INTRODUCTION

   Picking the right "tools" for the job requires knowing exactly what you'll use them with and what for. The same applies with pretty much everything in the computer industry so picking the right parts always has to do with what your needs are and of course how well they can all work together. Take the new PCIe 4.0 motherboards for example, some of them come with support for Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe drives while others do not so it goes to reason that you should pair the former with Gen 4x4 M.2 NVMe SSDs. Now there aren't that many 4.0 models in the market today but after reviewing the very good US70 1TB model by Silicon Power some of you asked if i could also test the 2TB capacity one to see how it performs and that's exactly what I’ve been doing for the past 2 weeks.

   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 its own state-of-the-art production site in Taipei, SP has become a leading manufacturer of flash memory cards, USB flash drives, portable hard drives, solid state drives, DRAM modules and industrial-grade products. Successfully blending innovative technology with award-winning design, the international player with four branch offices around the globe continuously strives for perfection in preserving and protecting your valuable data. Because memory is personal.

   Just like with the 1TB capacity model the 2TB variant of the US70 M.2 Gen 4x4 NVMe SSD is also based on Phison's PS5016-E16-32 NAND flash controller which Silicon Power has paired with BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash by Sandisk and two SKhynix 1GB DDR4 SDRAM modules. Once again, the PS5016-E16-32 is a dual-core (32-bit ARM Cortex R5 CPUs with CoXProcessor technology), 8-channel NVMe v1.3 NAND flash controller that features Phison's 4th Gen LDPC engine (low-density parity check) along with end-to-end data path protection, wear levelling, TRIM, bad block management, dynamic range SLC cache and SmartECC (RAID ECC) and fully supports AES-256bit hardware encryption and TCG Opal 2.0. Silicon Power covers the entire US70 line with a 5-year limited warranty and as for endurance they report 1.7 million hours together with a TBW (terabytes written) of 3600.

SPECIFICATIONS AND FEATURES

THE US70 2TB

The box is the same yellow and black used with the US70 1TB model so nothing new to see here.

The NVMe v1.3 standard is printed at the rear in 12 languages right over contact information for Silicon Power.

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

Under the top/front sticker we find the PS5016-E16-32 Gen 4 NAND flash controller along with a single 1GB DDR4 SDRAM module by SKhynix and two 512GB 3D TLC NAND modules by Sandisk.

One more 1GB DDR4 SDRAM module by SKhynix is located on the opposite side of the PCB along with two more 3D TLC NAND modules by Sandisk (512GB in capacity each).

TEST BED

TESTING METHODOLOGY

   After over 12 years of testing solid state drives, i’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 complete with every update 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.
** Unless stated otherwise the Ryzen 9 3950x based Test Rig used for M.2 Gen 4 SSD reviews is not located in the lab.

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

   Having reviewed the 1TB variant of the US70 line I more or less knew what to expect from the 2TB capacity model and as you can all tell from the charts they exchange blows with the latter coming on top in a slightly larger number of tests. Now of course 2TB is twice the capacity and with most (if not all) motherboards effectively denying consumers the ability to add more M.2 NVMe drives without sacrificing PCIe slots this also matters. That aside nothing more to say really, the US70 is clearly among the fastest M.2 NVMe Gen 4x4 solid state drives in the market, all that’s left really is for Silicon Power to release higher capacity models.

   So how much does the 2TB capacity model of the US70 line cost currently? Well 3 days into 2021 you can currently find the US70 2TB for USD319.99 inside the USA (Amazon.com) and for around 330Euros inside the EU, a price tag which is roughly 30% over that of the UD70 2TB model. This means that unless you have or intend on getting one of the latest PCIe 4.0 motherboards soon (do take into account that not all PCIe 4.0 motherboards support Gen 4x4 SSDs) it makes far more sense to go for the UD70 2TB instead. With that out of the way however there’s no denying that the US70 2TB is among the fastest SSDs in the market today and for that it clearly deserves the Platinum Award.

PROS

- Top of The Charts Performance (5000MB/s Read & 4400MB/s Write)
- Endurance (3600TBW / 1.7 Million Hours MTBF)
- 5 Years Warranty
- Silicon Power Software

CONS

- Thermal Throttling (During Our SNIA Tests)