We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their XD80 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 3.0 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:

Speed Ahead of The Competition

Featuring SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer, the XD80 peels rubber with blazing read/write speeds up to 3,400/3,000MB/s, respectively. Its high-speed PCIe Gen3x4 interface leaves traditional SATA III SSDs behind in the dust, giving hardcore gamers the competitive edge, they need to secure the win.

Eliminate Lag While Keeping It Cool

With NVMe 1.3 support, the XD80 delivers higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption for the smoothest gameplay without any lag. The durable aluminum heatsink provides maximum heat dissipation and thermal management. In fact, compared to SSDs without a heatsink, the XD80 keeps temperatures as much as 20% lower, maintaining its stability.

Better Performance with RAID Technology

To push beyond standard limits, the XD80 supports RAID technology and comes in massive storage capacity options up to 2TB. Even during the most highly demanding games, it will maintain system stability and data integrity to deliver maximum and reliable performance.

A Powerful System Upgrade with Room for More

With an M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor, the XD80's compact size allows for easy installation, while also saving space for other components. Coupled with its blazing speed and massive storage capacity options, it makes for an easy upgrade that's ready to handle the most intense gaming sessions.

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 XD80, 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: 2TB

Dimensions: 22.0mm x 80.0mm x 5mm

Weight: 11g

Interface: PCIe Gen3x4

Performance Read(max.): up to 3,400MB/s

Performance Write(max.): up to 3,000MB/s

System Requirements: 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): 2,000,000 hours

Shock Resistance Test: 1500G/0.5ms

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

Warranty: 5 years

 

It is time to look again at Silicon Power’s XD80 series of PCIe Gen 3x4 SSDs but with a different capacity of 2TB. With the increasing requirements of recent games, media and applications which take lots of storage space, this SKU should fit most preferences when installed inside a mainstream computer to offer a visible performance boost.

The drive is offered inside a simple blister packaging, which shows the drive design as-is, without the need of showing a photograph. The top area does reveal the total drive capacity, the supported bus, the form factor but also, we are reminded of the 5-year warranty:

 

 

 

On the back side, Silicon Power has included information regarding the worldwide offices, but also the product code name and serial number:

 

 

 

The cardboard layer can be easily removed, and we will end up with the transparent plastic protective layer:

 

 

 

The top area of the XD80 2TB is covered by an aluminum heatsink with a dark grey brushed look; we will note that the XPOWER logo is present in the middle:

 

 

 

On the back side of the PCB, we will note a small sticker with the drive serial number, the storage capacity but also logos of some supported standards:

 

 

 

By removing this sticker, we will expose two of the NAND packages, with an inscription we could not easily identify (Toshiba 96-layer TLC flash):

 

 

 

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; we did proceed with the usual steps in order to format it as NTFS:

 

 

With the help of AIDA64, we could extract more information regarding the drive; while the initial revision of the XD80 was packing a Phison PS5012-E12S-32 controller, the new SKU does come with a Realtek RTS5762 which is NVMe 1.3 compliant, features 8 flash channels and supports various types of 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND Flash memory, with robust LDPC-based ECC methods to ensure proper endurance.

 

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Blank SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Blank SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

PCMark 8

 

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

CrystalDiskMark

Blank SSD

 

 

 

Our continuous tests began while the drive was at 40 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The write speeds have started optimally:

 

 

 

At the same time, the drive temperature started raising a little:

 

 

 

After more than 83GB of written data, we haven’t noticed slowdowns:

 

 

 

At this moment in time, the temperature has raised to about 50 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The transfer speeds remained between 1.85GB/s and 2.01GB/s after writing about 170GB of data:

 

 

 

After writing about 272GB of data, same situation remained:

 

 

 

The temperature did raise to about 63 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The first notable slowdown has occurred after writing 441GB of data, when the speed dropped to about 1.68GB/s:

 

 

 

At this time, the controller has reached about 68 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The speed remained good even after writing about 537GB of data:

 

 

 

The temperature has raised to about 74 degrees at this stage:

 

 

 

We have noted another drop in performance, to about 960MB/s, after writing over 600GB of data; this behavior is expected after SLC buffer has been filled up:

 

 

 

The temperature remained at about 73 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

After writing some more data, we noted yet another speed drop, to about 488MB/s:

 

 

 

For the rest of the test, the speed did travel between 148MB/s and 210MB/s:

 

 

The Tests

 

HDTach Short Test

Filled SSD

 

HDTach Long Test

 

Filled SSD

 

CrystalMark HDD Test Suite

 

AIDA64 Disk Test Suite

 

PCMark05 HDD Test Suite

 

 

PCMark 8

 

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

CrystalDiskMark

Filled SSD

 

 

The new XD80 2TB version from Silicon Power is very interesting, since it does not come with the previous controller but retains the same internal product code. As we have noted from the test results, the drive trades punches in terms of performance with the 1TB version while blank, but when filled to about 60% of its capacity, it falls a bit behind. We think that this can be attributed to the Realtek RTS5762 controller, which operates differently but unfortunately not a lot of info is available online about it.

 

The drive can hold a high sustained write rate for quite a bit, which is very good for a mainstream model, especially when talking about higher capacity SKUs.

 

When running the HD Tune Pro write test on the XD80 2TB, the graph formed had an interesting sawtooth pattern, but we did not note high drops in performance thanks to the caching:

 

 

 

The drive can be currently found online for about 194.2 Euros, but there is no guarantee regarding the controller you will get. XD80 2TB falls in-line regarding pricing with other 3D TLC PCIe 3.0 models.

 

Silicon Power XD80 M.2 2280 2TB PCIe 3.0 SSD is Recommended for:

 

 

 

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