This article is thanks to Petris Tech‘s discovery, all image credit goes to him for this article.
Introduction
Back in 2019, Tom’s Hardware SSD editor Sean Webster reviewed the P34A80, at that time using a Phison E12 controller and Toshiba BiCS3 64L TLC NAND. It was one of the top performers and would still hold up well to this day. As E12 got discontinued by Phison, Silicon Power had a few variations with comparable controllers like the Phison E12S and Silicon Motion SM2262EN, combined with various 64/96l TLC NAND. It was a great recommendation in the US as it was often cheap, and featured great performance for that price… But recently a new variation came to light. Silicon Power seems to have massively downgraded the SSD while still selling it under the same name.
Controller
The main difference is in the controller. Instead of using the expected E12(S)/SM2262EN controller, the batch found here uses a Maxio MAP1001A. Maxio is a relatively small company compared to Phison and Silicon Motion, who used to be part of JMicron (not to be confused with Micron). They’ve mainly made SATA controllers and a few budget oriented NVMe controllers. When I saw this on the SSD, my expectations were already lowered.
NAND and DRAM cache
The second difference is in the NAND choice. This isn’t as dramatic as it’s been with for example the Crucial P2’s switch to QLC NAND, but still shows SP decided to cheap out with going from Toshiba to the Chinese Yangtze Memory Technologies Corp, or YMTC in short. They are a far less experienced compared to the industry giants, and were only founded in 2016.
The NAND doesn’t show anything out of the usual, featuring what is likely Samsung DRAM.
Benchmarks
Petris Tech did take off a few basic benchmarks to show a massive performance difference. As this is potentially impacted by the older system used, these numbers should be taken with a grain of salt, but are still very useful to prove a point here.
Hwinfo
Crystaldiskmark
Atto
Readout information
Click to open
v0.1a
OS: 10.0 build 19043
Drive : 1(NVME)
Scsi : 1
Driver : W10
Model : SPCC M.2 PCIe SSD
Fw : B00u7M10
Size : 1953514 MB [2048.4 GB]
LBA Size: 512
AdminCmd: 0x00 0x01 0x02 0x04 0x05 0x06 0x08 0x09 0x0A 0x0C 0x10 0x11 0x80 0x84 0xC1 0xC2
I/O Cmd : 0x00 0x04 0x08 0x09
Firmware id string[000]: MKSSD_501003000035880000,Sep 29 2020,21:26:52,MAP1001,WIWPCAPC
Project id string[180] : r:/beagle_dram_pr
Controller : MAP1001
Click to open
-------- NVME SMART --------
0 Critical Warning : 0
1 Composite Temperature : 40
2 Available Spare : 100
3 Available Spare Threshold : 1
4 Percentage Used : 0
5 Data Units Read,MB : 580167
6 Data Units Written,MB : 2654009
7 Host Read Commands : 25883624
8 Host Write Commands : 30691314
9 Controller Busy Time : 447
10 Power Cycles : 19
11 Power On Hours : 15
12 Unsafe Shutdowns : 3
13 Media and Data Integrity Errors : 0
14 Number of Error Information Log Entries : 17
15 Warning Composite Temperature Time : 0
16 Critical Composite Temperature Time : 0
17 Temperature Sensor 0 : 40
18 Temperature Sensor 1 : 40
19 Temperature Sensor 2 : 40
20 Temperature Sensor 3 : 40
21 Temperature Sensor 4 : 40
22 Temperature Sensor 5 : 40
23 Temperature Sensor 6 : 40
24 Temperature Sensor 7 : 40
25 Thermal Management Temp 1 Transition Count : 0
26 Thermal Management Temp 2 Transition Count : 0
27 Total Time For Thermal Management Temp 1 : 0
28 Total Time For Thermal Management Temp 2 : 0
-------- ATA-style ExtSMART --------
id Description val raw
009 Power-on Hours Count 0 15 (00000000000F)
012 Power Cycle Count 0 19 (000000000013)
167 SSD Protect Mode 0 0 (000000000000)
168 PHY Error Count 0 23130 (000000005A5A)
169 Bad Block Count 97 560/ 35 (000002300023)
171 Program Fail Count 0 0 (000000000000)
172 Erase Fail Count 0 0 (000000000000)
173 Erase Count 0 2/ 4/ 2 (000200040002)
175 Bad Cluster Table Count 100 0 (000000000000)
192 Unexpected Power Loss Count 0 3 (000000000003)
194 Temperature,C 100 41 (00000000013A)
231 SSD Life Left 100 0 (000000000000)
241 Total LBA written,MB 0 2654009 (00000052F012)
242 Total LBA read,MB 0 580167 (000000122157)
-------- ExtSMART --------
Write? : 260908800
Read? : 40250
Unk1 : 0
Unk2 : 0
Unk3 : 0
AvePE : 2
MaxPE : 4
MinPE : 2
AvePE SLC : 8
MaxPE SLC : 9
MinPE SLC : 6
Unk7 : 0
Bad Block Count?: 35
Bad Block Count?: 560
Unk10 : 0
SSD Life Left? : 100
Conclusion
To make a long story short, Silicon Power decided to massively downgrade their SSD to the point they can’t meet their own advertised speeds even remotely. There is no visible difference between the newer and older revisions, so for now we recommend against buying the drive as a whole.
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