The CS2342 is a mega burner with smaller data sets, therefore, PNY didn’t lie in its PR. in a unique class. It’s a great option for a Steam Deck or daily use. Unfortunately, secondary cache isn’t the drive you want for writing big data sets because of its very poor allocation.

Features

When there is a 2242 form-factor for M, why did PNY decide to call a 2230 (22 mm wide, 30 mm long) drive the CS2342? Two SSDs is a conundrum. I did a double-take before I took it out of the package, even though it is a 3 instead of a 2. Multiple buyers will likely be perplexed.

A true 2230 form factor, PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe, M.2 SSD, the CS2342 is made to fit into small form-factor devices like Steam Decks. The NAND is a fast, multilayer TLC, and the controller is a Phison PS5027-E27-75 host memory buffer (system memory as primary cache) type (see the performance discussion).

Although it is impossible to see on the website, the CS2343’s TBW (terabytes that may be written) rating of 600 TBW per 1TB of capacity, which is the standard for TLC, lessens the five-year warranty that PNY offers on the device.

Since most users don’t type nearly as much data as they may think, this is probably not a problem. Unless, of course, you’re a user looking for facts or a journalist attempting to convey them.

Cost

As of this writing, the CS2342 costs $96.99 for the 1TB model and $161.99 for the 2TB model; it is currently around $6 less expensive on Amazon. When we looked on Amazon for our review, we found that to was slightly less expensive than the WD SN770M and Corsair MP600 Core Mini competitors (see the performance section).

Because of Nintendo’s new double-down on getting every last penny out of gamers, the price of 2230 SSDs seems a little excessive. I respond, “Give me MAME.”

What is the PNY CS2342’s speed?

The size of the data set you give the CS2342 has a significant impact on how well it performs. With a 32 GiB test load, it dominates the competition in CrystalDiskMark 8, as you can see below. With the lesser load, that’s a full 2 GBps quicker than the competition for both reading and writing. Nothing to sneeze at, for sure. Unfortunately, the CS2342 was still impressive when reading, but not nearly as great when writing, when I standardized on the 64 GiB test load a long time ago.

The comparatively modest quantity of secondary cache allocated is the problem. When you write more than 70GB, the speed lowers to the native write rate of 750 MBps. This had an impact on several experiments. Please take note that the slowdown below only happened when I failed to let the drive recover from a 48GB write. On the plus side, the native write rate of 750 MBps is far faster than that of the more recent QLC or the older TLC, both of which can plummet to hard drive speeds. However, using the secondary cache does not result in 3 GBps. A bummer.

Since the controller doesn’t allocate more secondary cache on the fly, as I just mentioned, it will reload the supply after a short break.The 64 GiB CrystalDiskMark 8 workload performance figures for the CS2342 are shown below. Although the 7 GBps read performance is still outstanding, the write speed is much slower than the 6 GBps displayed in the previous graphic.

Should the CS2342 be purchased?

For the majority of customers, the CS2342 is the best 2230 SSD to purchase due to its low cost and blazingly quick sequential transfers with smaller data sets. But if you write more data regularly, check out one of its competitors.