All of this leaves the minor matter of how this drive actually performs. When it comes to peak sequential throughput, the Platinum P41 is basically as fast as anything else out there, bar a few rounding errors. OK, the Samsung 990 Pro is a bit faster at 7,462MB/s for reads to the P41's 7,375MB/s. But, honestly, it's inconsequential. The same goes for writes, where almost all the top drives will do just under 6.9GB/s. Reduced operating temps are another clear benefit of this new drive. The old SN850 hit a toasty 77°C. The new drive hits just 58°C under sustained load. That's a very worthwhile improvement. Elsewhere, the gains are less obvious, albeit the SN850 was already a great drive. The 4K random access results are a little disappointing, showing little to no improvement. Likewise, don't expect big gains in system-wide measures of performance like PCMark 10. The XS70 is priced well for a high-performance 2TB SSD, but there's fierce competition from other third-party SSD makers in this price range.The Silicon Power XS70 2TB SSD is a 2280 (80mm length) M.2 PCIe NVMe drive. It combines Micron 176-Layer TLC NAND with a Phison PS5018-E18 controller and 2GB of DDR4 RAM. That combination is common to many of the best SSDs, including the highly regarded Seagate FireCuda 530 and Kingston KC3000. It's worth noting that this drive can get hot when pushed, just like the SN850. It hit 76°C after a long day of testing, but without direct cooling on it, not even a heatsink. It should be fine in most systems, especially if your motherboard does come with some cooling solution.

In other words, while the speed freak in me loves what NVMe brings to the table, I recognize that in practice, it's usually not that noticeable. If you're looking to get the most from your money when it comes time to build a gaming PC, good SATA SSDs remain an excellent option, with prices now falling below 10 cents per GB. Silicon Power is a brand that probably doesn’t get much attention compared to the likes of Samsung or WD, but when you look at its XS70 NVMe SSD with its high-end specifications, it's clear that the brand name isn't everything. Armed with the latest Phison controller and high-performance NAND flash memory, a drive like the Silicon Power XS70 should have no problem competing with thebest SSD on the market. The point is, there's not much this Lexar drive can't do, and for a good price. If you have a spare Gen4 slot in your machine, and you are desperate for more game storage space, I highly recommend you look to the Lexar NM790 to fill that slot. We put every SSD we get in the PC Gamer labs through their paces in various benchmarks made up of a mix of synthetic tests and real-world applications. To ascertain a drives sequential throughput, we use ATTO SSD Benchmark for compressible data (a best-case scenario) and AS SSD for incompressible data (more realistic). We also test random throughput with AS SSD and a combination of CrystalDiskMark 7.0 and Anvil Pro. Well, it's got it all if the context is PCIe 4.0 drives. There is a new generation of PCIe 5.0 drives but they're a bit over the top for most gamers right now. PCIe Gen 4 is not only where it's at, it's probably also the limit of your PC or laptop's capabilities.

EXCERIA PRO SSD / EXCERIA G2 SSD: Sequential speeds are measured with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.1 x64, Q=32, T=1. The SN770 skips on the DRAM to make a much cheaper proposition for gamers. It's a great drive and importantly comes very cheap for high capacities. For most PC applications, that probably doesn't matter. But for small form factor rigs and perhaps a gaming laptop, every little can undoubtedly help. On that note, for most applications, we'd probably go for the cheaper bare drive rather than this more expensive model with its heat spreader. The revised SN850X is inherently a cooler-running thing, after all. Give it up for the new SK Hynix Platinum P41 2TB. If that doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, it also doesn't help that SK Hynix isn't the most familiar brand regarding the sort of consumer-focused clobber that's aimed at gamers, including SSDs.

Right now, PCIe 4.0 is the go-to PCIe generation. That's because it offers a high speed at a reasonable cost. The newest SSDs on the market offer PCIe 5.0 capability, which doubles the theoretical bandwidth an SSD can run at. However, these are few and far between and awfully expensive. Also the first drives of any PCIe generation tend to end up much slower than what that generation is truly capable of.It improves game loading times courtesy of a so-called "read look-ahead" algorithm, which predictively caches game data. The synthetic performance shows the SN770 trails more expensive drives in terms of reads, although the writes are much closer. The 4K performance is relatively impressive and shows that the SN770 has something to offer in this crowded marketplace. It's not too surprising that this drive outperforms Samsung's DRAM-less offering, as that is a PCIe 3.0 drive, after all, but the extent to which it does is impressive.

tradeIn.yesAttr.text}} {{tradeIn.yesAttr.subText}} {{tradeIn.yesAttr.text}} {{tradeIn.yesAttr.subText}} Experience superior performance and reliability that you can only get from the world's number one brand for flash memory since 2003. All firmware and components, including Samsung's world-renowned DRAM and NAND, are produced in-house, allowing end-to-end integration for quality you can trust. EXCERIA PLUS G2 SSD / EXCERIA PLUS SSD / EXCERIA SSD: Sequential speeds are measured with CrystalDiskMark 6.0.2 x64, Q=32, T=1. Random Read (4 KB, QD1) Up to 22,000 IOPS * Performance may vary based on system hardware & configuration Pay for your phone and an inclusive bundle of calls, texts and data in one easy-to-manage monthly fee.Power consumption (Idle) Max. 35 mW * Actual power consumption may vary depending on system hardware & configuration These values are the best values obtained in a specific test environment at KIOXIA Corporation and KIOXIA Corporation warrant neither read nor write speeds in individual devices. Read and write speed may vary depending on a device used and file size read or written. If you're copying a game from one drive to another or validating game files in Steam, faster NVMe drives make a difference. They can also shave off a second or two when it comes time to load a game level, but the more significant difference is against hard drives, where even a slower SATA SSD is much faster. Go beyond a certain point, and all SSDs start to feel similar.

Running on the same basic interface as your graphics card, NVMe SSDs deliver more raw bandwidth and performance than any SATA-based SSD could ever offer. They're also a lot smaller than any other hard drive or SSD too, which all means that the best NVMe SSDs are perfect for either that small form factor build you always wanted or a monstrous high-end gaming PC build. What PCIe generation should I look for? As for the actual flash memory used, it's SK Hynix's latest and very greatest 176-layer 3D TLC NAND. It's about as advanced as TLC memory currently gets, and SK Hynix claims a 40% performance boost over its old 128-layer chips. The net result is sequential read and write specs for this 2TB model of 7,000MB/s and 6,500MB/s respectively.EXCERIA PLUS G3 SSD / EXCERIA with Heatsink SSD: 4KiB random performance is measured with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4 x64, Q=32,T=16. It's also pretty speedy in random workloads, which will make for a snappier system. It comes in at 75MB/s read and 291MB/s, which is in the mix with some of the faster Gen4 and first-wave Gen5 drives we've tested. Definition of capacity: KIOXIA defines a megabyte (MB) as 1,000,000 bytes, a gigabyte (GB) as 1,000,000,000 bytes and a terabyte (TB) as 1,000,000,000,000 bytes. A computer operating system, however, reports storage capacity using powers of 2 for the definition of 1GB = 2