INTRODUCTION

   Thanks to the significant performance gains between PCIe 3.0 Gen3 and PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs using DRAM-less NAND controllers makes a lot more sense today than it did even just a couple of years ago and that's obviously why we're starting to see an increase in such models lately. Both the ATOM 50 line by XPG and the FX900 line by HP performed well in my tests and yes even though they clearly can't directly compete with their DRAM outfitted brothers they should be more than sufficient for a vast number of consumers. Well, Silicon Power is one of the latest storage media manufacturers to also release a DRAM-less PCIe 4.0 Gen4 line of M.2 NVMe SSDs and today with me i have 2 out of the 3 available models in it (currently) the UD90 500GB and 1TB.

   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 UD90 line of PCIe 4.0 Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs by Silicon Power is currently available in 256GB/512GB/1TB capacities and is based on the rather new 4-channel (ARM Cortex-R5 single processor) PS5021-E21 NVMe v1.4 DRAM-less NAND flash controller by PHISON paired with Micron's 176-layer 3D QLC NAND flash (N48R). The PS5021-E21 NAND flash controller by PHISON features their 4th Gen LDPC engine (low-density parity check) along with end-to-end data path protection, Host Memory Buffer (HMB) architecture support (basically takes up a fraction of your PC's system memory to cache mapping tables - only supported on versions of Windows 10/11 launched from 2019 and beyond), wear levelling, low power mode, thermal throttling (70 degrees Celsius limit), TRIM, bad block management, static/dynamic range SLC cache and SmartECC 2.0 (RAID ECC) and fully supports AES-256bit hardware encryption along with TCG Opal 2.0 and Pyrite. Silicon Power covers the entire UD90 line of M.2 NVMe Gen4 SSDs with a 5-year limited warranty and in regards to durability they report an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1.5 million hours and a TBW of 200 for the 256GB model, 300 for the 512GB model and 600 for the 1TB model.