SK hynix Platinum P41 2 TB

[W1zzard]

The SK Hynix P41 offers amazing performance thanks to a new PCI-Express 4.0 compatible controller. In our Hynix Platinum P41 review we find that this drive is faster than Samsung 980 Pro and WD Black SN850. Thanks to an energy efficient design, there is no thermal throttling, even without heatsink.

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[Udyr]

Thank you for the thorough review, Wiz.

I've been thinking about getting a new drive for the OS and the Hynix Gold was on my list, but then this one came out.

Do you think the performance difference between the drives is worth the extra gold coins?

 

[W1zzard]

Depends on how value-focused you are, or if you want the best

 

[trsttte]

A bit late to the game but a very interesting drive. Any particular reason why they are not available in Europe? In the past it was also not easy to find their stuff never understood why but it was possible

 

[mechtech]

I wonder if the gold will go on sale more now??

Poor W!zz. Still no AMD 5500, 5600, 5700x to test yet

 

[Selaya]

what is the green curve for ... or rather, what is the red?

[ ... ] The drive's own thermal sensor reported 86°C for the controller at this time [ ... ]

looks like the green's for the controller then ... there's another thermal sensor for the NAND, or something?

also, a power consumption test would be interesting, since the p31 was by far the most power-efficient drive out there (primarily of concern for the laptop/mobile crowd)
i understand this isn't part of tpu's suite, but yea

 

[AlwaysHope]

Good review, but once again demonstrated that game loading times make practically no difference between PCIe v3+4 nvme drives whatsoever. We're taking less than half a second at most between them across multiple game engines in best case scenarios.

 

[Minus Infinity]

Too expensive and sustained write speeds are no better than my PCI-E 3.0 970 EVO Plus. Sequential speeds are largely irrelevant for most users. Look at the price performance chart and a drive like the WD770 is far better option IMO. If this were the price of a 4TB version then we would be talking, but sick of seeing 2TB max capacities. I'm not going to buy QLC garbage.

 

[W1zzard]

there's another thermal sensor for the NAND, or something?

Yup, it has two sensors

 

[Bwaze]

Why would anyone risk their data with a company with almost no track record? Even the drives from long established companies can, and do fail without any warning or known cause.

 

[LuxZg]

I have 2 questions.

1) Review / testing intro says rhat WD Black 7200 rpm SATA numbers are in the title, but I don't see them anywhere, neither graphs nor benchmark texts. Can this be added? Or link to other review that has these numbers for rough comparison

2) I own the SM951 512GB NVMe drive from 6 years ago. Which out of the other drives in graphs would roughly be the same performance category?

Thanks!

 

[MarsM4N]

"Not available in Europe" Guess it's just not worth doing business with poor EU badlands.

Wouldn't buy their stuff anyways. Just checked their Wikipedia page, and it's pretty wild:

- 2005: Emerged from Corporate Restructuring Promotion Act ahead of schedule. Fined US$185M for involvement in DRAM price fixing cartel
- 2009: Company put up for sale by its lenders after it defaulted on loans and a subsequent debt-equity swap
- 2010: Fine of €51.47 million for illegally fixing prices with eight other memory chip makers.
- Treatment of employees: Illegal pay-cut, Deceptive revision of employment rules & 2020 incentive bonus controversy

Doesn't sound like it's a fun place to work, lol.

 

[W1zzard]

1) Review / testing intro says rhat WD Black 7200 rpm SATA numbers are in the title, but I don't see them anywhere, neither graphs nor benchmark texts. Can this be added? Or link to other review that has these numbers for rough comparison

Whoops, this has been added back in (in the texts above the tests, putting it into the chart as bar would completely destroy the scale)

2) I own the SM951 512GB drive from 6 years ago. Which out of the other drives in graphs would roughly be the same performance category?

Roughly 970 EVO, with slightly better writes due to it being MLC. I see no reason to replace the SM951 unless you read huge bursts of data from it all the time

 

[R0H1T]

Guess it's just not worth doing business with poor EU badlands.

Not to be too disheartened, this thing's not readily available in Asia either! It's mostly US (NA?) oriented product or something

 

[TheLostSwede]

Why would anyone risk their data with a company with almost no track record? Even the drives from long established companies can, and do fail without any warning or known cause.

Sorry what? A company with almost no track record? SK Hynix is one of the largest corporations in Korea and has been making NAND flash for well over a decade and DRAM for even longer. They produce their own in-house controllers and are used by a wide range of OEM/ODM customers like Dell, HP and Lenovo. They were making enterprise products long before they enter the consumer market.

 

[Bwaze]

I know they make RAM, although it isn't really that common in Europe. And I searched for their SSD drives, similar story - a couple of old SATA drives available here. So they really focus on other markets.

