SK hynix Platinum P41 2 TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD Review – Solid Performance & A Bonus PS5-Compatible Heatsink

While PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs are setting new storage performance benchmarks, the real-life and application benefits of getting those drives are still not worth the price you are paying for them. It's mostly an early adopters product for now and while we appreciate the speed-up, we would love to see the performance transition from synthetic benchmarks to actual use cases.

And you know what's still considered to be quite fast without breaking your wallet? The current-gen PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs. Gen 4 SSDs are now available at very affordable price rates and offer great performance. Back in 2022, SK hynix introduced its Platinum P41 SSDs which were very competitive in the premium segment and as time went by, these SSDs saw a radical drop in prices. The SSD was meant to tackle Samsung's 980 Pro and other high-enders with its proprietary controller and specs which looked great on the table.

Today, I will be testing the SK hynix Platinum P41 2 TB SSD. The drive features a Gen 4.0 protocol which means that it is future-proof and retails for around $130 US.

The SK hynix Platinum P41 SSD is part of the Platinum series which is as high-end as things can get. The lineup will soon see the introduction of the Platinum P51 series featuring the Gen5 controller so we thought it would be great to see if the P41 still holds decent value compared to its rivals. The SK hynix Platinum P41 SSDs are based on the NVMe SSD form factor and feature TLC-based 3D NAND flash, offering larger capacities of up to 4 TB, better performance, and slightly lower power input.

The SSDs are based on the in-house Aries controller which offers increased speeds, doubling of the number of channels, and doubling of IOPS too, all making it a very high-end Gen4 controller, perfect for the likes of the Platinum P41 series. The drives also come with an added DRAM-cache.

In terms of performance, SK hynix Platinum P41 2 TB SSD has sequential read speeds of up to 7000 MB/s and write speeds of 6200 MB/s. The Random read speeds of these drives are up to 1400K IOPS and the write is 1300K IOPS. The drive is based on 176-layer TCL NAND from SK hynix itself and has an endurance of 1200 (TBW) backed by a 5-year warranty.

The SK hynix Platinum P41 2 TB SSD comes in a standard package. The package is colored black and purple plus it features a diamond platinum on the front. The front only lists down the 2 TB capacity.

The back of the package lists some specifications of the SSD and some performance figures which we will get to in a bit.

The Platinum P41 SSD package includes a warranty booklet and that's about it. The SSD container includes the storage drive.

The front of the SSD has the standard sticker. This is the standard NVMe 1.4 standard & measures 22 x 80 x 2.38mm (LxWxH).

The two NAND Flash chips, the DRAM module, and the Gen4 controller are situated on the front. Being a single-sided design means that the SSD will run a bit cooler since users don't have to worry about heat from any components on the other side.

The drive doesn't feature any heatsink by itself and is recommended to house it under a heat sink that comes with the motherboard. If you don't have one, then SK hynix also provides its Haechi H01 SSD heatsink which is compatible with PlayStation 5 (CFI-1200) too.

The Haechi H01 is a rather large heatsink with a single-sided heat pad on it. We had no trouble installing it on our test board. The heatsink comes in a distinct orange and black color.

Our test platform for this review consisted of an Intel Core i9-13900K processor which ran at stock clocks on the MSI Z790 ACE motherboard. The platform was coupled with 32 GB of DDR5 memory from G.Skill (Trident Z5/ 16 GB x 2) and the MSI MEG Ai1300P PSU. For graphics, I used the MSI GeForce RTX 4090 SUPRIM X. This rounds up as a high-end platform for tests with modern-day SSDs.

First up, we have the official performance stats for these drives as listed by their manufacturers. You can compare these stats with the rest of the drives I tested in the following chart:

AS SSD Benchmark download is a Windows 10 utility software program that tests the performance of solid-state drives. With its help, you can find out the speed of all installed SSDs and take care of any issues that the tests may reveal. The free app performs three separate tests to provide you with conclusive evidence of your driver's general behavior while it copies, reads, and writes data.  The app determines the access time of an SSD, along with its speed and performance capabilities

As the industry’s leading provider of high-performance storage & network connectivity products, ATTO has created a widely-accepted Disk Benchmark freeware software to help measure storage system performance. As one of the top tools utilized in the industry, Disk Benchmark identifies performance in hard drives, solid-state drives, RAID arrays as well as the host connection to attached storage. Top drive manufacturers, like Hitachi, build and test every drive using the ATTO Disk Benchmark.

The ATTO Disk Benchmark performance measurement tool is compatible with Microsoft Windows. Use ATTO Disk Benchmark to test any manufacturer's RAID controllers, storage controllers, host bus adapters (HBAs), hard drives, and SSD drives, and notice that ATTO products will consistently provide the highest level of performance to your storage.

CrystalDiskMark is a disk benchmark software. It measures sequential reads/writes speed, random 512KB, 4KB, 4KB (Queue Depth=32) reads/writes speed, selects test data (Random, 0Fill, 1Fill),

To test the maximum average transfer speeds of the drives, I used a 100 GB file to test the limits.

The PCMark 10 Storage benchmark is designed to test the performance of SSDs, HDDs, and hybrid drives with traces recorded from Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, and a selection of popular games. You can test the system drive or any other recognized storage device, including local external drives. Unlike synthetic storage tests, the PCMark 10 Storage benchmark highlights real-world performance differences between storage devices.

The SK hynix Platinum P41 SSD lineup was and remains a strong contender in the high-end PCIe Gen4 storage lineup. Back when it launched, it was seen as fierce competition to the Samsung 980 Pro and WD_Black SN850 series. That remains true to this day with the P41 outperforming the 980 Pro by a decent margin but there are more faster solutions out in the market. The positive thing is that the P41 has a good price with the 2 TB variant priced at around $130 US which makes it a very decent option worth considering.

The performance is still top-notch and there are no hiccups. The temperatures might get a bit crazy if you are running the SSD without any heatsink but modern-day motherboards have plenty of heat sinks for M.2 devices & you should put this under one of those to ensure the best SSD experience.

What I would say is that the SK hynix Platinum P41 still holds a decent spot in the high-end storage category. If your PC is slowing down and you need a faster SSD with good capacities, the P41 is very much a choice worth considering.

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