PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB SSD Review

The last PNY drive we looked at was the CS2030, the company's first NVMe drive way back in 2017. The CS2030 used Toshiba 15mn MLC NAND in combination with a Phison PS5007-E7. The new CS3030 sees updates in both NAND and controller with its Toshiba 64-layer BiCS NAND and Phison PS5012-E12 controller combination.

The new drive is available in four capacities, an entry level 250GB model, 500GB and 1TB drives with a 2TB flagship drive topping of the range.

The only official performance figures to be found on the spec sheet for the drive are Sequential read/writes, which is a bit odd. But the 1TB drive is rated as up to 3,500MB/s for reads and up to 3,000MB/s for writes. Using the ATTO benchmark we couldn't quite get to the maximum read figure, the review drive producing a figure of 3,414MB/s. Tested writes, on the other hand, were a wee bit better at 3,064MB/s.

It was the same when the drive was tested with our 128KB Sequential tests, with a read peak result of 3,473.95MB/s with peak writes coming in at 3,085.92MB/s.

PNY don't state any 4K random performance figures for the drive but in our tests the best read IOPS figure we got from the drive was 364,725 IOPS at a QD of 32. The best write figure was 198,729 IOPS at a queue depth of 2.

We found the 1TB CS3030 on Amazon for £133.37 HERE

Pros

• Overall Performance.
• 5-year warranty.

Cons

• 4K performance a little disappointing in some of our tests.

KitGuru says: PNY's new CS3030 performs well and is priced to give it a chance in a highly competitive market segment.

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