INTRODUCTION

   Even though according to several industry reports NAND flash price are set to rise later in 2020 at least at the time i type these lines SSD's have never been cheaper and that includes both SATA and PCIe models. Yes, it will be long before SSDs can finally catch up to regular HDDs when it comes to capacity (and more importantly reach their price/capacity ratio) but with performance numbers surpassing even 4000MB/s (for PCIe 4.0 models) most consumers place capacity second. Of course, as expected the mid-end M.2 NVMe drives are driving the market in terms of sales and so most manufacturers have been keeping their focus in the development and production of such models one of which is the latest P34A60 by Silicon Power which is here with us today.

   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.

   The P34A60 line of M.2 2280 PCIe SSDs by Silicon Power is currently available in 256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB capacities and is based on the DRAM-less SM2263XT 4-channel high-performance PCIe Gen3 x4 NAND flash controller which they've paired with 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory by Micron. Just like the Helix-L model by Mushkin the P34A60 also supports the Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture which makes up for the lack of DRAM by using the memory of your PC to cache mapping tables (remember that this feature is only supported on versions of Windows 10 launched from 2019 and beyond). In the case of the P34A60 this enables the SM2263XT controller to achieve performance numbers of up to 2200MB/s in reads and 1600MB/s in writes thus rivalling controllers with their very own DRAM modules. Of course, the SM2263XT controller also supports various technologies like Silicon Motion's NANDXtend error-correcting code (ECC) with SRAM ECC, end to end data path protection, global wear-levelling, real time AES 256-bit encryption, SHA 256, TRNG, TCG Opal and IEEE-1667 (Microsoft's eDrive). Finally, Silicon Power reports a general MTBF of 2.000.000 hours for the entire P34A60 line and covers it with a 5 year warranty.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE P34A60 512GB

The P34A60 arrived inside a small black and blue box that has a small clear plastic window at the front from where you can see the drive.

Contact information for Silicon Power is printed at the rear of the box right next to several certification logos.

The drive follows the typical 2280 form factor (22mm in width and 80mm in length).

A long sticker at the top of the drive includes information such as the drive capacity, model name, part number and barcode.

Four 64-Layer 3D TLC NAND Flash memory modules by Micron are placed at the top of the drive (128GB each).

The SM2263XT controller is located on the other end (the other side of the PCB is "populated" in the higher capacity models).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After over 10 years of testing solid state drives, we’ve concluded that it's almost impossible for any single benchmark suite to accurately measure their performance and that's why in certain benchmark suites we see amazing read/write performance numbers with some drives while in others things are quite different. The reason behind this is that some benchmarking suites are configured to read and write random chunks of data while others read and write constant (sequential) ones. So that's why i always use a very wide selection of benchmarking suites including AIDA64, HD Tach RW, HD Tune Pro, Crystal Disk Mark, Sisoftware Sandra Pro, AS SSD, IOmeter and ATTO. To get the most accurate results each test gets repeated a total of 6 times with the average performance numbers recorded into our charts*. Also, as of February 25th 2015 our results will also include the Storage Networking Industry Association’s (SNIA) IOMeter tests. These tests include a 12 Hour write test used to “simulate” performance degradation over time and a mixed workload test which basically shows what you can expect when using an SSD continuously for roughly two hours. Unfortunately, due to the time required for these tests we repeat them a total of 3 times and not 6 as the above.

   Many people have made inquiries about our charts in the past so once again please do keep in mind that the Charts have the average performance numbers of each drive recorded and not the peak (highest) ones. Also, although every single one of these programs can help potential buyers choose the right drive for their needs you should also remember that from any kind of benchmark up to real world usage the gap is not small (and usually most differences will go unnoticed by most people). All tests were performed in a fresh Windows 10 Pro x64 installation with every update installed up to the date of this review.

* Since November 2018 our SSD comparison charts have been divided to 2.5” and M.2 models to reduce their growing size.

TEST RESULTS - AIDA64 / ATTO

TEST RESULTS - HD TACH RW / HD TUNE PRO

TEST RESULTS - SISOFTWARE SANDRA PRO / CRYSTAL DISK MARK

TEST RESULTS - AS SSD / IOMETER

TEST RESULTS - IOMETER SNIA

CONCLUSION

   Even though DRAM-less M.2 NVMe models belong in the low/mid-end segment of the market the Silicon Power P34A60 512GB was a good surprise not only because it managed to surpass the very similar Helix-L 1TB model by Mushkin but because of its overall price/performance ratio. On top of that add the very good MTBF (2 million hours), the available capacities (256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB) and its 5-year limited warranty and things can’t get much better than this (we would like to see less thermal throttling during our SNIA tests but that can’t be helped when there’s no heatsink and even then things may not improve by much).

   We did mention price/performance so just how much will the P34A60 512GB set you back? Well currently the P34A60 512GB variant (SP512GBP34A60M28) retails for just USD62.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for around 73Euros inside the EU a price tag which is indeed very competitive. Performance, price, endurance and a 5 year warranty are the reasons as to the why we give the P34A60 512GB M.2 NVMe SSD by Silicon Power our Golden Award.

PROS

- Very Good Overall Performance
- Endurance Numbers (2.000.000 MTBF)
- 5 Years Limited Warranty
- Available Capacities (256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB)
- Price (For Some)

CONS

- Thermal Throttling (Evident In Our SNIA Tests)