At $35 or less, we think this can make a lot of sense especially versus smaller 16GB and 32GB SATADOM options as a boot device. Overall, as a $75 drive, we could not recommend this even as a boot SSD. TLC NAND is designed to be read-optimized so as a L2ARC or similar device where the majority of access is read, and most write bandwidth often happens at under 10MB/s, that makes sense. They are inexpensive and if you have large and slow hard drives, then having frequently used data on these SSDs for cache is a good way to utilize a device like this. ASRock D1541 Motherboard In SilverStone CS381 Chassis With Silicon Power A55 Boot M.2 Installedįor those thinking of these as a read cache SSD, that is a decent use case. ![]() There is a fairly large price difference between SATADOMs and this drive. If we need an inexpensive boot drive for an embedded OS in a desktop virtualization host or storage appliance that we can swap quickly with a spare, then that 1.5M hour MTBF is not an issue. If we were sending a server to a remote location, SATADOMs make more sense. This means that we again went well beyond buffers in the NAND and as a result we saw write speeds fall to an abysmal =3M hour MTBF ratings. We tested the drive using a larger 64GB test size. Silicon Power A55 128GB M.2 SSD CrystalDiskMark Benchmark It offers a different look at performance. CrystalDiskMark BenchmarkĬrystalDiskMark has been around for years. We also saw sub 500MB/s read and sub 400MB/s write speeds on the sequential side. We saw relatively high access times for this drive with AS SSD. Silicon Power A55 128GB M.2 SSD AS SSD Benchmark AS SSD BenchmarkĪS SSD is another easy-to-use storage benchmark tool specifically for SSDs. We are seeing the impact of going beyond NAND buffers. ![]() That is hard-drive like performance, and perhaps lower than many modern hard drives. In Anvil’s Storage Utilities we can see the TLC NAND getting hit hard in our sequential write test dropping to under 50MB/s. Silicon Power A55 128GB M.2 SSD Anvil Storage Utilities Benchmark Anvil’s Storage UtilitiesĪnvil’s Storage Utilities shows us the performance of the device along a number of common SSD performance vectors. This is one where the speed may be OK but practically the capacity is too small. While the performance here may be acceptable for many types of video formats, 128GB is very small in terms of capacity for 4K video editing. Silicon Power A55 128GB M.2 SSD Blackmagic Disk Speed Test It shows whether a storage device is suitable for throughput required at a given video format. ![]() This is a popular speed test in the video community. We are going to run through a few sets of numbers to test the 400MB/s claims Silicon Power makes. Still, as a read cache drive, boot drive, or other lighter-duty tasks, it is serviceable. This drive is not designed to be a server drive hammered by OLTP databases 24×7. Silicon Power 128GB A55 M.2 SATA SSD Benchmark Performance One can load VMware ESXi, FreeNAS/ TrueNAS Core, pfSense or other OSes and simply have a low-cost boot option. Instead, we think of this drive now as a “boot drive” class device. With a modern server, we would urge our users to utilize larger capacity drives and NVMe for primary storage. ![]() At this price point, components can change as you are not paying for a stable BOM. The A55 2.5″ SATA drives have more room so they can use different controllers and NAND. This particular drive uses a Silicon Motion controller with Intel 3D TLC NAND. For cooling purposes, this M.2 2280 or 80mm SSD only has top side components that help with keeping the drive’s temperatures moderated. The back of the drive is completely barren. Today’s M.2 SSDs can support PCIe Gen4 and speeds 14x what this drive can handle. As a result, it is not a performance class of drive. The drive itself is a M.2 SSD, however it is not NVMe like most modern drives. This makes a lot of sense since the A55 line can scale to higher capacity points with 3D TLC NAND. On the front of the drive, we can see four pads for NAND with only one occupied. Silicon Power 128GB A55 M.2 SATA SSD Overview In our review, we are going to take a look at what you can expect from a drive like this. We purchased several of these for under $35 to use as boot devices. The word “cheap” is not one we take lightly at STH, but that is essentially the product segment for this drive, an ultra-low-cost SATA M.2 device. Indeed, it is meant to be something completely different: cheap. The Silicon Power 128GB A55 M.2 SATA SSD is not a fancy drive.
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