Final Thoughts
Once again we are extremely impressed with a drive from SK hynix! Just like what we saw with their Gold P31, SK hynix is able to provide great performance without any of the issues we’ve seen with other Gen4 drives. A lot of this has to do with the fact that SK hynix makes everything on the drive, from the controller, to the NAND, and even the cache chip. This allows SK hynix to really optimize these parts and is much easier to source them then waiting for the bottlenecks of supply chain from other companies.
In terms of performance this drive at the top of most of our performance charts when it comes to Gen4 drives. With advertised speeds of 7000 MB/s read and 6500 MB/s write we saw speeds of 7156 MB/s and 6869 MB/s in CrystalDiskMark, and 6670 MB/s and 6330 MB/s in ATTO Disk Benchmark. What is even more impressive is that it really does not need a heatsink to achieve these speeds.
Another thing we found impressive is the Platinum P41’s sustained write performance. It its larger SLC cache we were able to write about 90% off the drive before performance started to taper off. Entry level drives will drop around 20% and most other drives make it to 30-40%, but writing to almost the entire drive without a major performance hit is something we haven’t really seen in a Gen4 drive!
Right now you can pick up the 2TB version of the drive that we reviewed today at our favorite online retailer for $259.99, while the 1TB version is going for $149.99. While these prices are slightly more than other drives in the same performance class, I really think this is the Gen4 drive to get. It checks all the boxes, doesn’t require a heatsink, and has great overall performance. I just wish SK hynix offered it in a 4TB version. Overall ThinkComputers gives the SK hynix Platinum P41 Gen4 NVMe Solid State Drive a 9 out of 10 score and our Recommended Award!
Pros:
– Great performance
– All parts made by SK hynix
– Does not require a heatsink
– Some of the best sustained write performance we’ve seen from a Gen4 drive
Cons:
– No 4TB version available
