Silicon Power US70 1TB NVme SSD Review

SSD Temperature & Conclusion

When it comes to SSD temperature testing we figured out that this is a really tricky thing to measure and that is why most review sites don’t show temperature results. At first we were going to use the minimum and maximum temperatures reported by S.M.A.R.T. and call it a day. That looked good, but while looking closer at the data we noticed that some of the drives with the highest peak value actually averaged out to be much cooler over our entire test suite that takes over three hours per pass to complete. For example, the Intel Optane 905P 960GB drive has the second lowest maximum temperature of all the drives that we have tested, but it also happens to be tied as having the highest average temperature. Seeing high temperatures on a drive might persuade someone not to buy that particular model, so the average temperature result seems to be very important result to include.

All temperature testing was done in a Corsair iCUE 465X RGB case ($129.99 shipped) with an extra Corsair LL Series LL120 RGB fan added to the back of the case to help as an exhaust fan. We then set the fan speed in the UEFI of the ASUS TUF Gaming X570-Plus (Wi-Fi) to run at 50% fan speed.

The drive being tested was then screwed down in the primary M.2 slot that is located between the CPU socket and the primary PCIe 4.0 x16 slot that holds the AMD Radeon RX 5600 XT 6GB graphics card. The tempered glass side panel was then placed back on the case before our test suite was run. Ambient room temperature at the time of testing was 21C or right around 70F.

Using the S.M.A.R.T. temperature sensor we found the Silicon Power 1TB drive had a minimum temperature 0f 39C, a maximum temperature of 82C and an average of 44C inside our test system with the tempered glass panel on during our period of testing. We recently reviewed the Patriot Viper VP4100 1TB drive that is based on the same Phison E16 reference design with a heatsink and it topped out at 67C versus the 82C we see here.

That said, the average temperature on the Silicon Power US70 1TB drive was 1C higher. If you are concerned about temperatures we’ve found a heatsink will help with the maximum temps for general use, but doesn’t dramatically change the performance of the drive by any means. The exception to this is if you are doing very large file transfers (over 100GB) and do them often.

The warning temperature threshold on this drive is 90C and the critical temperature threshold is 95C. We are still far from triggering thermal throttling, but you’ll still want to ensure you have good airflow around this drive.

Final Thoughts & Conclusions

The Silicon Power US70 is a very appealing drive right now as it is the lowest priced PCIe Gen4x4 drive on the market that is based on Phison’s E16 controller. It is really exciting to see PCIe Gen4 SSDs under the $0.15 per GB price point in 2020 without rebates. If you are building a new AMD Ryzen system and using the B550 or X570 chipset for your motherboard, a drive series like the US70 is perfect. If you are buying a new motherboard you might as well use the features it has!

We were able to reach the drive top rated read speed of 5,000 MB/s and write speed of 4,200 MB/s write speed in CrystalDiskMark. Our drive was tested with firmware v13.0 for the Phison E16 controller and we saw solid-performance across our performance tests.

When it comes to pricing the Silicon Power US70 1TB model that we reviewed here today can be picked up for $147.99 shipped over at Amazon. This is the lowest price that we’ve seen for a drive based on the Phison E16 reference design. In fact, the only PCIe Gen4 drive on the market right now is the ADATA XPG GAMMIX S50 Lite 1TB at $139.99 shipped over at Amazon. The S50 Lite 1TB is in our performance charts and the SP US70 1TB clearly offers superior performance and is well worth the extra eight bucks.

Silicon Power’s US70 comes backed by a 5-year warranty and the 1,800 TBW endurance rating is about as good as you are going to get on a 1TB drive. Very few people are doing a complete drive write per day over five years, so this drive should be a premium model that will likely last the length of your PC build.

This drive will get you 5 GB/s speeds and a 5-year warranty without breaking the bank!

Legit Bottom Line: The Silicon Power US70 delivers the best bang for the buck when it comes to PCIe Gen4x4 drives at this point in time!