The Silicon Power P34A80 is pretty much the epitome of value in a sector of the market that has been pretty much bereft of just that. For a mere 2.5 cents more per Gigabyte than a Crucial P1 1TB NVMe solid state drive buyers get a veritable ton of added performance. Everything from better, more durable NAND to a controller that packs a heck of a punch. This really is a great deal that makes very few compromises in order to get you such a great bang for your buck.
Now we must admit to being a bit biased, but when it comes to TLC NAND… Toshiba’s BiCS TLC NAND is pretty much what we like to look for when looking at TLC NAND based drives. The underlying technology is simply better, and more proven than most other TLC NAND designs and it shows in the performance it has to offer. Would it have been even better to have seen the P34A80 come with BiCS 4 NAND instead of older BiCS3? Of course, but the boost in performance this change would have offered would have also come along with a rather noticeable price increase. This to us why we are so impressed with Silicon Power as they have grasped the very essence of what it takes to offer value… and this is something many less experienced ‘manufactures’ have problems doing (and why so many fail to impress).
All of this should come as no surprise as the Silicon Power P34A80 is a slightly modified ‘reference’ PHISON E12 design. What we mean is this is, for the most part, the exact same configuration that Phison decided upon when they set about to create a reference drive to showcase their new and incredibly potent E12 controller.
Now with all that said while it is mostly a reference design E12 NVMe Silicon Power did make one tweak that we do take issue with. PHISON designed the E12 around the idea of having 6.25 percent Over-provisioning. In the case of the ‘1TB’ capacity version that meant instead of 1TB it was to be seen as a 960GB capacity drive by the OS – i.e. have a full 64GB of over-provisioning. The P34A80 does not natively come with this level of Over-Provisioning. As such we would recommend that for those who are planning on keeping their drive for the full five years of the warranty period and want to get the best performance they can… to turn it into a 960GB drive. This is one of things that separates the P34A80 from P34M85 drive. To fully convert it, either ensure your motherboard comes with a heatsink and/or active cooled M.2 port… or spend twenty dollars and pick a heatsink up from Amazon/newegg/memoryexpress/etc. Then you will have the more expensive model… and a drive that will be configured even better than the way Phison envisioned it!
Even with this caveat in mind the Silicon Power P34A80 is still one incredibly good drive that will impress you with not only its low asking price but it’s downright beefy performance. There really is a lot to like and little to not like when thinking about the P34A80 1TB SSD.
The Review
Silicon Power P34A80 1TB
Silicon Power may not be as well known as Crucial, Intel, Samsung, or even Corsair in the enthusiast end of the solid-state-drive market… but the P34A80 should rectify that tout de sweet! If they keep releasing incredible value drives like this, companies like Crucial who ‘own’ the value moniker better watch out.
