We would like to thank at first Silicon Power for supplying their UD90 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:

 

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 5,000MB/s and write speeds up to 4,800MB/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: 2TB

Dimensions : 22.0mm x 80.0mm x 3.5mm

Weight: 8g

Interface: PCIe Gen 4x4

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

Performance Write(max.): 4,800MB/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

TBW: 1200TB

Shock Resistance Test: 1500g/0.5ms

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

Warranty: 5-year limited warranty

 

We are visiting again the affordable UD90 drive from Silicon Power, now with its 2TB capacity, something which is fast becoming a norm nowadays due to continuously decreasing NAND prices. Unlike the 1TB model we have reviewed back in 2022, the 2TB packs Micron 176-Layer 3D QLC packages, in order to keep the product costs low.

 

The drive is shipped inside a simple cardboard and plastic enclosure, which is not reusable after first use. The UD90 can be checked out easily thanks to the transparent layer, and Silicon Power has also noted on the packaging the bus type, SSD format and total capacity:

 

 

 

On the back, we will note details on Silicon Power’s service center, but also the product serial number along with the code name:

 

 

 

The frontal area of the PCB is covered by a large sticker, which includes information about the drive name, capacity, but a barcode is also included here:

 

 

 

A smaller sticker with a QR code is present on the back of the drive, but here there are no other components:

 

 

 

After removing the top sticker, we will spot four NAND packages, a central controller, but no DRAM caching:

 

 

 

The same controller has been retained in the case of the 2TB variant, Phison PS5021-E21. It 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:

 

 

 

The NAND carries the IA7HG96AZA code name, meaning that we are dealing with Micron’s 176-layer 3D QLC. Each chip has a capacity of 512GB:

 

 

 

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

 

For continuing with the second part of the tests, we needed to fill the drive over 50% with data; at the same time we did monitor the controller temperature, but also the transfer rate. At the beginning of our test, the drive reported a very good temperature:

 

 

 

Writes started at optimal levels:

 

 

 

We noted a continued trend at about 3GB/s after 160GB of data written:

 

 

 

At this point, the temperature did only increase to 44 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

We noted the first sharp drop in performance after writing about 449GB, meaning that the drive has a healthy portion of pSLC cache:

 

 

 

The temperature remained at low levels:

 

 

 

The drive started fluctuating with transfers between 110MB/s and 160MB/s, similar to writes on regular portable HDDs, when interacting directly with the QLC portion of the chips:

 

 

 

This type of behavior continued till the end of the data transfer, when we recorded a maximum temperature of 58 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

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 UD90 is another entry-level PCI-E 4.0 drive from Silicon Power, which includes a good amount of pSLC cache in order to minimize de disadvantages of the QLC NAND packages. After the cache has been completely used up, the speed will drop significantly, between 110MB/s and 160MB/s, which is quite close to regular HDDs. Compatibility is assured with plenty of devices thanks to the 2280 format, and we noted that the rated TBW rating for a similar configuration is of 450TB.

 

The HD Tune Pro write workload does show how the drive runs when helped by the pSLC cache:

 

 

 

The QLC NAND and lack of DRAM caching do not recommend it as a system drive, but as a secondary or tertiary storage device.

Regarding pricing, it trades punches with similar solutions such as the CORSAIR MP600 Core XT which is based on the exact hardware, at about 110 Euros.

 

Silicon Power UD90 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!