Temperature:
While faster than their SATA-based SSDs, PCIe drives like the US75 tend to generate more heat. In fact, if your computer doesn't have enough airflow or a large video card covering your M.2 slots, they can get quite hot. To prevent themselves from overheating, most SSDs have implemented a mechanism called thermal throttling which automatically reduces a drive's performance when it reaches a certain temperature.
While not the hottest SSD we've looked at, the US75 can get get a bit toasty. At idle, temperatures hovered around 37 ºC. When pushed hard, the drive reached temperatures as high as 81 ºC when reading and writing. When the US75 reached this temperature, thermal throttling would kick in and limit its performance.
Final Thoughts:
The Silicon Power US75 is a great choice for the gamer or content-creator looking for a fast, yet affordable, PCIe Gen 4 SSD for their laptop computer or PlayStation 5 gaming console. This compact, M.2 form factor drive is powered by Maxio Technology's MAP1602 controller and is available with up to 4TB of YMTC's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash. Combine this with NVMe's Host Memory Buffer (HMB) technology and a PCIe Gen 4x4 interface and you have a drive capable of transferring data at nearly twice the speed of most Gen3 NVMe SSDs. In our sequential read and write tests, the 1TB version of the US75 was able to read at speeds as high as 7,402 MB/s and write at speeds in excess of 6,274 MB/s. The drive also did very well in our random write tests, producing more than 251,000 IOPS at low queue depths.
The US75 is available now in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities. Prices range from $58 up to $246, with the 1TB version reviewed here retailing for about $80.
Highs:
- Available in 500GB, 1TB, 2TB and 4TB capacities
- PCIe 4.0 x4 interface with NVMe protocol
- Maxio MAP1602 controller
- YMTC 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash
- Very good sequential and random read and write performance
- Small M.2 2280 form factor
- Affordably priced
- Host Memory Buffer (HMB)
- 5 year warranty
Lows:
- Can get hot under heavy workloads
- Does not support hardware based encryption
