Silicon Power UD90 1TB, M.2 2280 / M-Key / PCIe 4.0 x4

The Silicon Power UD90 is the first SSD that we test that's built using Phison's new E21 controller, designed as a modern replacement to the E19 that powered drives such as the MSI Spatium M450 and WD SN750SE. While the E19 was PCIe 4.0 too, the E21 is an upgraded design built on a 12 nanometer production process at TSMC, definitely improving heat output and thermals. For NAND flash, Silicon Power opted for the highly-popular Micron 176-layer 3D TLC—can't go wrong with that. As expected, for cost reasons, a DRAM cache is not included, but the E21 controller is especially optimized for DRAM-less operation.

The Phison E21 controller paired with Micron’s 176-layer TLC NAND does result in a good mainstream drive in terms of performance, even surpassing Silicon Power rated speeds, which operates at decent temperatures in normal operation. However, if your projects do imply writing very large sequences of data at once, the drive will heat up to about 80 degrees Celsius while using the stock thin graphene heatspreader. In that case, we will surely recommend a custom heatsink or simply installing the drive on a motherboard with an integrated cooling system.

The Silicon Power UD90 1TB NVMe SSD delivers a perfect mix of high performance and high quality at a low price. I’m sure that anyone who decides to buy this SSD, will be more than satisfied. Especially when we expect the specified performance but actually receive much more. Funky Kit highly recommends the Silicon Power UD90 1TB NVMe M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD!