Silicon Power US70 1TB M.2 PCIe Gen4x4 SSD

For the past several generations, a new PCIe generation launch was pretty lackluster. Sure, upcoming video cards might support it, but it didn’t really mean much in day to day use for consumers. That was before the widespread adoption of PCIe-based storage though. When PCIe gen 4 doubled the bandwidth of gen 3, consumers were drooling about new storage aspects. Silicon Power takes advantage of this with its new US70 M.2 drives that use PCIe gen 4.0 to hit speeds of up to 5GB/s. If you are a content creator working with high-resolution video, a performance-hungry gamer, or just don’t like to wait on your computer, the US70 gen4 drive gives you a mix of raw speed with 1TB or 2TB worth of space. PC Test Bench would like to thank Silicon Power for sending us the US70 SSD drive over to check out! Silicon Power’s take on the US70 M.2 PCIe Gen4x4 SSD: Offering a standard data transfer rate that's double that of the previous 3.0 version, the US70 PCIe Gen 4x4 with 3D NAND flash memory and NVMe 1.3 support is exactly what combative gamers, competitive overclockers, professional designers/editors, and high-end business users crave. With incredible read and write speeds up to 5,000MB/s and 4,400MB/s, respectively, the US70 is nearly 10 times faster than traditional SATA III SSDs. It provides next-level specs that will be competitively relevant for the future, while also being backward-compatible with PCIe 3.0 too. Long-Lasting Performance with NVMe 1.3 Support The US70 packs the storage capacity, either 1TB or 2TB, to put its unmatched performance to good use. Featuring 3D NAND flash memory stacks, the Total Bytes Written (TBW) is substantially improved to meet the demanding needs of storage applications with ease. TBW for the 1TB version is 1,800TB and 3,600TB for the 2TB version. NVMe 1.3 support allows for higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption to maximize the power and lifespan of this SSD. Powered By Multiple Technologies For Optimum Performance The US70 supports SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer to improve sequential read/write and random read/write performance. It is engineered with low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding and an ECC algorithm to ensure the accuracy of transmission and reliability of data access. Featuring E2E data protection and support for TRIM commands, the US70 efficiently manages reusable space and significantly reduces hard drive wear out. And if all that's not enough, our proprietary S.M.A.R.T. software enables operational monitoring of the SSD at any time. Wear leveling Wear leveling equalizes the wear of each NAND flash block, avoiding damage or data loss caused by excess use. Over-Provision (OP) The built-in over-provision (OP) increases the SSD's reserved space and reduces NAND flash wear to ensure reliability and stability as well as achieve an optimal lifespan. Bad Block management (BBM) A bad block management mechanism detects and marks bad blocks to avoid storage in those blocks and eliminate access errors. And, even if errors do occur in new blocks during an erase, this mechanism can move the data to other effective blocks to prevent data loss resulting from the failed erase. A Powerful System Upgrade With Room For More With an M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor, the US70's compact size allows for easy installation in laptops, small form factor PC systems, and some ultrabooks. Coupled with its massive storage capacity options, blazing speed, and numerous advanced technologies, it makes for an easy upgrade that will significantly improve your system's performance and storage potential, while also saving space for other components. Features PCIe Gen 4x4 interface with read speeds up to 5,000MB/s and write speeds up to 4,400MB/s NVMe 1.3 support allows for higher performance, lower latency, and lower power consumption Features wear leveling to equalize the wear of each NAND flash block, ensuring longer reliability and stability of the SSD Built-in bad block management (BBM) mechanism detects and marks bad blocks in the NAND flash to avoid storage in those blocks and eliminate access errors Includes over-provision (OP), which increases the SSD's reserved space to improve performance and durability as well as to reduce NAND flash wear, therefore extending the lifespan of hard drives Supports SLC Caching and DRAM Cache Buffer to improve sequential read/write and random read/write performance Built-in E2E data protection for enhanced data transfer integrity Engineered with low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding to ensure accuracy of data transmission and reliability of data access Supports TRIM commands, enabling the SSD to efficiently manage reusable space as well as significantly reduce hard drive wear out Features our proprietary S.M.A.R.T. software for operational monitoring at any time Small form factor M.2 2280 (80mm) allows for easy installation in laptops, small form factor PC systems, and some Ultrabooks Specs Capacity 1TB, 2TB Dimensions 0mm x 80.0mm x 3.5mm Weight 8g Interface PCIe Gen 4x4 Performance Read(max.) up to 5000 MB/s* Performance Write(max.) up to 4400 MB/s* MTBF (est) 1.7M hours Operating Temperature 0°C - 70°C Shock Resistance Test 1500G/0.5ms Warranty 5 years A Closer Look Silicon Power’s US70 comes in a small black box similar to some of their other models. Basic specs can be found on the back