INTRODUCTION
Thermal issues still being a thing with most Gen5 M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs currently in the market combined with the limited number of motherboards that actually fully support such drives means that Gen4 PCIe 4.0 models are still leading in both popularity and sales (and i don't imagine that changing anytime soon). Still even though there are many top-end Gen4 SSDs that offer speeds exceeding 7000MB/s countless consumers are looking for models that offer the best bang for their buck. A while back i had the opportunity to test Solidigm's flagship consumer drive the P44 Pro but since some of you asked today, I’ll be testing their P41 Plus 2TB model.
Solidigm is a leading global provider of innovative NAND flash memory solutions. Solidigm technology unlocks data’s unlimited potential for customers, enabling them to fuel human advancement. Originating from the sale of Intel’s NAND and SSD business, Solidigm became a standalone U.S. subsidiary of semiconductor leader SK hynix in December 2021. Headquartered in Rancho Cordova, California, Solidigm is powered by the inventiveness of more than 2,000 employees in 20 locations around the world. For more information, please visit solidigm.com and follow us on Twitter and on LinkedIn. “Solidigm” is a trademark of SK hynix NAND Product Solutions Corp. (d/b/a Solidigm).
The P41 Plus is currently available in 512GB/1TB/2TB capacities and unlike its high-end brother (the P44 Pro) it's based the quad-channel DRAM-less SM2269XTF PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 (NVMe v1.4) NAND flash controller by Silicon Motion which this time Solidigm has paired with 144-layer 3D QLC NAND flash. The Silicon Motion SM2269XTF DRAM-less controller may not be their fastest one to date but is still quite packed with technologies like 4K LDPC error-correction (ECC), RAID, TRIM, SMART, device sleep (power management), garbage collection and real-time AES-128/256bit encryption (TCG Opal 2.0 compliant). Moving to endurance Solidigm reports an MTBF (meantime between failures) of 1.6 million hours for the entire line and an TBW of 200, 400 and 800 for the 512GB, 1TB and 2TB capacities respectively. Finally in terms of warranty Solidigm once again covers their entire P41 Plus line of PCIe 4.0 Gen 4 SSDs with a 5-year limited one.