Search

If we had to choose any one SSD to fill our system, it would be the WD Black SN7100. This PCIe 4.0 SSD comes in up to 4TB of capacity. The 2TB version that we tested was the fastest overall in our benchmarks. Because the drive uses a host memory buffer design for cache, as opposed to onboard DRAM, it's competitively priced, making it an excellent price-to-performance value.

The best cheap SSD in our view is the WD Blue SN5000, followed closely by Kingston's NV3. Both of these PCIe 4.0 SSDs are fast, and very affordable. However, when it comes to PCIe 5.0, the PNY CS2150 is your bargain choice.

The PA40SU is a handsome, mostly metal black rectangle measuring approximately 4.75 inches long, by 1.8 inches wide, by 0.6 inches thick. Weight is around 4.7 ounces with an SSD inside. It’s svelte indeed for a 40Gbps SSD enclosure — witness the large fins and bulk of the competing OWC 1M2 and TerraMaster D1 Plus. The enclosure is slotted on both sides to facilitate air flow, and is actively cooled by a fan at the non-port end. The fan is the reason it’s not as bulky as the aforementioned competition. The NVMe bridge/controller chip is an ASMedia ASM2464PD, and no AC adapter is required — the

While not the fastest 40Gbps NVMe enclosure we’ve tested, the PA40SU was competitive with its OWC 1M2, LaCie Rugged SSD4, and TerraMaster D1 SSD Plus competitors in nearly all respects. In other words, it’s fast, though better on synthetic benchmarks than with real-world transfers. As you can see below, the PA40SU turned in a good CrystalDiskMark 8 sequential throughput performance, though it didn’t top the charts in any particular test. It was the same neck-and-neck story with CrystalDiskMark 8’s 4K tests. The PA40SU’s 48GB transfers fell a bit behind the curve with Windows Explorer, but rebo