INTRODUCTION

   With the very first PCIe 5.0 Gen 5 SSD compatible motherboards by both AMD (X670E) and Intel (Z790) making their debut as i type these lines it's a safe bet that Gen 5 M.2 NVMe SSD models will soon start popping up in numbers. Still for now PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 models are obviously the fastest popular storage media around and with data transfer speeds surpassing 7000MB/s for quite a few models they are actually more than what the majority of the market could ever hope for. Last week i had the opportunity to test the 2TB capacity model of the Gold P31 line of PCIe 3.0 Gen 3 M.2 NVMe SSDs by SK hynix and as promised today I’ll be testing their Platinum P41 2TB PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 M.2 NVMe model.

   SK hynix Inc., headquartered in Korea, is the world’s top tier semiconductor supplier offering Dynamic Random Access Memory chips (“DRAM”), flash memory chips (“NAND flash”) and CMOS Image Sensors (“CIS”) for a wide range of distinguished customers globally. The Company’s shares are traded on the Korea Exchange, and the Global Depository shares are listed on the Luxemburg Stock Exchange. Further information about SK hynix is available at www.skhynix.com, news.skhynix.com.

   The Platinum P41 is currently available in 500GB/1TB/2TB capacities and is based on SK hynix's very own ACNS075 PHC631.00S-1 PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 (NVMe v1.4) NAND flash controller (codename ARIES) which they’ve paired with 2GB of their very own LPDDR4 DRAM (4266MHz) and their very own 176-layer 3D TLC NAND flash (so basically this is an 100% in-house model like the ones manufactured by Samsung). This configuration allows the Platinum P41 2TB variant to achieve sequential read and write speeds of 7000MB/s and 65000MB/s respectively. The ACNS075 PHC631.00S-1 PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 NAND flash controller is an 8-channel model that fully supports technologies like error correction, TRIM, SMART, device sleep (power management), garbage collection and AES-256bit encryption (TCG pyrite is supported). As for endurance SK hynix reports an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1.5 million hours for the entire line and an TBW of 500, 750 and 1200 for the 500GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities respectively. Last but not least SK hynix covers their entire Platinum P41 line of PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 SSDs with a 5-year limited warranty.