SK hynix Gold S31 1TB Solid State Drive

Model: SK hynix Gold S31 1TB Solid State Drive
Manufacturer: SK hynix
Provided By: SK hynix

As one of the biggest names in the semiconductor market, SK hynix doesn't need much of an introduction. Founded in 1983 as Hyundai Electronic Industrial Co., Ltd., the company quickly made its mark by producing Korea’s first 16Kb SRAM. Since then, SK hynix has continued to lead the industry with smaller, faster and lower power semiconductors. Today, they are the world's second-largest memory chipmaker as well as the third-largest semiconductor company. Their memory, NAND flash and CMOS image sensors are found in products from some of the biggest names in the computer industry including Apple, ASUS, Dell and HP.

With its background in NAND flash, it should come as no surprise that SK hynix is a major player in the SSD industry. Until recently though, they've stayed behind the scenes, supplying consumer and enterprise drives to PC OEMs. However, with the launch of its new Gold S31 SSD, the company is looking to get a piece of the retail market. Aimed at gamers, designers and content creators, the Gold S31 is the first of SK hynix's new SuperCore series of consumer SSDs. Designed and built completely in-house, the drive is powered by the company's own "Quartz" controller and is available with up to 1TB of their 72-layer 3D TLC NAND flash.

The Gold S31 is available in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities. For this review, SK hynix sent us the 1TB version of the drive which is capable of delivering up to 560 MB/s sequential read and 525 MB/s sequential write speeds as well as up to 95,000 random read and 87,000 random write IOPS.

Needless to say, this is only a taste of what the Gold S31 has to offer. To give you an idea of what to expect, we'll take a closer look at SK hynix's new SSD and then see how well it performs. Does the Gold S31 have what it takes? More importantly, is it the best bang for your buck? Keep reading as we find out.