Instead of a box, the XS70 comes packaged in a cardboard blister pack. The packaging advertises some of the drive's key features including its 1TB capacity, PCIe Gen 4x4 interface, support for NVMe 1.4, maximum read and write speeds and 5 year warranty.
Physical Features:
The XS70 uses the 2280 form factor for M.2 (NGFF) SSDs. It measures 24.6 x 80 x 10.8 mm and weighs in at a whopping 33g. The drive also has an "M key" edge connector which provides PCIe SSDs with up to 4x lanes of bandwidth.
The XS70's is equipped with a unique heatsink design that, according to Silicon Power, breathes like a shark. Heat is able to ventilate out through the heatsink's angled, gill-like slits to prevent overheating and maintain superior performance, even during intense gaming sessions.
The heatsink wraps entirely around the XS70 and is attached using a couple of screws. While this ensures a solid fit, it also adds about 2.6mm to the overall width of the drive. This doesn't sound like much. However, you will want to make sure that the card doesn't hit a PCI slot or any of the other components on your motherboard.
The XS70 uses Phison's PS5018-E18 controller chip. This PCIe Gen 4 x4 SSD controller is powered by a triple-core ARM Cortex R5 processor with CoXProcessor technology and supports eight channels with up to 32 chip enables (CE) per channel. The E18 also offers features like AES encryption, end-to-end data path protection, SmartECC technology and Phison’s 4th Generation LDPC ECC engine.
For the 1TB version of the XS70, Silicon Power opted to use Micron's 176-layer (B47R) 3D TLC NAND flash. Looking at the picture above, you can see that there are four 256GB NAND flash packages on the top of the PCB. The drive also has a single 1GB SK hynix DDR4 DRAM chip that is used for caching.
