Question Replaced my Adata SX8100 for a SK hynix Gold P31 NVMe 1TB

Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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I do get tired of wasting money on computers that I plan to retire sooner rather than later. My 512GB A-data SX8100 (think poor man's S8200pro) had issues booting from time to time. I thought it was my motherboard because it's old. Then I read others having issues with A-data NVMe drives as well. It was a fast drive, not the fastest but when you put in cheap NVMe drives. You can tell it was a hot-rod NVMe for a PCI-e 3 drive. A couple of times in 100 or so boots the computer would hang on boot. Simply holding the power button down would restart the computer as if nothing happened. Once the drive was up and running it never had issues.

Here is what the numbers look like between the two drives. Userbenchmark says the SK Hynix is the 12th fastest NVMe drive (behind all those PCI-i4 drives) but they do not list it in their rankings. It boots faster than the SX8100 and has no micro stutter or hitch when booting. They also do not list the SX8100 in their rankings after running the benchmark. It's their somewhere. After benching both these drives there are thousands of other benches of the same drives.

Adata SX8100 512GB


SX8100 performance.png

SK hynix Gold P31 1TB
SK hynix Gold S31.png
 
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Shmee

Memory & Storage, Graphics Cards Mod Elite Member
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Cool, a nice little upgrade, especially since you doubled the storage capacity.
 

BonzaiDuck

Lifer
Jun 30, 2004
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I tend to be more lavish in upgrades for my old computers, but it stops at a point where I've decided that this or that computer has a limited planned lifespan. So I don't make NVME upgrades to my Sandy Bridge boxes -- still running as they do.

My first and only NVME drive was a Samsung 960 Pro I picked up in early 2017 for a mere $600 (+ or -). This year, I had some spare parts after replacing the motherboard on that particular Skylake system under warranty. I usually won't wait for RMA confirmation or the turnaround if the computer is essential for its continued operation, so I look for surplus parts on EBay.

I simply decided to build a twin system -- identical down to the last detail for my 13-year-old case design of a CoolerMaster Stacker 832. I won't go into the reasons I think this dated case design is ideal for me -- just assume that it is indeed ideal for very practical reasons. I found one for about 2/3 of what I'd paid for it new back in 2007/2008.

Of course I needed at least one 1TB NVME drive, and I discovered the SK Hynix Gold P31 units for about $135 -- a fraction of what I"d paid for the Samsung 960 Pro.

In about a month or so, I'll have my case-mods and installations done and it will be ready to fire up the twin for the first time. Given the OP"s experience displayed in this thread, I have very high hopes for these drives. Since I'm not with CIA or NSA, the Samsung encryption feature not offered with the SK Hynix drives has little or no value for me in the scheme of things.
 

Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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I wanted to add. The SK Hynix gold NVME drive has a firmware update. Installed it, did nothing but install was easy and fast. I had not done a hard drive firmware update in more than 5 years for any kind of drive. Closer to 10 years probably. Some get confused by some reviews saying it's a great laptop drive because it runs very cool and it's very power efficient. I swear by my Samsung 850 Evo Sata III SSD's. Top performance and reliability.

I will keep this thread updated.
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
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I think I'm going through the same thing with my current WD desktop SSD. Although it shows healthy, my system has been crawling at times now for over a week, and it seems to be getting worse (and more frequent). I couldn't even play music on my PC earlier as my mouse almost freezes every 1 second when trying to move it. I have extra of most components to swap out, but I had no extra NVMe drives.

It would have been an easy decision if the SK Hynix P31 had been on sale, but it went back to it's full price after Prime Day. The Adata SX8200 PRO was on sale for $99.99 with a coupon, but I lost all faith in Adata when they began secretly swapping in inferior controllers and NAND. So for that sole reason, I passed on it. That drive used to be one of the best $/performance drives out there, but it is what it is.

I ended up getting the Samsung 980 (the DRAMless one) because most other 1TB NVMe drives on Amazon were either out of stock or at full MSRP. The 980 was $109, so it kind of "won" by default. Hopefully I don't regret not spending the extra $30+ on a drive with DRAM.
 
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VirtualLarry

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In my limited usage thus far with a pair of 980 non-pro 500GB models, they seem to work and perform satisfactorily. Haven't noticed any weird lagging, like I sometimes saw with a WD SN750 Black non-heatsink model.
 
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Viper GTS

Lifer
Oct 13, 1999
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I've been watching these for months as I've been looking to fill this:

1624571324598.png

Grabbed four on Prime Day. Playing around with Storage Spaces (with two 970 EVO+ as well):

1624571414962.png

Very happy so far and IMO they're the perfect drives to run in this. I'm running it with the fan switched off and under heavy load they stay nice and cool vs the 970 EVO+ that are likely thermally throttling in the onboard slots.

I have another one of these cards on the way to hopefully solve the thermal throttling issues and maybe demote my GPU to an x8 slot to fully populate another card.

Viper GTS
 

UsandThem

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May 4, 2000
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In case anyone wanted to know how the newer budget 980 compares to the P31:

9.jpg

If they were at the same price when I bought, I would have 100% for sure gone with the P31. The 980 is slower no doubt, but probably not noticeable in most of the things I do with my PC.

However, the 1TB 980 was priced 18% lower than the P31 at the time of purchase, so it was a decent purchase for the money (not to mention all my constant micro stutters seems to be now fixed).
 
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Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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I just wanted to let the P31 gold NVMe drive soak in my system for a month. This drive is the real deal. My system has been buttery smooth. Not a single blue screen in Windows 10. This is a great drive.

At one point in time I inadvertently had the Adata SX8100 running in UEFI+Legacy. The Hynix gold is UEFI only. I do not think that would cause the Adata NVMe drive to be buggy and unstable as a drive. I read others having issues with the Adata NVMe drives on this forum and other forums. A micro stutter and quite a few blue screens.

Anyway, the SK Hynix drive is great and the real deal if you need an NVMe 1.3 drive. I do also love my Samsung SATA III SSD's.
 

Hans Gruber

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Dec 23, 2006
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For those who missed the Gold P31 (1TB) deal on Amazon a few weeks ago. It's back $107.99
 
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UsandThem

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I finally bought one of their P31 drives for my laptop today. I've had two of my older Samsung 850 EVOs (bought in 2015) die without warning over the last 6 months even though they didn't have that many writes on them, so I decided to preemptively retire the final 850 EVO I had in my laptop after my wife's drive decided to die a few days ago. The P31 was on sale this time, and was only a few bucks higher than the Samsung 980.

Despite there being a weird issue from using their cloning software, the laptop eventually was able to boot after a few attempts. The drive is speedy, and even in my laptop where there's no airflow, it pretty well stays in the mid to upper 40s range which is pretty impressive for a NVMe drive.