Solidigm P44 Pro SSD review: The best and getting better all the time

Price When Reviewed

512GB: $79.99 I 1TB: $129.99 I 2TB: $219..99

Best Prices Today: Solidigm P44 Pro NVMe SSD

$39.99

$57.60

Soligim’s P44 Pro is the quickest PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD total that we’ve examined. It’s additionally particularly adept at random operations, making it an incredible alternative for an working system drive. Random ops are even sooner after you put in Solidigm’s personal Synergy Windows driver. Yes, Solidigm (née Intel) offers a top-notch NVMe driver. You don’t see that day by day.

Further studying: See our roundup of the best SSDs to find out about competing merchandise.

Solidgm P44 Pro design and options

The Solidgm P44 Pro is the primary NVMe SSD we’ve seen for a few months with DRAM onboard (1MB per gigabyte) for caching. The host reminiscence bus (DRAM-less) designs which have proliferated and dominated our protection have made nice strides performance-wise, however DRAM cache nonetheless makes for faster random efficiency.

The P44 Pro sports activities the widespread 2280 (22mm broad, 80mm lengthy) type issue and is accessible in 512GB, 1TB, and 2TB flavors. Pricing appears to be all over. I discovered the small fry for as little as $40, the 1TB for $67, and the 2TB for $110 on Newegg, whereas present pricing on Amazon is barely larger (for 512GB and1TB) to dramatically larger for 2TB. For what it’s price, Solidigm quoted me $40, $60 and $110, respectively, so store fastidiously and be affected person — these costs are certain to indicate up.

The quoted costs aren’t absolutely the lowest for NVMe SSDs lately, however they’re remarkably low for honest-to-goodness onboard DRAM major cache.

Solidigm warranties the P44 Pro for 5 years with mitigating TBW (terabytes that could be written) scores of 500 for the 512GB, 750 for the 1TB, and 1,250 for the 2TB. Those aren’t the biggest we’ve seen, however they’re workable and symbolize way more information than the typical consumer will write over the higher a part of a decade.

How does the P44 Pro carry out?

We after all examined the P44 Pro with each the usual Windows driver and Solidigm’s Synergy driver, then measured the outcomes in opposition to a number of equally priced PCIe 4.0 SSDs.

While not the quickest in each CrystalDiskMark 8 check, the P44 Pro was simply the quickest total of the drives proven. In truth, it completed fourth amongst all of the SSDs we’ve examined — behind solely the three PCIe 5.0 SSDs on our charts (Crucial T700, Seagate FireCuda 540, and Gigabyte Aorus Gen 5 10,000).

As you possibly can see beneath, the P44 Pro could be very quick with random operations, and will get even sooner if you set up the Solidigm Windows driver.

The P44 Pro was additionally very quick at our 48GB transfers, tying the Teamgroup MP44 for quickest time within the group. The Synergy driver might or might not have affected this check — it’s too near name. Note that even our smaller information are significantly bigger (32KB to 3MB) than what could be thought of one of many random operations the Synergy driver excels at.

While nonetheless round 40 seconds slower than the quickest 450GB write we’ve seen (learn our Sabrent Rocket Q4 and Crucial T700 evaluations), the P44 Pro was nonetheless very quick. Note that the synergy driver appeared to decrease sequential throughput barely in favor or random efficiency. But the lower is tiny, and throughout the margin of error for these exams.

Note that the most recent TLC NAND has seen a pointy improve in efficiency over earlier generations. When employed as secondary cache (SLC mode), it may be written at nicely over 3GBps, and even in TLC/3-bit mode the velocity solely drops to round 1.5GBps. The solely time you’ll see extreme drops with the most recent NAND is when the controller should do housekeeping to unencumber area.

Compare that with the drops of previous-gen NAND to 500MBps, and generations earlier than that to 100MBps or much less, and you may see why you desire a late-model SSD on your system. This modifies our recommendation on shopping for double the capability you want. That nonetheless holds true if you would like high efficiency on a regular basis, however 1.5GBps is hardly a tragic write fee for an SSD.

Should you purchase the Solidigm P44 Pro?

If I have been on the lookout for a PCIe 4.0 SSD as my fundamental storage, the Solidigm P44 Pro is the drive I’d go for. You can save a buck or two with an HMB design, however the uptick in random efficiency from the P44 Pro’s DRAM cache is nicely price the additional coin in my e-book. Sold!

How we check

Internal drive exams at the moment make the most of Windows 11, 64-bit operating on an X790 (PCIe 4.0/5.0) motherboard/i5-12400 CPU combo with two Kingston Fury 32GB DDR5 4800MHz modules (64GB of reminiscence complete). Both 20Gbps USB and Thunderbolt 4 are built-in to the again panel and Intel CPU/GPU graphics are used. The 48GB switch exams make the most of an ImDisk RAM disk taking on 58GB of the 64GB of complete reminiscence. The 450GB file is transferred from a Samsung 990 Pro 2TB which additionally runs the OS.

Each check is carried out on a newly formatted and TRIM’d drive so the outcomes are optimum. Note that in regular use, as a drive fills up, efficiency will lower because of much less NAND for secondary caching, in addition to different components.

Caveat: The efficiency numbers proven apply solely to the drive we have been shipped and to the capability examined. SSD efficiency can and can range by capability because of extra or fewer chips to shotgun reads/writes throughout and the quantity of NAND accessible for secondary caching. Vendors additionally often swap parts. If you ever discover a big discrepancy between the efficiency you expertise and that which we report, by all means, tell us.