Temperature:
While PCIe SSDs like the US70 offer impressive performance, they also generate a good amount of heat. At idle, the drive's temperature hovered around 30 ºC. When pushed hard, the drive reached temperatures as high as 54 ºC when reading and 55 ºC when writing.
These temperatures had no impact on the US70's performance. No matter how hard I pushed it, the drive did not throttle its read or write speeds in any noticeable way.
Final Thoughts:
The Silicon Power US70 is an excellent choice for the gamer, overclocker or creative professional looking for a fast, yet affordable, PCIe 4.0 SSD for their desktop computer. This compact, M.2 form factor drive is powered by Phison's PS5016-E16 controller and is available with up to 2TB of 3D TLC NAND flash. Combine this with an SLC cache, DRAM cache buffer and a PCIe Gen4 x4 NVMe 1.3 interface and you have a drive capable of reading and writing at speeds well beyond that of the fastest PCIe 3.0 SSDs. In our sequential read and write tests, the 1TB version of the US70 was able to read at speeds as high as 5,009 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 4,275 MB/s. The drive also did reasonably well in our random write tests. While it lagged behind some of the drives at low queue depths, it handled heavier workloads like a champ, topping out at a little more than 439,000 IOPS.
Of course, fast read and write speeds aren't the only things the US70 has to offer. Along with support for SLC caching, the US70 features low density parity check (LDPC) coding and E2E data protection for enhanced data integrity and reliability. The drive also utilizes wear leveling to equalize the wear of each NAND flash block as well as a built-in bad block management (BBM) mechanism that detects and marks bad blocks to eliminate access errors. Last, but not least, the US70 is covered by a five year warranty.
The US70 is available now in 1TB and 2TB capacities and can be purchased directly from Silicon Power or through retailers like Amazon for $175 and $350, respectively.
Highs:
- Available in 1TB and 2TB capacities
- PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
- Phison PS5016-E16 controller
- Equipped with 3D TLC NAND flash
- Excellent sequential read and write speeds
- Good random read performance
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- Built-in bad block management (BBM) mechanism
- LDPC coding and E2E data protection
- SLC caching and DRAM cache buffer
- Reasonably priced
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Mediocre random write performance at low queue depths
- Does not support hardware based encryption
