PNY XLR8 CS3030 1TB SSD Review

The CS3030 comes in a compact box with a image of the drive on the front along with the drives capacity on the top right hand corner. Under the drive image are the read and write Sequential speeds along with the drives warranty length. The rear of the box has a very small product info panel but most of the back is taking up by marketing points in English, French, Spanish and German.

 
The CS3030 1TB drive is a double-sided PCB design with the components on both sides covered with product labels.

The front of the PCB holds the Phison PS5012-E12 controller, two Toshiba 64-layer BiCS NAND packages and a single DDR4 cache IC. The other side of the PCB is home to another pair of NAND packages and another DDR4 cache IC.

Phison’s PS5012-E12 is their second generation PCIe Gen3 x4 NVMe controller. The 8-channel controller is built on a TSMC 28nm process and has been designed to work with TLC and QLC NAND technologies with support for Phison’s SmartECC and the latest LDPC (Low-Density Parity Check) error correction as well as AES256, TCG OPAL and TCG Pyrite hardware encryption support. With 8 NAND channels and 32 NAND chip enable lines, the maximum amount of NAND the controller can support is 8TB.

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