The SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD is a very impressive 1TB drive. It's fast, it's reliable (we've been running it for the past three weeks) and it does what it says it will do. For a price of $118 (via Amazon), there isn't a lot to hate about it. We've yet to find an imperfection in its design and execution.
While PC hardware isn’t our main item of interest for reviewing, as you can see through our history of reviews (mostly video games/accessories and movies), we do actually enjoy the challenge of seeing what we can find out about hardware when given the opportunity. It’s like doing fun usability testing but in a Digitalchumps style.
Anyway, today we’ve put together our first SSD review of the SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD. The specs for the drive are broken down as such:
Capacity: 1TB
Type: Internal SSD, SATA III Interface (2.5-inch)
Specs: 3D NAND + SK hynix Controller
Warranty: 5 years or 600TBW
Performance: 560MB/s
We ran the SSD through a bevy of benchmarks (2) and did some actual speed tests with consumer apps. Do we feel professional in the process? God, yes. Was it interesting to explore the ins/outs of SSD testing? You have no idea, but we are a bunch of nerds, so you can probably guess that answer. Did the SSD do well? Let’s find out.
Benchmarks
ATTO Disk Benchmark
This benchmark test was quick and dirty, which is a usability term if you didn’t know. It took about 5-minutes max, and it involved simply closing all programs and hitting a start button (fancy shit). The crux of the test was to figure out the read/write speeds of the drive while being mostly unimpeded by other programs. For the most part, the ATTO Disk Benchmark came back with pretty decent results (below). We performed this test three separate times and each one came back somewhat close to the previous test, which points to reliability of speeds.
Result: The read/write speeds were consistent. At its highest, the drive was pulling around 532mb read, while the write speed fell somewhere around 460mb. The latter of the two was the more inconsistent of the pair, as you can see in the math. Regardless, according to this benchmark software, it’s still a fast drive. While it didn’t necessarily reach its advertised 560mb speed, it still brought a high level of consistency with how fast it performed.
Again, this is certainly quick and dirty, but nonetheless not too far off from the truth.
PCMark 8 (yes, we haven’t upgraded yet)
This benchmark testing software took about 1.5 hours to complete. PCMark is actually one of the highest-rated testing software out there on the market and one that usability labs depend on when testing out systems. We ran ours through the Steam client (yep, it’s available through it). The software does a thorough breakdown of hardware and takes into account other factors that contribute or hinder said hardware. In short, it was probably the most trustworthy of the two benchmarks pieces. It’s also a piece of software that you pay for, unlike ATTO (take that as a positive or negative), so that has to be something, right? Kidding, but it is something in this case.
Anyway, here are its results:
According to PCMark 8, the score for this drive was 4934 overall. What that means is that at least 60% of the SSD could not outperform this drive. It also is an impressive score for an SSD to have, and it is highly recommended according to the software’s scale. That’s a solid way of saying it’s awesome. As you can see with the above breakdown, the PC system as a whole was taken into account and detailed out, so that all factors of the system’s construction was taken into consideration during the benchmark tests.
Result: This drive passed with flying colors according to the software’s scale, and is highly recommended.
Fun speed tests
We understand this doesn’t mean much, but it was fun
As the title here states, we know the following doesn’t mean much, but it was fun to try out anyway. We put the SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD up against a loaded MacBook Pro (similar specs, sans the GPU — Apple has yet to discover GPUs) featuring an APPLE SSD AP1024J. We loaded up two pieces of software and timed each to see how fast the software launched.
NOTE: The current OS for the PC was Windows 10 (and its latest build), while the MacOS was Catalina (beta).
Microsoft Word
SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD: 1.53 seconds
APPLE SSD AP1024J: 7.79 seconds
Adobe Photoshop
SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD: 4.73 seconds
APPLE SSD AP1024J: 8.22 seconds
There are so many other factors here that could help/hinder those SSD times, but it was still fun trying something different. Clearly, based on these times, the SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD was superior, though Tim Cook would disagree.
Loading a fresh copy of Windows 10
This is timed from the moment I clicked ‘next’ after formatting the drive in the Windows setup menu.
Windows Install: 1m 47 seconds
This was the fastest I’ve seen Windows installed in my 13 years of IT work. It was scary impressive. The Windows ISO was stored on a USB 3.0 Thumb drive.
Overall, as the above results state, the SK hynix Gold S31 Internal SSD is a very impressive 1TB drive. It’s fast, it’s reliable (we’ve been running it for the past three weeks) and it does what it says it will do. For a price of $118 (via Amazon), there isn’t a lot to hate about it. We’ve yet to find an imperfection in its design and execution.
