SK hynix SE3010 960GB Review

The SK hynix SE3010 960GB drive is built on the standard 2.5in 7mm format.

As you might expect from something aimed at the enterprise market the drive forgoes a flimsy plastic case or lightweight metal one and has a no-nonsense good quality metal enclosure held together by four screws. The PCB is held in place by another four screws.

Once inside the drive there is a surprise in the shape of thick thermal pads on the inside of the lid, something you don't see so often these days as the latest NAND technologies tend to run cooler as they are more power efficient.  But it does make sense in a drive that might find itself in some pretty hostile environments and where heat build-up may be an issue.

The pads cover the NAND and controller but the poor old cache chip is left to fend for itself. Although the flip side of the PCB is empty, it too has a thermal pad to protect it.

All the IC's are SK hynix in house designs including the controller thanks to the Link_A_Media (LAMD) acquisition. The 960GB drive's capacity is made up of eight 16nm 128Gb MLC NAND packages labelled H27Q18YEB9a and looking after these is the SH87810AA Pearl 8-channel controller. Rounding out the chips is a single LPDDR2 IC looking after the cache duties.

The PCB also houses four capacitors to prevent data loss in the case of sudden power loss, but the board has pads for attaching quite a few more.

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