Greatness Requires Sacrifices
We arrive at the nub of the matter. The SK hynix P51 is an amazing PCIe 5.0 SSD with both a custom designed controller and new flash which show the advantage of designing a drive completely in-house. It also illustrates the problem of going on your own; expense. The vast majority of SSDs use controllers designed by Phison or Innogrit and thanks to the economy of scale that means they can be produced at a lower cost.
At the time of this review, the TeamGroup T-Force GC Pro is $120 CDN, $90USD less expensive than the P51. To put it another way, the GC Pro sits at around $0.12/$0.09 GB and the P51 at $0.18/$0.14 GB, in clear violation of Ryan’s Law in all but one case. You can add to that the fact that for gaming, the difference in load times between a PCIe 4.0 drive and a PCIe 5.0 drive can be measured in nanoseconds. There are certainly applications where you will see a larger difference, or where nanoseconds quickly add up, which is why it is wise that SK hynix focused on longevity for these drives. If you’ve joined the dark side and are hosting an LLM or arguing about the benefits of Proof of Stake the P51 is a solid investment.
The P51 is without doubt faster than any of the other drives tested here and essentially within margin of error of the Samsung 9100 PRO 8TB, which benefits from significantly more space. It does represent a serious investment, which may be more than many pockets can handle, however it will stick with you as it has been built to last and you can bet SK hynix will honour their warranty.
