Silicon Power has announced the XS80 SSD series boasting up to 10GB/s transfer speed in capacities reaching 2TB without requiring a fan.
Measuring 24.0mm(W) x 80.4mm (L) x 20.5mm (H), the XS80 SSD lineup offers 1TB and 2TB of storage space topped by a silver or black heatsink weighing 53g. All models support the NVMe 2.0 standard and operate on a PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 interface. According to Silicon Power’s durability specs, the XS80 should also be available in 4TB, but we’ll just have to wait and see.
While we are on the subject, Silicon Power claims 700TBW of durability on the 1TB, 1,400TBW for the 2TB, and 3,000TBW on the 4TB, enough for years of intense use. I am confident in these numbers, as my P34A80 has been running for three years non-stop and still has 91 per cent durability left, and trust me, Steam isn’t giving it a break.
Unsurprisingly, the XS80 also uses Phison’s E26 controller alongside different amounts of 232-layer 3D NAND flash to achieve its rated speeds. For this metric, Silicon Power claims a 10GB/s sequential read and write for the 2TB model, and a 9.5GB/s read plus 8.5GB/s write on the 1TB version. Many would gladly take a passively cooled 10GB/s SSD over a 12GB/s actively cooled one, which is understandable as many software and games can’t leverage these high speeds.
The keen-eyed among you may have noticed the resemblance to early PCIe Gen 5 SSDs from the likes of Corsair and CFD. But unlike these, the XS80 doesn’t include a small 20mm fan for cooling, instead opting for a passive aluminium heatsink, which should be more reliable as no moving parts risk failing unexpectedly.
While Silicon Power hasn’t shared any pricing figures yet, we expected these drives to retail for around $150 for 1TB and $250 for 2TB, backed by a five-year warranty.
