Silicon Power P34A60 2TB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 2280

The Silicon Power P34A60 is a 2TB PCIe 3.0 NVMe SSD that delivers solid everyday performance at a budget price. It's a big step up from SATA drives, but DRAM-less design and Gen3 speeds mean it's not built for heavy sustained workloads. Buy it when it's on sale, and you'll be happy.

The P34A60 hits 2,200 MB/s sequential reads and 1,600 MB/s sequential writes on paper. In our database, that puts it right around the middle of the pack for speed, which is exactly what you'd expect from a PCIe 3.0 x4 drive in this price range. It's not going to touch the 7,000+ MB/s numbers you see from Gen4 drives like the WD Black SN850X or Crucial T500, but it's also not trying to.

For everyday use, the SLC cache does a lot of the heavy lifting. Small file operations feel responsive, and boot times are quick. The DRAM-less design means sustained writes will eventually drop off once the cache fills up, but for typical consumer workloads like installing games, browsing, and light content creation, you probably won't hit that wall often. The 600 TBW endurance rating is solid for a budget drive, and the 2 million hour MTBF is standard fare.

Stacked against the Western Digital Black SN850X, the P34A60 looks like it's from a different era. The SN850X is a Gen4 drive with read speeds over 7,000 MB/s, and it absolutely crushes the Silicon Power in benchmarks. But it also costs more, and for most people, the real-world difference in game load times and boot speeds is measured in fractions of a second. The Crucial T500 is another Gen4 option that outclasses the P34A60 on paper, but again, you're paying for that headroom.

Where the P34A60 makes sense is against other budget PCIe 3.0 drives. The Kingston Fury Renegade and Samsung 9100 PRO are both faster and more expensive, aimed at enthusiasts who actually need the throughput. If you're just looking for a big, cheap NVMe drive to replace a hard drive or SATA SSD, the P34A60 holds its own. Just don't expect it to compete with drives that cost twice as much.

Pricing on this drive is a bit of a moving target. We're seeing it listed around $260 USD for the 2TB model, which is not exactly a screaming deal when you consider that faster Gen4 drives sometimes dip into that territory on sale. But the P34A60 often sells for less than its listed price, and if you catch it at a discount, it's a solid value for a 2TB NVMe drive. The affordability score in our database puts it below average, which tells us the regular price isn't doing it any favors. If you can find it for under $200, it becomes a much more compelling buy. Otherwise, you might want to look at alternatives like the Crucial P3 or TeamGroup MP33, which often undercut it on price while offering similar performance.

The Silicon Power P34A60 is a 2TB M.2 NVMe SSD that sits in the budget end of the PCIe 3.0 market. It's the kind of drive you grab when you need a lot of storage without spending a fortune, and you're not chasing bleeding-edge speeds. With read speeds up to 2,200 MB/s and writes up to 1,600 MB/s, it's not going to win any races against Gen4 or Gen5 drives, but it's a massive leap over any SATA SSD or spinning hard drive.

This is a DRAM-less design using TLC NAND, which keeps costs down. It leans on Host Memory Buffer (HMB) tech to borrow a slice of your system RAM for its mapping tables. That's a common trick in budget NVMe drives, and it works fine for everyday tasks like booting Windows, loading games, and shuffling files around. The drive also supports NVMe 1.3 and SLC caching to keep things feeling snappy during short bursts of activity.

If you're asking "is the Silicon Power P34A60 good for gaming?" the answer is yes, mostly. Game load times will be dramatically better than a hard drive, and you won't notice much difference between this and a pricier Gen4 drive in real-world use. But if you're moving huge video files all day or running heavy sustained writes, you'll feel the ceiling pretty quickly.

Skip the P34A60 if you're doing heavy video editing, working with large datasets, or regularly moving massive files around. The DRAM-less design and PCIe 3.0 interface will bottleneck sustained writes, and you'll be waiting around more than you'd like. Content creators and professionals should look at Gen4 drives like the Crucial T500 or Samsung 9100 PRO instead. Also, if you're building a new system with a PCIe 4.0 or 5.0 motherboard, you're leaving performance on the table by going with a Gen3 drive. Spend a little more and get something that can actually use your board's bandwidth.

Should you buy the Silicon Power P34A60? If you need 2TB of NVMe storage on a tight budget and you're coming from a hard drive or SATA SSD, yes, it's a solid upgrade. The speed is fine for everyday use, the endurance is respectable, and installation is straightforward in any M.2 2280 slot with an M key. It's not the fastest drive out there, but it doesn't pretend to be.

But if you're building a new system and you have a little more room in the budget, a Gen4 drive like the Crucial T500 or WD Black SN850X will serve you better in the long run. The P34A60 is a value play, and it only really shines when the price is right. At full retail, it's a tougher sell.