Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Review: Big, Fast NVMe Cloud Storage


Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Review: Additional Benchmarks And Our Verdict

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EFD Software's HD Tune is described on the company's website thusly: "HD Tune is a hard disk utility with many functions. It can be used to measure the drive's performance, scan for errors, check the health status (S.M.A.R.T.), securely erase all data and much more." The latest version of the benchmark added temperature statistics and improved support for SSDs, among a few other updates and fixes.

HD Tune Pro v5.75: Bandwidth & Latency

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The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drives offered the highest throughput and tied for the lowest latencies here. They were competitive in the burst tests as well, save for the D7-P5510 which put up a significantly higher score.

CrystalDiskMark Storage Tests

CrystalDiskMark is a synthetic benchmark that tests both sequential and random small and mid-sized file transfers using incompressible data. It provides a quick look at best and worst case scenarios with regard to SSD performance, best case being larger sequential transfers and worse case being small, random transfers.

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The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drives offered some of the best performance across the board in CrystalDiskMark as well. Whether using higher or low queue depths, random or sequential transfers, the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 drives finish at or near the top of the charts.

Latency Under Load

For this next set of tests, we measured access latency at various queue depths with the same fully random IOmeter 4K access pattern (67% reads, 33% writes) featured previously, but while each of the drives was also under a sustained sequential write workload. A sustained sequential write across the entire volume was initiated, and when performance plateaued, access latency was measured with IOMeter using the 4K fully random access pattern.

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While under load, the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 hardly blinked and maintained similarly, only slightly higher latency. The Intel D7-P5510 ultimately has a slight edge, but the consistency of the Solidigm SSD D7-P5520's latency performance remained consistent here.

Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 Summary And Conclusion:

Solidigm set out to offer leading-edge, native PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, with class-leading real-world performance across a variety of workloads, with the new D7-P5520 of drives. In our testing the company delivered just that. The 7.68TB Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 was one of the highest performing solid state drives we tested, especially in terms of reads and when places under higher loads. 
Both the 7.68TB and 3.84TB Solidigm D7-P5520 series Solid State Drives put up excellent, competitive numbers across the board. Unfortunately, we haven't been able to find them for sale anywhere just yet, so calculating street prices isn't an option currently. However, if history is any indicator, Solidigm's pricing will likely be aggressive. Intel's SSD D7-P5510 drives, which are very similar, can be found for "only" $0.18 - $0.24 per gigabyte, which isn't much higher than some of the better consumer-class drives currently on the market.

Considering their strong performance and competitive endurance ratings with other drives in this class, the Solidigm's SSD D7-P5520 series is easy to recommend (higher endurance P5620 series drives are also coming down the pipe). The Solidigm SSD D7-P5520 offers strong overall performance in a variety of high demand workloads, with leading-edge features, a solid warranty, and what we expect to be competitive prices. We look forward to seeing what this new but seasoned storage competitor is cooking up next.


  • Competitive Performance
  • Low Latency
  • High Capacities And Throughput
  • Competitive Pricing (expected)
  • Trailed In Some Tests At Mid-Range QD
  • Random Writes Marginally Faster Than Previous Gen

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