Introduction

Hynix has been one of the "big three" memory manufacturers for decades. Together with Samsung and Micron, they have been dominating the memory market and are producing a substantial percentage of the world's DRAM and NAND memory. A few years ago, the company "Hynix," which was originally founded as "Hyundai Electronics Industrial Co" in 1983, was sold to "SK Group"—a large Korean conglomerate, hence the name "SK Hynix." Just last year, Hynix decided to purchase Intel's NAND business for $9 billion.



We reviewed the Hynix Gold P31 1 TB back in June and were impressed by its performance and competitive pricing. Today, we have the review of the 2 TB variant, which is brand-new and just arrived at various stores.

Besides Samsung, Hynix is the only SSD maker in the world who can build an SSD using only in-house components. As expected, the Hynix Gold P31 2 TB uses the same controller as the P31 1 TB, it's an in-house design by Hynix called "ACNT038," or "Cepheus." The flash chips are modern 128-layer 3D TLC. A LPDDR4-3733 DRAM chip provides 1 GB of memory for the mapping tables of the SSD.

The Hynix Gold P31 comes in capacities of 512 GB ($75), 1 TB ($135), and 2 TB ($280). Endurance for these models is set to 500 TBW, 750 TBW, and 1200 TBW respectively. Hynix includes a five-year warranty with the Gold P31.

Packaging

The Drive

The drive uses the M.2 2280 form factor, which makes it 22 mm wide and 80 mm long.


Like most M.2 NVMe SSDs, the SK Hynix Gold P31 connects to the host system over a PCI-Express 3.0 x4 interface.


On the PCB, you'll find the controller, two flash chips, and one DRAM chip.

Chip Component Analysis

The Hynix ACNT038 controller is a new in-house development by Hynix. Unfortunately, not much is known about this controller yet.


The two flash chips are Hynix 128-layer 3D TLC NAND. Each chip has a capacity of 1 TB.


One Hynix LPDDR4-4266 chip provides 2 GB of fast DRAM storage for the controller to store the mapping tables.

Test Setup