Review Solidigm P44 Pro SSD Review: Platinum P41, Take Two

[Admin]

That Solidigm P44 Pro is the SK hynix Platinum P41 under a different name. Under the new umbrella it has access to Solidigm’s software support and the MSRP is more attractive.

Solidigm P44 Pro SSD Review: Platinum P41, Take Two : Read more

 

[cyrusfox]

Refreshing to see a top end drive from Solidigm, although odd. As this is the P41 with Solidigm software and controller tuning. I would have thought they would repurpose their own NAND rather than used Hynix.

Nice aggressive initial pricing as well for a top tier drive, this should be able to be found cheaper than the other 3 tops contenders (Sn850, 990 pro, & P41). Whatever happened to Kioxia(Toshiba) or Micron, they seem absent from the top of the line consumer pcie gen 4 ssd competition. Crucial P5 can't compete, not seeing any entries from Kioxia.

 

[anonymousdude]

Refreshing to see a top end drive from Solidigm, although odd. As this is the P41 with Solidigm software and controller tuning. I would have thought they would repurpose their own NAND rather than used Hynix.

Nice aggressive initial pricing as well for a top tier drive, this should be able to be found cheaper than the other 3 tops contenders (Sn850, 990 pro, & P41). Whatever happened to Kioxia(Toshiba) or Micron, they seem absent from the top of the line consumer pcie gen 4 ssd competition. Crucial P5 can't compete, not seeing any entries from Kioxia.

I think you may be misunderstanding the relationship between some of these companies. Solidigm is a subsidiary of SK Hynix created as a result of acquiring Intel's flash and ssd division, which to my knowledge was only making QLC NAND and Optane anyways. No controller either. So it's not weird at all that they use TLC Hynix flash and controller.

As for pricing, it is very competitive. The closest one at msrp is the P41 and that's $260. Granted these go on sale fairly frequently. Like the 2TB SN850x and P41 were $160 or so during Black Friday. I see the P41 pop up for around $210 too.

Kioxia doesn't really release to retail like this much anymore. They do have retail products, just not in high volume nor are competitively priced. Their history is fun too. WD acquired SanDisk back in 2016, who had a joint venture with Toshiba (Kioxia) for NAND fabrication and development which continues to this day. So WD drives have a custom controller with Kioxia's BICs NAND. You'll see the Kioxia name often though in pre-builts and laptops cause that's their target market.

Micron (Crucial) released the P5 Plus last year and it targeted the top 4.0 drives at that time. So the 980 Pro, SN850, and your pick of Phison E18 drive. It was competitive at that time and with its recent pricing is still a great value. It just so happens that everyone updated their drives this year. Samsung 990 Pro and WD SN850x. SK Hynix releases the P41 beginning of the year and now Solidigm with the P44. So mostly a case of bad timing on Micron's part is what gives you that feeling.

 

[thestryker]

It's not clear in the review whether or not the Solidigm Driver is used on the test system. Assuming it was were any tests done without it to see if it has an impact (or if it wasn't were any done with it)? I generally don't install storage drivers/software unless there's a specific reason to and was considering getting one of these.

It is interesting to see where PCIe 4.0 drive performance has landed. Seems like this, the 990 and P41 will likely be the best choice of drive for some time even with PCIe 5.0 drives coming.

One note on Kioxia: they've been having financial and legal issues which seems to have impacted several of their latest technologies. I don't believe there are any gen1 XL-Flash devices on the market despite having their own line and one from Dapustor. They've even announced a second generation of XL-Flash without any products.

 

[Udyr]

I don't know why or how you're getting such high idle temps. My 1TB P41 idles at 27C, with an ambient temp of 24C, sandwiched between the CPU and GPU and no additional airflow other than the front fans.. When I had to transfer all my backup data (~700GB) from my trusty old HDD, the temperature went up by 12-13C, even after a couple hours of activity. Granted, I didn't run any synthetic benchmark, but seems odd the test yielded such high numbers.

 

[DavidLejdar]

Nice. I have only one M.2 slot left, and looking to use that for a 4 TB drive eventually. But the test results seem to say that one shouldn't really see a difference between P44 Pro and i.e. 990 Pro in everyday use.

And the cheaper price makes upgrading more affordable, which in turn means proliferation, which in turn means even more game devs making use of NVMe bandwidth, which in turn means that I may benefit too.

I don't know why or how you're getting such high idle temps. My 1TB P41 idles at 27C, with an ambient temp of 24C, sandwiched between the CPU and GPU and no additional airflow other than the front fans.. When I had to transfer all my backup data (~700GB) from my trusty old HDD, the temperature went up by 12-13C, even after a couple hours of activity. Granted, I didn't run any synthetic benchmark, but seems odd the test yielded such high numbers.

Even an active cooling for SSD may rely on there being air flow, like in a wind tunnel, which the test-rig apparently didn't have. And the heat-buildup near a SSD without such air flow, it may not really be that large for some convective heat dissipation to be going on. Well, at least that would be my guess about what could be a factor in regard to idle temperature. As for operating temperature, HDD can do around 100 MB/s (plusminus), and that's not really pushing a NVMe SSD, even if it took some time to move all that data.

 

[ReallyBigMistake]

solidigm is pronounced [saa-luh-dime]
I would have never figured that out
I can't wait for PCIe 5.0 SSDs to finally come out.

 

[DVDRDog]

I have to question where Shane got his specs for the Solidgn SSD's. For example he states warranty TBW. That seems to be the biggest secret on the Internet. Not even on the manufacturer's site is the warranted TBW for their Intel inherited SSD line. Does Shane Downing have some spiritual connection with SK Hynix and he has uncovered the big secret or is he fudging the numbers? I challenge Shane to back up his info with something legally binding in writing from the manufacturer or save this kind of speculation to social media where it belongs.

 

[TesseractOrion]

Would a heatsink be recommended for a well ventilated case? I have six fans on various sides (front, top, bottom & back), but the NvME 4.0 slot is next to CPU and under GPU (though could move that).

I have an AMD 5700X but only a Radeon 580X paired with it.