SK Hynix has now officially unveiled its first consumer SSD with PCIe 4.0 connectivity and the new 176-layer NAND flash. The Platinum P41 SSD comes in the M.2280 form factor and has a maximum read speed of 7,000 MB/s and a write speed of 6,500 MB/s.
Platinum P41 SSD from SK Hynix introduced
SK Hynix sees the biggest advantage with the Platinum P41 SSD in the fact that almost all components come from a single source. Thus, the M.2280 SSD uses SK Hynix’s own Aries controller, 3D TLC NAND of the 176-layer generation as well as a DDR4 DRAM cache from the manufacturer.
This makes SK Hynix the third manufacturer besides Micron (Crucial) and Samsung to produce its consumer SSD completely in its own factories, while Western Digital and Kioxia, for example, have to source the DDR cache externally.
The Platinum P41 is supposed to achieve particularly high sequential data transfer rates of up to 7,000 MB/s for reading and 6,500 MB/s for writing via the PCIe 4.0 x4 connection. The Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) are also high with a maximum of 1.4 million, respectively 1.3 million IOPS for random reading/writing of 4K data.
Thus, the P41 is a direct competitor to the corresponding counterparts from Samsung (980 Pro), Western Digital (WD Black SN850) or Seagate (FireCuda 530), which achieve higher speeds, but cannot keep up with the IOPS and reach a maximum of one million IOPS.
Platinum P41 SSD comes in three sizes
SK Hynix will offer the Platinum P41 SSD in three capacities of 500 GB, 1 TB and 2 TB. Total Bytes Written (TBW) will be dated at 500 TB, 750 TB and 1,200 TB, and the warranty will alternatively end after five years of use.
Price and Availability
Whether the SK Hynix Platinum P41 will even make it to Germany is currently unclear. Already the predecessor models of the Gold series, namely the P31 and the SATA model S31, were only available as imports. According to a report from Techpowerup, the manufacturer wants to provide further information about availability and prices in the first quarter of 2022.
However, there is hope elsewhere, because with the acquisition of Intel’s SSD division and the new foundation of the Solidigm brand, we should also expect SSDs for private users with the 670p and 660p series, which feature PCIe 3.0 x4 and come as NVMe in the M.2280 form factor.
