Silicon Power P34A60 128GB PCIe 3.0 x4 NVMe M.2 2280

The Silicon Power P34A60 is a dirt-cheap NVMe drive with a 5-year warranty and speeds that are fine for daily use. The 128GB capacity is the main limitation, but at USD 36 on Amazon, it's a no-brainer for a boot drive. If you need more space, look elsewhere.

Sequential reads top out at 2200 MB/s and writes at 1600 MB/s, which lands it right around the middle of the pack in our database. That's fine for booting Windows, loading apps, and general daily use. The DRAM-less design means random performance takes a hit compared to drives with a dedicated cache, but HMB support helps smooth things out. The 128GB capacity is the real bottleneck here. It's in the 7th percentile for capacity, so you will run out of space quickly if you install more than a couple of games. For an OS-only drive, it's fine. For anything else, it gets cramped fast.

Stacked against the Team Group MP44L, the P34A60 holds its own on price but gives up speed. The MP44L pushes higher sequential numbers, but you'll pay more for it. The SanDisk Optimus GX 7100 and MSI SPATIUM M560 are in a different league performance-wise, but they're also in a different price bracket. The Crucial P2 is probably the closest competitor, and it's a toss-up. Crucial has better brand recognition and support, but the P34A60 undercuts it on price. If you're shopping on a strict budget, the Silicon Power wins. If you want peace of mind and firmware updates that actually work, Crucial or SanDisk might be worth the extra cash.

At USD 36 to USD 45 depending on the vendor, this drive is a steal. The 96th percentile affordability score backs that up. Amazon has the best deal right now at USD 36, and with free delivery on eligible purchases, it's hard to argue with. You're getting a 5-year warranty, decent speeds, and a name-brand controller for less than the cost of a pizza and a movie. The value proposition here is the strongest thing about this drive, and it's not close.

The Silicon Power P34A60 is a budget NVMe drive that punches above its weight class in the value department. At 128GB, it's not going to hold your Steam library, but it'll wake up an old laptop or serve as a snappy boot drive without emptying your wallet. The 2200 MB/s read and 1600 MB/s write speeds are modest by today's standards, but for the price, it's a solid little workhorse.

This is a DRAM-less drive, which usually means we'd expect some performance hiccups under sustained loads. But Silicon Power leans on HMB and SLC caching to keep things feeling responsive. The 5-year warranty is a nice touch for a drive this cheap, and the 2,000,000 hour MTBF suggests they're not worried about it dying young.

If you need more than 128GB of storage, this drive is not for you. The capacity is in the 7th percentile, which means it's smaller than almost everything else on the market. Gamers, content creators, or anyone who stores large files should look at a 500GB or 1TB drive instead. Also, if you're the type who wants regular firmware updates and responsive vendor support, the broken website and lack of documentation might drive you nuts.

This drive is for people who need a cheap, reliable boot drive and don't care about bleeding-edge speeds. It's perfect for reviving an old laptop, building a budget NAS, or adding a snappy OS drive to a secondary machine. The 128GB capacity is the dealbreaker for anyone who wants to store games or large media files. But if you just need Windows to boot fast and apps to load without waiting, this thing delivers.