Which SSD will claim the crown in this year's Hardware Awards?
2022 was the year SSDs squeezed the last few morsels of performance from the PCIe Gen 4 protocol. Well, at least in terms of peak sequential throughput. When it comes to IOPS and random 4K performance, arguably there's still plenty of room for improvement.
Next year, we're looking forward to the arrival of Gen 5 drives and just maybe a decent step in up in terms of IOPS. But for now, Gen 4 M.2 drives are as good as it gets and there were indeed some excellent SSDs this year. But which M.2 SSD was actually the best we saw throughout 2022? SK Hynix announced its arrival as not just an OEM supplier of SSD technology, but a major retail player with the SK Hynix Platinum P41, an all in-house affair based on SK Hynix's own flash memory chips and controller. It immediately made a mark with excellent all-round performance.
Meanwhile, the Silicon Power XS70 is one of the best of the horde of drives powered by the popular Phison E18 controller. Equipped with quality TLC NAND memory, it delivers all the usual E18 upsides at a competitive price. And then there's WD's updated SN850X. Strictly speaking, this heatsinked M.2 drive is meant to appeal to console owners. But it is an all-round improvement on the already excellent SN850 and can often be had for a very appealing price. It's absolutely in with a shout of top honors.On the eve of a new generation of PCIe Gen 5 SSDs, SK Hynix has rolled out what proves to be one of the very fastest Gen 4 drives yet.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best CPUs of 2022Intel, AMD, VIA?! These are the three nominees we've shortlisted for the gaming CPU crown this year.
Read more »
PC Gamer Hardware Awards: The best graphics card of 2022There have been new GPUs, affordable GPUs, and even actually available GPUs. What a year?!
Read more »
PC Gamer's highest hardware review scores of 2022... and the five lowestAll the top tech to hit the magic 90% mark in our rigorous testing as well as the ones which fell waaaaaay short.
Read more »
All the PC Gamer hardware reviews from 2022Every single PCG hardware review in 2022, from Steam Deck to RX 7900 XTX.
Read more »
Here are the biggest PC gaming hardware stories of 20222022 had its fair share of new hardware controversy, crypto drama, and plenty of Gabe.
Read more »