Silicon Power XD80 Gen 3 NVMe SSD Review – Is this the Ultimate Gen3 Gaming Solution?

REPORT ANALYSIS AND FINAL THOUGHTS

The Silicon Power XD80 enters the market as a main stream PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD, capable of hitting just under 3.5GB/s throughput and 740K IOPS which is where we want to see Gen 3 SSDs introduced today.  The fact that it includes a heatsink may be a benefit to some, however, we personally have never really seen a need for this with Gen 3 drives.  We wanted to take a closer look at the drive to see if it could be one of the best options available today…because of that heatsink. We never saw that.

In fact, when we tested the XD80 in our True Data Testing regime, PCMark 10, PassMark and our Final Fantasy XIV Gaming benchmark, we found the XD80 to be a mid-performance SSD that we expected just a bit more from.  Pricing and availability.  MSRP lists this SSD at $199 for the 1TB capacity and $299 for the 2TB we are testing today.  We don’t really find this a value point when considering others available at this point and time.  We still don’t even see it in the Silicon Power Store on Amazon at the time of this report.

With respect to a final recommendation, the Silicon Power XD80 contains quality components and is a decent DRAM based SSD. We are certain that this SSD what be a great inclusion to any typical use PC.  If you are looking for a high performing or gaming SSD, however, we might suggest looking elsewhere. A heatsink alone doesn’t make a gaming SSD. On a final note, the Silicon Power XD80 has  very impressive endurance rated at over 3 petabytes for the 2TB sample we have tested today. If you are looking for a high endurance SSD, this is a definite consideration.

Check Silicon Power Availability on Amazon.