INTRODUCTION

    M.2 NVMe SSD models may not enjoy the same compatibility levels as 2.5" SATA models but due to their impressive read and write numbers they are without doubt leading the market in terms of performance. On top of that add the fact that SSD prices haven’t really stopped dropping for a while now and it's very easy to understand why these drives enjoy such high popularity levels among enthusiasts, gamers and professionals alike. Of course, just like everything else in the market (or even the world) not everything is created equal and so there are many classes of M.2 NVMe models in the market ranging from entry-level ones that feature read and write speeds of up to 1000MB/s, mid-end ones that go up to 1500-2000MB/s and high-end models that climb all the way up to 3000-3500MB/s (always talking about advertised numbers). Silicon Power may have a rather long history with SSDs but they just recently entered the M.2 NVMe market and so today we'll be testing their flagship model the P34A80.

    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 P34A80 M.2 NVMe SSD (currently available in 256GB/512GB/1TB/2TB capacities) is part of Silicon Power's new XPOWER Gaming line and is based on the E12 high performance controller by Phison (PS5012-E12 / Gen3x4 NVMe 1.3 interface) complete with Toshiba 64-layer BiCS3 3D TLC NAND flash and 1GB DDR4 SDRAM by SKhynix allowing the drive to hit numbers of 3200MB/s read and 3000MB/s write. The Phison PS5012-E12 controller used here is updated to version ECFM12.1 (the one used in the CORSAIR MP510 we reviewed a while back was ECFM11.0) and features a total of eight NAND channels with 32 CE targets, supports up to 8TB of NAND and packs several interesting technologies aimed at both high performance and reliability including as StrongECC, SmartRefresh, SmartFlush, end-to-end data protection, thermal monitoring, AES-256 encryption and TCG Pyrite/OPAL support. Another difference between the P34A80 we have here and the CORSAIR MP510 is the amount of overprovisioning so whereas the P34A80 has a total usable capacity of 1024GB the MP510 has 960GB and that basically means that it should perform better in some scenarios. Unfortunately, Silicon Power doesn't disclose MTBF (meantime between failure) numbers for their P34A80 line (should however be very close if not identical to the numbers of the MP510 models) but they do cover it with a 5-year limited warranty.