Silicon Power P34A60 1TB NVMe SSD - Testing and Final Thoughts

Info & Testing:

For our test platform, we are using a HP Envy x360 running a Ryzen 5 2500U that does have a PCIe Gen3 x4 connector. The test results below are merely for an easy comparison of what kind of performance you will see in a real-world situation when you do a simple upgrade.

Note: The Patriot Scorch M is a PCIe Gen 3 x2 solution that boasts up to 1700MB/s / 950MB/s Read/Write speeds. The Silicon Power P34A60 claims 2200MB/s / 1600MB/s Read/Write Speeds over the PCIe Gen 3 x4 interface. The purpose of this comparison today is to show what kind of gains you get in a mid-range Ultrabook solution.

Compression - Read / Write Patriot

Compression - Read / Write Silicon Power

As you can see by the charts above, the 1TB Silicon Power PCIe Gen3x4 is marginally faster than the Patriot Scorch PCIe Gen3x2 512GB. That is a no brainer, but as the controllers are NAND ultimately dictate performance, in many tests, the difference is negligible. In some of the tests, the Silicon Power drive pulls ahead by leaps and bounds and is a fantastic upgrade for your system.

Conclusion:

This is where the rubber meets the road and it pretty easy to see that if you have a system with a standard SATA III connection on a traditional 2.5-inch SSD, any PCIe NVMe drive will offer a huge boost in performance. A few months back the NVMe drives were significantly more expensive than their transitional 2.5-inch counterparts, but that gap has narrowed and is virtually non-existent.

This means that for the same price of a legacy SSD, you get some significant performance improvements and even if you’re running a slightly older NVMe (PCIe Gen3x2), you will see actual performance gains on a mainstream system by going with the Silicon Power P34A60 series. If you have a high-end system, with lots of bandwidth, the SP P34A80 series offers over 3,000MB/s performance and keeps up with the best of the best.

That being said, the P34A60 we looked here is a perfect fit for many systems. Gone are the days of 500MB/s performance and hello to some serious speed at a great price. You don’t give up anything by choosing Silicon Power - you gain great performance, value and an incredible 5-year warranty.

In our system, the drive didn’t reach its maximum rated speed, but I believe that in a high-end desktop system with built-in M.2, you’ll see it reach it’s claimed speed, but in our test system, it didn’t quite pull it off. To be perfectly fair, I can’t quite give it a Gold Award, but I can give it our Silver Wrench award and still give it a two-thumbs up for price, value, performance and warranty.

I'd like to thank Silicon Power for sending over this product to review. If you need solid SSDs with great warranty for fantastic price, make sure you check out their full line of products.