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On our test Bench today is the Silicon Power XD80 PCIe 3.0 NVMe M.2 SSD. It is a 2TB capacity and claims to bring us top Gen 3 speeds with a lower price point and at lower temperatures, 20% lower actually. The XD80 comes with its own metal heatsink attached, something we really never saw with many Gen 3 SSDs. The reason of course is that Gen 3 never brought us the high temperature issues that we see with Gen 4 performance today.
The Silicon Power XD80 is a PCIe 3.0 x 4 (four lane) M.2 2280 (80mm) form factor NVMe SSD that relies on the 1.3 NVMe protocol. Listed specifications speak to performance of up to 3400MB/s read and 3000MB/s write throughput and Silicon Power believes this SSD/heatsink combination may be the ideal choice for ‘performance enthusiasts building custom gaming rigs’. Is this the ultimate Gen3 gaming SSD? Read on.
As mentioned earlier, the XD80 comes with a black metal heatsink already affixed to the drive itself. We don’t recommend anyone remove this if they don’t have to (when affixed) as this could cause damage to the SSD and your warranty would be toast as well.
The XD80 is a one-sided SSD with the components set into a dark plastic PCB (printed circuit board) and branding on the bottom.
It contains the Phison PS5012-E12S 8-channel NVMe controller, four packages of KIOXIA BiCS4 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, along with a single DDR3 DRAM buffer. This SSD comes with a 5-year warranty and is rated at 1665TBW for the 1TB capacity, and over 3 petabytes for the drive we are testing today, something pretty much unheard of for similar.
MSRP pricing is set at $199 (1TB) and $299(2TB) and we are finding availability rather limited at this point and time. Check Amazon.