of consumption and SSD diagnostics

 

Product Specifications:

 

Capacity: 2TB

Dimensions: 24.6mm x 80.0mm x 10.8mm

Weight: 33g

Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4

Performance Read(max.): up to 7,300MB/s

Performance Write(max.): up to 6,800MB/s

System Requirement: Computer with M.2 slots supporting PCIe interface and one of the following operating systems: Windows 10 or Windows 11

Operating Temperature: 0°C - 70°C

MTBF (est): 1,600,000 hours

Shock Resistance Test: 1500G/0.5ms

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

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

 

Silicon Power is not a stranger when it comes to high-end M.2 SSDs and for that they have released the XS70, which comes with improvements in terms of the cooling system to keep temperatures at bay, while providing up to 7300MB/s reads, 6800MB/s writes, and compatibility with the PlayStation 5 system. It incorporates the Phison PS5018-E18 controller, manufactured on TSMC’s 12nm process, with eight channels, a speed of 1600MT/s per channel and support for DDR4 caching. As we have seen with other PCIe 4.0 SSDs tested in the past, the XS70 is also using Micron 176-layer 3D TLC NAND, to provide a sustained performance for longer and having increased durability.

 

The XS70 PCIe 4.0 SSD is shipped inside a simple cardboard packaging, but with a transparent plastic inner layer; through it we can look at the drive without unsealing the enclosure. In the frontal area, Silicon Power does highlight the capacity of the drive but also the fact that it comes with a 5-year limited warranty:

 

 

 

On the back, we will note some more details on the company along with the product serial number and internal code name:

 

 

 

Here is the transparent plastic mold after the cardboard layer has been completely removed:

 

 

 

To avoid throttling in less-than-ideal airflow chassis builds, the XS70 SSD is equipped with an aluminum alloy heatsink with multiple fins, for a more efficient heat evacuation. A stylish dark grey cover is also applied on top, which holds the product series name, along with the type of drive:

 

 

 

The drive also comes with a backplate, which screws to the main sink with two screws, a set on each side:

 

 

 

 

On the backplate, we will note the drive serial number, the code name, but also a list of supported standards:

 

 

 

Here are some views at both ends as well:

 

 

 

 

The drive looks great after installation on our test machine; given the color scheme, it should fit with most motherboard designs:

 

 

 

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 Viper VP4100 PCIe 4.0 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

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Blank SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

 

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Blank SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Blank SSD

 

Before testing the continuous write behavior, we went ahead and checked out the starting temperature, which was perfectly fine:

 

 

 

We then started writing continuously 576GB of data:

 

 

 

The drive did not show any drop in speed after writing more than 130GB:

 

 

 

The temperature only raised a little bit:

 

 

 

The drive kept a steady transfer rate even after writing almost 290GB:

 

 

 

The temperature has reached 64 degrees Celsius in this stage:

 

 

 

Surprisingly, after 417GB of written data, the write speed remained stable:

 

 

 

We have seen very small speed drops after writing more than 475GB:

 

 

 

At this time, the temperature has reached 72 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

We continued writing to the drive a secondary set of 576GB of data, without any stops in between (in order not to help with SLC cache recovery); the drive speed only dropped after writing about 688GB:

 

 

 

A secondary drop meant the drive was hovering between 350 and 400MB/s:

 

 

 

At this stage, the controller temperature has reached a maximum of 73 degrees Celsius and did not raise further till the end of the test. When the SLC cache became full, the drive temperature even dropped to around 68-69 degrees Celsius!

 

 

 

After a small recovery, the drive continued writing with transfer rates between 500 and 600MB/s:

 

 

 

The drive continued the same writing pattern till the end of our test:

 

 

 

The Tests

 

3DMark

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

CrystalDisk Test Suite (Random)

 

HDTune Test Suite

Filled SSD

 

PCMark Vantage HDD Test Suite

 

Anvil [Read]

Anvil [Write]

PCMark 10

Quick System Drive Benchmark

 

Extra Tests:

 

AS SSD Benchmark

Filled SSD

AS SSD Benchmark (IOPS)

Filled SSD

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Filled SSD

 

The Silicon Power XS70 drive does perform great versus other models we have tested in the past thanks to the Phison E18 controller coupled with Micron’s 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. We could write lots of data continuously before SLC cache has been fully occupied and even then, the drive remained at very acceptable write speeds. The incorporated heatsink does help with delaying the heating up process till the drive reaches about 73 degrees Celsius, a maximum temperature we have seen other drives reaching with much smaller cooling systems, but those reached it considerably faster.

 

The HD Tune Write workload can illustrate the speed stages the drive can go through and we were quite amazed to see that it remains quite cool most of the time, when writing to it continuously:

 

 

 

PS5 compatibility out of the box is a plus, meaning that we do not have to purchase the cooling systems ourselves and install it; however, if you need to get it mounted on a motherboard which features an integrated M.2 cooling system, you may have to remove the Silicon Power heatsink and rely on that motherboard heatsink instead!

Silicon Power products are usually priced competitively and the XS70 does not make any exception! The XS70, as tested with the 2TB capacity can be found online for about 310 Euros!

 

Silicon Power XS70 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

 

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