Phison PS5031-E31T 2TB Technical Preview (E31T Controller)

After bringing the world's first PCIe Gen5 controller, the PS5026-E26, to the market, Phison is back with their second-generation PCIe Gen5 product, the PS5031-E31T – and it could make an even bigger impact than the E26. This is because the E31T is not aimed at the high-end segment like the E26, it's aimed at the mainstream market and is the world's first Gen 5 mainstream controller and is also the world's first optimised for notebooks for good measure. Oh, and it's a DRAM-less design as well, relying on HMB technology.

Built using TSMC 7nm process technology the E31T uses single-CPU architecture with a built-in 32-bit microcontroller. The controller supports 4 NAND channels with Flash transfer rates up to 3600MT/s. Up to 8TB of 3D TLC and QLC NAND memory are supported and to protect your data the E31T uses Phison's 7th generation LDPC ECC & RAID ECC engine.

The 2TB reference design SSD that Phison sent us uses the PS5031-E31T in combination with two packages of Kioxia BiCS8 3D TLC NAND. For the 1TB and 2TB reference designs Phison quotes Sequential read/write performance for the 2TB model as up to 10,300MB/s and 8,600MB/s respectively with the 1TB model a little slower at 10,200MB/s and 8,300MB/s for read and writes respectively. Random performance is rated at up to 1,300,000 IOPS for reads and up to 1,500,000 IOPS for writes for both capacities.

Using the CrystalDiskMark 8 benchmark we could confirm those official Sequential ratings with default test figures of 10,363.01MB/s for reads and 8,729MB/s for writes. Using the Peak Performance profile of CrystalDiskMark 8 we could also confirm the official random 4K figures for the drive with default test results of 1,367,880 IOPS for reads and 1,577,389 IOPS for writes.

The 4K QD1 performance of the E31T is excellent for both reads and writes. Using our 4-threaded 4K tests the reference drive topped both the random read and write performance charts, outperforming the high-end drives that make up the tables.

As mentioned at the start of this article, we were sent a reference drive from Phison to use for this preview – this isn't actually a product that will be sold. We would expect to the see the E31T drive in various retail products from the likes of Seagate, Crucial, Corsair, Gigabyte, and so on.

You can read more about the E31T on Phison's website HERE.

Discuss on our Facebook page HERE.

KitGuru says: Phison's PS5031-E31T controller is a game changer. It opens up the promise of seeing Gen 5 SSDs not only in the mainstream market segment but also in the notebook space, given the E31T has been designed to run cooler and more efficiently than the previous generation Gen 5 controllers.

Become a Patron!