The test system used in this review is equipped with an Intel Core i7-6700K CPU, GIGABYTE GA-Z170X-UD3 motherboard, 32GB (16GB x 2) of Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4 memory, Samsung 960 PRO 512GB SSD and a GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 1060 WINDFORCE OC 6G graphics card. For the operating system, I installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 Enterprise.
To test the performance of Silicon Power's PC60 SSD, I ran a series of benchmarks using CrystalDiskMark, HD Tach RW, ATTO Disk Benchmark, AS SSD, HD Tune Pro, Anvil's Storage Utilities, Iometer and PCMark 8. For comparison, I've also included test results from the SK hynix Gold S31, ADATA Ultimate SU750, Samsung 860 QVO, Samsung 860 PRO, Crucial MX500, Plextor M8V, Crucial BX300, ADATA Ultimate SU900, Plextor S3C, Toshiba OCZ VX500, ADATA Ultimate SU800, Plextor S2C, Crucial MX300, Plextor M7V, PNY CS1311, OCZ Trion 150, PNY CS2211, Plextor M6V, Crucial BX200, OCZ Trion 100, Kingston HyperX Savage, Crucial MX200, OCZ Vector 180, Kingston BX100, Samsung 850 EVO M.2, Samsung 850 EVO mSATA, AMD Radeon R7, Silicon Power Slim S80, Samsung SSD 850 EVO, OCZ ARC 100, SanDisk Ultra II, Crucial MX100, SanDisk Extreme Pro and Samsung SSD 850 PRO.
As I mentioned earlier, the PC60 is based on Silicon Motion's SM2259XT controller chip. Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that it performs equally well with both incompressible (0%) and compressible (100%) data.
CrystalDiskMark 5.1.2:
First, I ran a few quick tests using CrystalDiskMark. This benchmark tool measures the performance of a storage device by testing its sequential read and write speeds as well as its random read and write speeds using blocks 512K and 4K in size.
 Silicon Power PC60 960GB |
 Samsung T5 500GB |
According to Silicon Power, the PC60 is capable of reading at 540 MB/s and writing at 500 MB/s when connected to a USB 3.1 Gen 2 port. While the drive performed relatively well, it came up a bit short of these numbers in CrystalDiskMark's sequential read and write speed tests.
 Silicon Power PC60 960GB - USB 3.0 |
The PC60 can also be plugged into a USB 3.1 Gen 1 (USB 3.0) port. However, with half the bandwidth, its sequential read and write speeds aren't quite as fast.
HD Tach RW 3.0.4.0:
Next, I used HD Tach to test the PC60's read, write and burst speeds as well as its seek times and CPU usage.
Looking at the screenshot above, you can see that the PC60 had average read and write speeds of 311.7 MB/s and 96.6 MB/s respectively, as well as a burst speed of 234.3 MB/s. The screenshot also shows that it uses some sort of SLC caching. The drive starts writing at about 300 MB/s and then drops to about 75 MB/s when the write operation exceeds the size of the cache.
ATTO Disk Benchmark 2.46:
I also used ATTO Disk Benchmark to test the PC60's sequential read and write speeds. The tests are run using blocks ranging in size from 0.5KB to 8192KB and the total length set to 256MB.
 Silicon Power PC60 960GB |
 Samsung T5 500GB |
When tested with ATTO, the PC60's read speeds topped out at about 506 MB/s and its write speeds at 492 MB/s.