in several languages. Gold accents differentiate this PCIe gen 4 drive from the UD70 PCIe Gen 3 drive we tested recently. The US70 is a standard 2280 sized M.2 M-Key drive. It comes with a blue PCB with a sticker covering most of the front. On the back, there are two DRAM modules as well as a NAND flash module. The DRAM cache is comprised of a pair of SKHynix 512MB DDR4-2400 C17 memory modules. On the front, two 3D NAND flash modules make up half of the 1TB of capacity. We weren’t able to find a spec sheet for these specific modules. Closer to the connector we find a Phison E16 controller which was the world’s first consumer PCIe 4.0 SSD Controller and supports up to 8 channels of TLC or QLC storage. Half of the DRAM Cache sits right next to the Phison controller. Configuration and Software CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X Motherboard: MSI MEG X570 Godlike Gaming RAM: 32GB HyperX Fury RGB 3200Mhz GPU: Nvidia RTX 2080 FE Drive: Silicon Power US70 1TB OS: Windows 10 Professional (2004) Silicon Power SP Toolbox SP Toolbox was developed for use with SP SSDs and Industrial Flash products and provides multiple ways for users to obtain disk information, and to change settings easily. Additionally, it is an advanced and user-friendly software that makes it easier than ever to maintain a healthy and efficient device. The useful features include: View Drive Information, View S.M.A.R.T. Status, Wear Out Count, Block Information, Diagnostic Scan, Performance Test, and Secure Erase. Toolbox has a few less things for this drive than some of its NVMe drives, but you still get the basics. The first button gives you this page where you can see all the important information at a glance. You shouldn’t need to spend much time on the health tab early on, but you can keep an eye on drive health here. Since some space is reserved for wear leveling and you can keep tabs on that here. On the last tab, you can do a quick or a full scan of the drive to detect errors or bad sectors. Testing Initialized as GPT and formatted as NTFS in windows, we get a useable space of 931GB. CrystalDiskInfo CrystalDiskInfo shows our drive connecting to the system at its full PCIe 4.0 x4 bandwidth using NVMe 1.3. Sequential Testing – Variable Queue Depth We see pretty solid performance at low queue depth which is where most consumers are going to be using most of the time. Performance levels off from QD4 and up. Random Testing – Variable Queue Depth The 8-channel controller and DRAM cache lend themselves to very high random write performance as small chunks of data can be aggregated and written efficiently but reads and mixed don’t climb quite as quickly with queue depth. CrystalDiskMark 7.0 “CrystalDiskMark is designed to quickly test the performance of your hard drives. Currently, the program allows measuring sequential and random read/write speeds." We test using the “Real World” preset in CDM which uses a single thread and lower queue depth, so the results look worse than the advertised 5000/4400MB/s speeds. This is to be expected, but shows you how the drive will perform outside of synthetic testing: quite well! ATTO Disk Benchmark ATTO shows the US70 ramp up to full speed about the 256KB block size. We see read speeds clear 5.2GB/s and right around the 4GB/s mark on writes, quite impressive. Anvil's Storage Utilities Anvil gives us a score of almost 20,000 points. Max read and write speeds in this test land just about the 4GB/s mark in both directions. latencies look decent, and we hit a pretty impressive 453k IOPS on writes. This blows every PCIe 3.0 drive we’ve tested right out of the water. Final Thoughts and Conclusion We’ve had the opportunity to check out several of Silicon Power’s drives, and they always deliver exactly what is advertised. While synthetic benchmarks rely on high-queue depth testing to show advertised numbers, this doesn’t really represent real-world usage. The US70 drive is able to deliver real-world speeds with this gen 4 drive similar to and above what most gen 3 drives advertised in unrealistic scenarios. If you have a system capable of PCIe 4.0 such as AMD’s Ryzen on 500 series boards, or eventually, Intel’s next-gen platform, you’ll be able to take advantage of very fast storage. If you don’t have a PCIe 4.0 system just yet, don’t worry, you can still use the US70 on a PCIe 3.0 platform to great effect, and you know your storage will be ready to crank it to 11 when you upgrade. We also wanted to mention that you don’t need to worry about temperatures too much. If your motherboard has a heatsink, great! If not, don’t worry. Even though this is a high-performance drive, we weren’t able to get it warm enough in testing to throttle. We were seeing drive temps land in the mid 50C range under heavy load with a peak of 58C. While our flagship board used for testing includes heatsinks for every M.2 slot, we tested without them to show worst-case scenario. Performance-wise, there isn’t much more to desire. The SLC caching and DRAM cache buffer give consistent performance, even in very high demand scenarios. You get peace of mind from low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding and E2E data protection backed up with a 5-year warranty. This makes the US70 a great choice for enthusiasts, gamers, content creators, or anyone that wants a great drive with plenty of performance on tap. Great job Silicon Power!

A Closer Look

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