The PNY XLR8 CS3040 is a solid-state drive in the M.2 2280 form factor, launched on October 22nd, 2020. It is available in capacities ranging from 500 GB to 4 TB. This page reports specifications for the 1 TB variant. With the rest of the system, the PNY XLR8 CS3040 interfaces using a PCI-Express 4.0 x4 connection. The SSD controller is the PS5016-E16-32 from Phison, a DRAM cache chip is available. PNY has installed 96-layer TLC NAND flash on the XLR8 CS3040, the flash chips are made by Toshiba. To improve write speeds, a pseudo-SLC cache is used, so bursts of incoming writes are absorbed more quickly. Thanks to support for the fast PCI-Express 4.0 interface, performance is excellent. The XLR8 CS3040 is rated for sequential read speeds of up to 5,600 MB/s and 3,900 MB/s write; random IO reaches 420K IOPS for read and 362K for writes.
At its launch, the SSD was priced at 122 USD. The warranty length is set to five years, which is an excellent warranty period. PNY guarantees an endurance rating of 1800 TBW, a good value.