SK Hynix releases a high-quality SSD at a wonderfully affordable price with the new Gold S31

What is it?

SK Hynix is known for creating effective affordable memory and storage products at an affordable cost so it is no surprise that they have released a great SSD solution for consumers. The S31 offers premium SSD technology in these gold drives such as their own 3D Nand controller and Dram allowing for maximum speeds in the 2.5″ drive. The built-in Dram makes moving and using large files much faster and more stable. This is a feature usually restricted to the more elite and expensive drives. You may see some drives that are cheaper but do not offer this technology that may make the life of the drive and stability much less that you will see in the SK Hynix Gold S31.

Unboxing and Initial Thoughts

The S31 comes in a compact very no-frills box with a user manual and the drive. The drive itself has a very nice brushed metal casing with the Sk Hynix Gold logo and pertinent information on the exterior. It is a 2.5″ form factor drive so if you are planning on installing this into your desktop I recommend that you use or purchase a drive caddy to keep it stable. It uses a SATA III connector and power adapter so make sure that your computer also has sufficient cables and a power source. There are for screw holes for mounting to your laptop or pc. The S31 has the straightforward and standard setup that you see all SSDs so if you are already familiar with that there are no surprises here.

Product Specifications: Gold S31

Interface SATA III
Product Type Internal SSD
Form Factor Standard 2.5”
SSD capacity 1TB/500GB/250GB
NAND Flash 3D NAND Flash
Controller SK Hynix Controller
Sequential Read up to 560MB/s
Sequential Write up to 525MB/s
Warranty 5 years

Testing the Speeds

So SK Hynix claims that the drives offer a 556mb per second read speed and a 506mb per second read speed. So you are looking at roughly a half a gigabyte per second of information per second, which is roughly double what your old mechanical hard drive can do.

That may not make some sense to some, so I tried some basic tests that we can all understand. The first test looked at how fast can it install Windows 10 Professional. If you are buying this drive to upgrade your computer, many of you will be doing a fresh OS install. So from the moment I pressed the power button to the time it first opened my Windows home screen, it took four minutes and fifty-one seconds. Traditionally I would get up and cook a meal or at the very least grab a soda and snack while Windows was installed, but with the S31 I never had a chance to get off the couch. This is laughable for me. I still remember installing Windows 95 with 12 floppy disks and having it take a minimum of an afternoon. Even a year ago I installed Windows 10 on a Western Digital Black mechanical drive and it took roughly half an hour. So being able to install Windows 10 in the time it takes for an extended commercial break is amazing. I was also able to reboot Windows from the time I hit the reboot button to the home screen in around 30 seconds which is also fabulous.

The Time it took me to install Windows 10 from button to final home screen.

Final Thoughts and Recommendation

SK Hynix has been a leader in making products on the professional end of the market for a long time and stands behind their work. Along with the great read and write speeds of the S31 Gold Drive it comes with a five-year warranty which is phenomenal for any hard drive. I am really excited to see the SSD market finally come down out of the pricing stratosphere. For years hard drives have been one of the main causes of computers hitting a speed/bandwidth bottleneck. So now may be a good time to upgrade your home or work PC and maybe bring new life to that laptop you have been toting around the last couple of years. SK Hynix offers some different sizes and prices just in case you want to take it slow and just dip your toe in the SSD Market.

I definitely would take advantage and pick up an SK Hynix Gold S31 Drive!