Silicon Power UD70 PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD review - Introduction

Silicon Power UD70 - 2 TB
NVMe 3.0 Gen3 PCIe M.2 SSD

Powered by a Phison 5012-E12S controller and paired with QLC NAND, Silicon power offers a product that shapes up in nice volume size, 2TB UD70 series NVMe M2 SSDs. The series is not targeted at an enthusiast audience but rather is released as a mainstream high capacity NVMe SSD series with very satisfactory performance. It's the year 2021, we're testing 2TB and recently already 4 TB NVMe NAND storage units; that's just an amazing fact all by itself; we're getting there!. SSD storage is closing in on HDD volume sizes, a dream of many. Today we turn to Silicon power who offers their UD70 NVMe SSD (m.2) in a 2TB capacity for 16 cents per GB, and this is just over 325 EUD/EUR. The unit is a QLC NAND written SSD. And before your face will turn all green on me, trust me when I state this; it will impress you in performance. It's as fast in any segment as a premium PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe SSD, and due to strong buffers and full utilization of NAND channels, we did not hit a TLC/QLC write buffer issue either. Likely thanks to a massive 2 GB DRAM buffer and a pSLC cache.

QLC NAND technology was designed to store big amounts of data more cheaply; per design, this flash type stores four bits in a single NAND cell. Thanks to all the buffers, this SSD remains a swift one, with transfer speeds of up to 3,400MB/sec sequential read and 3,000MB/sec sequential writes. The UD70 is available now in 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB. Conveniently slotting directly into a motherboard thanks to its M.2 2280 industry-standard NVMe form-factor, the SSD boasts wide-ranging compatibility and high-bandwidth performance, while its high-density 3D QLC NAND memory ensures better value than the previous generation TLC NAND, able to store more data in the same amount of physical space. What about endurance, you wonder, well ... at 2TB, you have many NAND cells. And as such, this storage unit offers an endurance of up to 120, 240, and 530TB Written for 500GB, 1TB, and 2TB models.  But let's head on over to the next page and talk a little more about all this.