We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their UD85 2TB 2280 NVMe 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:

 

Upgrade Your Productivity

Looking to make the switch to the latest generation of PCIe interface? The UD85 is the perfect introduction to the power of PCIe 4.0. With support for NVMe 1.4 and Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology, you'll get uninterrupted productivity via higher performance and lower latency for seamless execution across applications.

Speed Up Your Efficiency

The UD85 delivers a fast and smooth experience with read speeds up to 3,600MB/s and write speeds up to 2,800MB/s. It achieves improved sequential read/write and random read/write performance with support for SLC Caching.

Do More With 4TB For Less

The UD85 is all about value: it's available in large storage capacities up to 4TB with an affordable price tag. Get all the space you need for applications, documents, photos, and videos without breaking the bank.

A Flexible Upgrade

The UD85 makes it easy to upgrade from PCIe Gen 3 to Gen 4. It's also backwards compatible with Gen 3 for greater flexibility across systems and its M.2 2280 size easily integrates into designs with M.2 connectors, making it the perfect choice for thin laptops and small form factor PCs.

Lower Latency With 3D NAND

With 3D NAND flash technology, the UD85 incorporates multiple layers of vertically stacked memory cells to overcome the density limitations of its single-layered 2D counterpart and achieve greater capacities. A reduced distance between memory cells also results in lower latency and higher performance.

Comprehensive Data Protection and Accuracy

The UD85 supports low density parity check (LDPC) coding to ensure accuracy of data transmission and reliability of data access, while RAID protects data in the case of a drive failure. It's also equipped with built-in E2E data protection and an automatic error correction code (ECC) function for enhanced data transfer integrity.

Stay S.M.A.R.T. With SP Toolbox

The SP Toolbox provides a free, user-friendly way to obtain disk information, change settings at any time, and erase files securely. View drive information, S.M.A.R.T. status, wear-out count, and block information with ease or perform a diagnostic scan or performance test to make sure the drive is healthy and running efficiently.

 

Product Specifications:

 

Capacity: 2TB

Dimensions: 22.0mm x 80.0mm x 3.5mm

Weight: 8g

Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4

Performance Read(max.): 3,600MB/s

Performance Write(max.): 2,800MB/s

System Requirements:

Computer with M.2 slots supporting PCIe interface and an OS with NVMe support

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, KCC

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

 

Silicon Power has prepared another PCIe Gen 4x4 drive, but this time for the entry-level segment and carrying the UD85 name. It is a DRAMless solution with support for Host Memory Buffer technology and capacities do range from a small 250GB and up to an impressive 4TB!

 

The drive is shipped inside a very simple packaging, easy to remove for installation purposes; right on the frontal area, we will get to see the total drive capacity, the supported bus, the code name of the product but we will be also reminded that the UD85 drive is backed up by a 5-year limited warranty:

 

 

 

On the back side, we will learn of the drive power rating, details on the Silicon Power offices, supported standards but also the complete product code name and serial number:

 

 

 

The frontal area of the drive is completely covered by a large sticker, which also acts as a small heatsink:

 

 

 

On the back side, we will note the presence of two NAND Flash chips, in an unusual position, right in the middle:

 

 

 

After removing the top sticker, we will note two extra NAND chips, but also the main controller; like one third of the drivers’ PCB is unused:

 

 

 

In terms of the controller, we are dealing with a Phison ES5019-E19 with an updated, more compact packaging, built on TSMC’s 28nm node, supporting a maximum of 4 channels and 1200MT/s per channel. It incorporates a 32-bit ARM Cortex R5 architecture, and it is a single-core SKU:

 

 

 

In terms of NAND Flash, we are getting here another “exotic” TLC model, carrying the 06T2TAAB000 code name, while YTMC is the manufacturer:

 

 

 

Test Bench:

The test system did incorporate a AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-core CPU, a Sabrent Rocket 2x16GB DDR5 4800MHz C40 memory kit, a PowerColor Red Dragon Radeon RX 5700 video card but also a Sabrent Rocket 4 Plus NVMe 4.0 2TB SSD; all these were connected to the BIOSTAR X670E VALKYRIE AM5 motherboard. As a power supply we have chosen a Cooler Master 850W non-modular and the system was running the latest Windows 11 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

 

To fire up the second stage of the tests, we need to fill up the drive over 50% and monitor the transfer rate behavior during this time. The IDLE temperature reported by the drive in AIDA64 is 36 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

After just about 20GB of written data, the speed has dropped abruptly, which tells us that we are not dealing with a lot of pSLC cache on this drive:

 

 

 

The temperature has raised to about 50 degrees Celsius after 30 seconds of continuous transfer:

 

 

 

The drive continued to write at the same pace, with speed hovering between 500 and 800MB/s:

 

 

 

The reported speed has raised to about 61 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

Till the end of the test, we did not notice any change in speed;

 

 

 

 

 

The reported temperature has remained at safe levels:

 

 

 

The only worrisome indicator would be the secondary temperature sensor reading in AIDA64, which we do suppose that it tracks the controller temperature; this one has reached about 80 and we have sometimes saw spikes to about 84 degrees Celsius and keep in mind that we have tested with the included motherboard SSD heatsink:

 

 

 

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 entry-level U85 drive from Silicon Power does come with decent performance and thanks to the inclusion of the TLC NAND instead of QLC we noted higher sustained writes but also the TBW for the 2TB model is appreciable, at about 1120TB. The placement of the ICs is a bit different when compared to other manufacturers, leaving about one third of the PCB unused; the main Phison PS5019-E19-35 controller will get a bit toasty during prolonged writes so we would really recommend good ventilation around the drive when writing large amounts of data at once.

 

The HD Tune write workload does show how the drive does perform when the cache methods are not fully filled up:

 

 

 

The UD85 drive with 2TB capacity can be found online for as low as 91 Euros, which is quite a good deal considering that it packs TLC NAND; even with the low quantity of pSLC, the write rates when writing directly to the TLC portion of the drive is 6 to 8 times higher as when talking about QLC models.

 

Silicon Power UD85 2TB 2280 NVMe PCIe 4.0 SSD is Recommended for:

 

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