Silicon Power US70 – With PCIe Gen 4 to the performance crown?

Silicon Power is primarily represented on the market with storage media – in addition to SSDs, memory sticks and RAM, card readers and powerbanks are also available. The leitmotif – combining performance with design – characterizes the product image.

With the US70, Silicon Power launches its first PCIe Gen 4 SSD on the market – and thus wants to convince with performance. The marketing focus of Silicon Power is directed at gamers, but professional users should also be addressed with this SSD. With values of up to 5000 MB/s read and 4400 MB/s write, the US70 promises quite a bit of performance. Can the US70 live up to the expectations? We have tested it for you.

Specifications

Capacity	1 TB, 2 TB
Size	22.0 mm x 80.0 mm x 4.8 mm
Weight	8 g
Interface	PCIe Gen 4×4, NVMe 1.3
Performance Read	Up to 5000 MB/s
Performance Write	Up to 4400 MB/s
Operating temperature	0 °C – 70 °C
MTBF	1,700,000 hours
TBW and Warranty	1 TB: 1800 TB 2 TB: 3600 TB Warranty: 5 years or reach TBW
Price	€ 222.43 *

The specified data throughput is quite high – this requires a PCIe Gen4x4 interface. So your motherboard must be able to handle PCIe Gen 4 in any case – thus at least the chipset B550 or X570 (AMD) or a compatible Z490 or Z590 (Intel). However, caution is advised with Intel – not all Z490 chipsets are PCIe Gen 4 compatible, and an 11th generation CPU is also required.

As with the XD80, Silicon Power impresses with a high TBW and fairly long warranty. Nice!

Scope of delivery

As we are used to from Silicon Power, the scope of delivery is limited to the essentials – the SSD. In an understated package, the SSD is presented through a plastic window.

There is quite little data on the packaging. Unfortunately, there is no information about TBW and speed, but in times of online buying almost every buyer will inform himself beforehand.

The SSD also comes along quite plain and neutral. A heatspreader is omitted – one can be divided in opinion here. Since it is a PCIe Gen 4 SSD, most will be able to use an integrated heatspreader on the motherboard, so we see this aspect neutral.

The PCB is blue – so it’s not necessarily the most visually appealing model. The front is almost completely covered with a sticker, which contains the name, serial number and some other info.

Test system

As a test system, we installed the following components:

• AMD Ryzen 7 5800X Box*
• MSI B550 Tomahawk
• Crucial Ballistix Sport LT 3000 MHz
• NVIDIA Geforce RTX 3080 Founders Edition
• Seasonic FOCUS GX-750 Full Modular PC Power Supply 80PLUS Gold 750 Watt*

Performance

To compare the SSD’s performance to other SSDs we’ve already tested, we use a number of different benchmarks – specifically AS SSD, CrystalDiskMark, ATTO Disk, and HD Tune Pro.

Unsurprisingly, the US70 is currently at the top of our tests – it is, after all, the first PCIe Gen4x4 SSD we tested. Anything else would be very disappointing. Still, we’d like to put the whole thing in perspective a bit – the SN850 from Western Digital, for example, advertises higher speeds. If you believe other testers, it seems to achieve them as well. We don’t want to portray the US70 as a performance miracle, because that would simply be wrong. Nevertheless, it uses a good part of the PCIe Gen4x4 interface.

Benchmarks speak for themselves, so feel free to check them out. Especially in CrystalDiskMark, which is often used as a reference for the called or advertised throughputs, it almost reaches the target – but misses it very narrowly. Nevertheless, the values are right – there are no particularly unexpected results in between.

Conclusion

The US70 leaves us with mixed feelings. It has its strengths – but also its weaknesses. At least at the called price.

For the current € 222.43 * (test time: around 180 €), it has to prove itself against cheaper models, such as the WD SN850 (test time: around 150 €) – and loses in terms of performance. The Samsung 980 Pro also wins in terms of performance at a lower price.

So why the US70? The TBW is convincing. The SSD should last quite a while longer – at least on paper. And this is not a narrow victory – the 980 Pro and the SN850 (both 1TB) advertise 600 TB – the tested Silicon Power US70 advertises an enormous 1800 TB – thus three times the value!

In summary, it can be clearly deduced – you won’t get the most brute performance on the market – but an extremely strong durability. The price is currently a bit high – should this drop a bit closer to the big competition, the US70 is definitely worth considering if you write a lot on your SSD. And by a lot, we really mean a lot. We’re giving it the Silver Award – a thoroughly good SSD – which would, however, have to tweak either the performance or the price to really become a top product.