It uses the same hardware as other prominent drives like the Rocket 4 Plus and includes an excellent warranty. With SK hynix’s newest flash reaching incredible bit density, the Gold P31 hits the market at very low pricing. The only downside of the NM790 is that its pricing isn’t quite as good at lower capacities, where options like the WD Black SN770 may still be competitive. It even beat out Samsung’s own 970 PRO in a few tests, which is quite the feat considering the PRO slots in as Samsung's workhorse for workstation-class applications. Sporting Phison’s beastly, penta-core PS5018-E18 NVMe SSD controller and Micron’s fast 176-Layer TLC flash, the FireCuda 530 outperforms both the Samsung and WD across the board, and it comes backed by better warranty and support service.

This makes the Plus-G seem stranded without any games that support one of its most important features, although our I/O+ firmware preview definitely showed superior performance in sustained workloads. It's at least as good as anything else: trading blows with WD's Black SN850X, Samsung's upgraded 990 Pro, and the usual Phison E18-powered suspects. As for the actual flash memory used, it's SK Hynix's latest and very greatest 176-layer 3D TLC NAND.It's not too surprising that this drive outperforms Samsung's DRAM-less offering, as that is a PCIe 3. Not all older motherboards do, especially if you're going back multiple CPU generations (maybe a full upgrade's due, if so). In practice, enabling this mode does draw more power and produce more heat but neither should be a problem in a well-ventilated desktop case.

In the case of this SSD, the hard benefit is the four terabytes of super fast NVMe storage exists in something the size of a stick of gum.Games that can use DirectStorage are also delayed, with the first game to use it, Forspoken, expected in early 2023. Yes, it's expensive, but it's so big you can forget about installing games on a slower data drive, and just enjoy top performance pretty much all the time. That drive is a glorified heatsinked SN850X and should only be picked if you want the heatsink at 4TB. Or, if you're looking for an external SSD, you can check out our Best External Hard Drives and SSD page, or learn how to save some money by building your own external SSD. We've come to expect higher-end Gen4 drives to rely on Phison's very popular E18 controller, but the Lexar doesn't.

Still, it’s a good, yet hidden, option if you can find it on sale, and its small pSLC cache makes it great for heavier workloads. The benefit of QLC is capacity, each cell can hold more data and thus the drive itself can hold more. Laptop users who prioritize battery life should definitely put the new SK hynix Gold P31 at the top of their drive list.

The 4K performance is relatively impressive and shows that the SN770 has something to offer in this crowded marketplace.