Silicon Power US70 Gen 4×4 1TB NVMe SSD Review

Less than a week ago Canon introduced their newest camera lineup which was highlighted by the Canon EOS mirror-less R5 Digital camera.  To anyone who is familiar with cameras, this may be the release of the decade.  It is a 45 megapixel camera that will shoot video as large as 8K/30 or 4K/120 with RAW.  Myself, I am moving up to this camera from my present 5D MkIV and I haven’t been able to quite grasp the fact that a simple photograph will double from 40MB to 80MB.  8K video is a totally different animal and the one thing I know is that editing photos and video will require at least double the power that it did this week..

PCIe 4.0 may be new to many but to the media professional, it means so much more than a nice to have or convenience.  It speaks to efficiency and being able to complete a task much quicker than before. This means being able to move your work to the next level, or maintain your current level with more time away for family.  This is what the Silicon Power US70 Gen 4×4 NVMe is capable of.

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The Silicon Power US70 Gen 4×4 NVMe SSD is available in capacities of one and two terabyte and it is a 2280 (80mm) form factor M.2 SSD that follows the NVMe 1.3 protocol.  Performance is listed at 5000MB/s and 4400MB/s  and endurance is listed at 1800TBW for the 1TB version which doubles for 2TB.  This SSD has a five-year limited warranty as well as AES 256-Bit hardware encryption.

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Looking at the components on the blue PCB, we see the all too familiar Phison PS5016-E16 NVMe Gen4 controller along with four pieces (two on each side) of SanDisk 3D TLC NAND flash memory and two SKHynix  512MB DDR4-2400 SDRAM cache chips.  This Silicon Power US70 release joins only three other releases four PCIe Gen 4×4 taht we have had our hands on; the Corsair MP600,   Seagate Firecuda 520 and the Sabrent Rocket. All are NVMe 4.0 and all contain the ever so popular Phison E16 8-channel NVMe controller.

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There is a difference between this SSD and the others though.  The three others use Toshiba BiCs 4 NAND flash memory and that is obvious by their NAND flash product number which starts with a ‘TA’.  This SSD doesn’t.  It is WD/SanDisk 3D TLC NAND and we are curious as to whether we will see any speed variation from that with Toshiba NAND.

Silicon Power also has their own SSD Toolbox available free to SP SSD customers.  It can be downloaded here.

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MSRP for the Silicon Power US70 Gen 4×4 NVMe SSD is set at $175.99US for the 1TB and $375.99 for the 2TB version but we are not seeing mass availability as of yet. Check Amazon for updated pricing.

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