I wonder what kind of buyer's protection you get when buying items like these? I know it should be handled by the seller, but it seems even in Europe more and more they are relying on direct customer support by company.

I have bought a Corsair MP600 1TB drive, one of the first PCIe 4 drives available in 2019. It failed after three years of light work (I kept it more than half empty, because the writes plummet almost to SATA speed otherwise). And the biggest seller in Europe, Mindfactory.de told me that 5 year manufacturer's warranty is just that, manufacturer's warranty - they only cover it up to two years. I'm now trying to RMA it to Corsair directly, but they're not really hurrying with their reply (apparently, due to Covid situation).

 

[TheLostSwede]

I know they make RAM, although it isn't really that common in Europe. And I searched for their SSD drives, similar story - a couple of old SATA drives available here. So they really focus on other markets.

Ok, I think you're confusing things here. SK Hynix sells DRAM to just about every single RAM stick maker out there, be that Corsair, G.Skill, Kingston, Adata or someone else. It's possibly the most common DRAM that you'll find in averagely priced memory sticks. They're not interested in selling you a stick of SK Hynix RAM.

I wonder what kind of buyer's protection you get when buying items like these? I know it should be handled by the seller, but it seems even in Europe more and more they are relying on direct customer support by company.

Well, SK Hynix is valued at US$59.3 billion and operates a massive amount of different businesses, so I think you're in pretty safe hands buying one of their products over just about any other SSD "manufacturer".

I have bought a Corsair MP600 1TB drive, one of the first PCIe 4 drives available in 2019. It failed after three years of light work (I kept it more than half empty, because the writes plummet almost to SATA speed otherwise). And the biggest seller in Europe, Mindfactory.de told me that 5 year manufacturer's warranty is just that, manufacturer's warranty - they only cover it up to two years. I'm now trying to RMA it to Corsair directly, but they're not really hurrying with their reply (apparently, due to Covid situation).

Corsair normally honours their warranties, but if you really want to compare the two, Corsair is currently only worth US$1.56 billion and is likely to go bust a long time before SK Hynix.

Honestly, your concerns here are very very strange.

 

[Voodoo Rufus]

Nice drive. The cost is not bad either, relative to drive prices a year ago.

I wonder if TPU can add an Optane 905 of some kind to their review list. I know they're basically out of production now, but it would be nice to compare against the newest NAND drives to see if they've caught up on the QD1 areas.

 

[mechtech]

"Not available in Europe" Guess it's just not worth doing business with poor EU badlands.

Wouldn't buy their stuff anyways. Just checked their Wikipedia page, and it's pretty wild:

- 2005: Emerged from Corporate Restructuring Promotion Act ahead of schedule. Fined US$185M for involvement in DRAM price fixing cartel
- 2009: Company put up for sale by its lenders after it defaulted on loans and a subsequent debt-equity swap
- 2010: Fine of €51.47 million for illegally fixing prices with eight other memory chip makers.
- Treatment of employees: Illegal pay-cut, Deceptive revision of employment rules & 2020 incentive bonus controversy

Doesn't sound like it's a fun place to work, lol.

2005 was a bunch of them all in it. 5 years ago same thing happened with prices then China said they were going to start and investigation and prices magically came back down.

 

[Valantar]

@W1zzard @TheLostSwede Any idea why these aren't available in Europe? I was interested in a Gold P31 back when that was new, particularly due to the low power draw, and I'm thinking the same here - these seem like ideal laptop upgrade drives. Does Hynix just not have the distribution network in Europe? Do they not want to comply with our longer warranty requirements? Something else?

 

[Aquinus]

You know, if you're testing MySQL, it might be worth testing Postgres as well. pgbench (which is part of Postgres,) makes automating this pretty easy.

 

[TheLostSwede]

@W1zzard @TheLostSwede Any idea why these aren't available in Europe? I was interested in a Gold P31 back when that was new, particularly due to the low power draw, and I'm thinking the same here - these seem like ideal laptop upgrade drives. Does Hynix just not have the distribution network in Europe? Do they not want to comply with our longer warranty requirements? Something else?

No idea, but they're not available here either.

 

[W1zzard]

@W1zzard @TheLostSwede Any idea why these aren't available in Europe?

I sent them an email yday about that, will let you know the answer

You know, if you're testing MySQL, it might be worth testing Postgres as well. pgbench (which is part of Postgres,) makes automating this pretty easy.

Not worth testing both, the load patterns should be similar enough. I picked MySQL because it's more common, and I didn't want to buy a MSSQL or Oracle license

 

[GabrielLP14]

No words regarding review quality, simply amazing, great job @W1zzard

 

[MarsM4N]

2005 was a bunch of them all in it. 5 years ago same thing happened with prices then China said they were going to start and investigation and prices magically came back down.

I bet it's the same reason why DDR5's pricing is still orbital.