We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their UD90 M.2 2280 1TB 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:

 

Accessible PCIe 4.0 Boost

Give your system the power of PCIe 4.0 with the budget-friendly UD90. Providing the best bang for your buck, it reaches read speeds up to 4,800MB/s and write speeds up to 4,200MB/s. It also boasts 2x faster data transfer rates than its predecessor, PCIe 3.0, for sustained use and dependable performance. With this much efficiency, the UD90 allows you to maximize your creative output at an unbeatable value.

 

Multi-Task Like No Other

Don't lose your train of thought with slow load times! Designed with content creators in mind, the UD90 is built to handle the demanding levels of multi-tasking that's required of creative production, effortlessly. With support for NVMe 1.4 and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, the UD90 offers uninterrupted productivity via higher performance and lower latency for seamless execution across applications.

 

Do More, In the Same Amount of Time

To bolster its multi-tasking factor even further, the UD90 takes advantage of increased bandwidth when used in conjunction with motherboards equipped with PCIe 4.0 slots. In fact, it has nearly double the bandwidth of PCIe 3.0 for shorter download times and the ability to download more files within the same amount of time.

 

Speed Meets Reliability

An SSD's speed is meaningless without the ability to handle that speed reliably. The UD90 achieves improved sequential read/write and random read/write performance with support for SLC Caching. At the same time, it supports low density parity check (LDPC) coding to ensure accuracy of data transmission and reliability of data access.

 

Safe And Secure Data Storage

The UD90 supports RAID to protect data in the case of a drive failure. It's also equipped with built-in E2E data protection for enhanced data transfer integrity. Unexpected things can happen at any moment, but the UD90 is prepared for them with your data at its utmost priority.

 

Free-Download of SSD Health Monitor - SP Toolbox

Easily monitor your new SSD's health with our free-download software – SP Toolbox. Run performance tests on the UD90, get an overall function evaluation, or check detailed information about your device, including used space, device temperature, total bytes written, and many more.

 

 

Product Specifications:

 

Capacity: 1TB

Dimensions: 22.0mm x 80.0mm x 3.5mm

Weight: 8g

Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4

Performance Read: (max.)up to 4,800MB/s*

Performance Write: (max.)up to 4,200MB/s*

System Requirement: Computer with M.2 slots supporting PCIe interface and one of the following operating systems: Windows 8.1 or Windows 10, Windows 11

Operating Temperature: 0°C - 70°C

MTBF (est): 1,500,000 hours

Shock Resistance Test: 1500g/0.5ms

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

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

 

Silicon Power has manufactured a new PCIe 4.0 SSD for the mainstream segment, taking the DRAMless route with the Phison PS5021-E21 controller. The UD90 drive can be purchased with capacities ranging from 250GB and up to 2TB and comes with rated speeds of 4800MB/s in case of the reads and 4200MB/s concerning the writes.

 

The product is shipped inside a simple blister packaging, a combination of cardboard on the outside and a transparent plastic housing on the inside. On the frontal area, we will note the listed drive capacity, but also the supported bus, standard and the model code name:

 

 

 

On the back, Silicon Power has placed more details regarding the addresses of the Silicon Power offices worldwide, but also the product serial number and internal code name:

 

 

 

The plastic layer helps the drive not to bend while in transit:

 

 

 

UD90 has a similar appearance to other drives from Silicon Power we have tested in the past, with a large sticker on top of the PCB. The drive can be easily identified with the data included on the white background, also including a barcode:

 

 

 

On the back side of the PCB, we do not note any additional components, neither placeholders for larger capacity drives with more NAND Flash ICs:

 

 

 

After removing the frontal sticker which does act as a small heatspreader, we will note four 3D NAND ICs, together with a central controller:

 

 

 

UD90 1TB does come with 256GB IA7BG94AYA Micron 176-layer 3D TLC B47R FortisFlash:

 

 

 

The Phison PS5021-E21 controller is considered an entry-level SKU for the PCIe 4.0 interface and will only function with DRAMless solutions. It has NVMe 1.4 support and can be coupled with both 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND packages.:

 

 

 

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 starting the second stage of the test (SSD filled over 50%), we have monitored the drive behavior during continuous writing. Initially, the drive temperature was about 51 degrees Celsius in IDLE mode:

 

 

 

The write speed remained at high levels when transferring test data:

 

 

 

 

 

During this time, the temperature has raised to about 59 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

After writing about 184GB of data, the transfer speed remained unchanged:

 

 

 

At the same time, the temperature has raised to about 61 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The first speed drop has occurred after writing about 258GB of data, while the temp got to about 65 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

 

 

The transfer speed remained constant at about 1.65GB/s, but the drive temp has increased significantly:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We noted about the same speed after writing 400GB of data, but the controller did really struggle to keep everything stable, which can be judged by the high temperature (80 degrees Celsius):

 

 

 

 

 

The next drop has occurred shortly after, with speeds ranging between 400 and 500MB/s:

 

 

 

When SLC is fully filled, we did note a similar behavior as the previously tested drives, when the drive temps start dropping:

 

 

 

The drive did recover a bit, but the speed has dropped quickly after:

 

 

 

 

The rest of the test has had speeds ranging from 140 to 200MB/s:

 

 

 

 

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 Phison E21 controller paired with Micron’s 176-layer TLC NAND does result in a good mainstream drive in terms of performance, even surpassing Silicon Power rated speeds, which operates at decent temperatures in normal operation. However, if your projects do imply writing very large sequences of data at once, the drive will heat up to about 80 degrees Celsius while using the stock thin graphene heatspreader. In that case, we will surely recommend a custom heatsink or simply installing the drive on a motherboard with an integrated cooling system.

 

The drive behavior during continuous writing is also described well with the HD Tune Pro write workload:

 

 

 

In terms of endurance, Silicon Power mentions 600TB of written data or 5 years of limited warranty. We do suspect the drive will support more that that, but the manufacturer wanted to be on the safe side.

 

In terms of pricing, the Silicon Power UD90 1TB is available in Europe at around 143 Euros, while in USA in can be had for about $90.

 

Silicon Power UD90 M.2 2280 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

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