PNY CS2142 Review – The Ally’s Companion

Gaming handhelds are a recently popularized form factor that has since begun to attract the attention of major PC makers, and currently both ASUS and Lenovo has joined the party with their respective handhelds – the ROG Ally and Legion Go. (Of course, there’s also Steam Deck that started it all.) As a result, this has kickstarted the component market to provide 3rd-party solutions, which include these particular PNY CS2142 SSDs. Let’s see what kind of performance we can expect.

Unboxing & Appearance

The SSDs that sit inside gaming handhelds like the ROG Ally isn’t regular-sized M.2 2280 ones – rather, it’s a tiny M.2 2230 (the number stands for 22mm x 30mm) form factor designed to fit the tightest of spaces in devices like this. Here we have the PNY CS2142 in both capacity options, 1TB and 2TB, that comes in a standard packaging.

One detail worth noting is that these drives are single-sided, which the ROG Ally requires as the slot is thin enough that a double-sided SSD simply wouldn’t fit inside the motherboard. With a tiny footprint like this, naturally you lose things like DRAM – and even the controller has to be shrunk down considerably to barely fit the PCB itself (but you still have software-based solutions like HMB in its place).

Specifications

PNY CS2142 SSD

Capacity	1TB	2TB
Form Factor	M.2 2230
Interface	PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4
Controller	Phison PS5021-E21
NAND Type	Micron 176-layer QLC NAND
DRAM	None, HMB (Host Memory Buffer) only
Read/Write Speed (Rated)	4,900 MB/s (Read) 3,200 MB/s (Write)	5,000 MB/s (Read) 3,200 MB/s (Write)
IOPS	Unspecified
Write Endurance	Unspecified
Max Power Draw	Unspecified
Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)	1,500,000 hours
Warranty	5 years
Dimensions	30 x 22 x 1.35 mm (single-sided)

Test System

*Some benchmarks are done on the ASUS ROG Ally handheld to demonstrate on-device performance – which will be noted accordingly.

CPU	Intel Core i9-13900K
Cooling	Cooler Master MasterLiquid PL360 Flux 30th Anniversary Edition Cooler Master MasterGel Maker
Motherboard	ASUS ROG Maximus Z790 HERO
GPU	NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 Ti Founders Edition
Memory	Kingston FURY RENEGADE RGB DDR5-6400 CL32 (2x16GB)
Storage	Samsung SSD 980 PRO 256GB (Boot) Kingston NV1 1TB (As tested:) PNY CS2142 1TB PNY CS2142 2TB
Power Supply	Cooler Master MWE Gold 1250 V2 Full Modular 1250W
Case	VECTOR Bench Case (Open-air chassis)
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro 22H2

Performance

CrystalDiskMark

Surprisingly, the measured sequential write speeds of both CS2142 variants turned out to be quite a bit higher than specified (which is 3,200MB/s). Read speeds meanwhile are pretty much in line with the spec sheet; in terms of general performance, it’s not quite on the same ballpark as a typical M.2 2280 high-performance SSD like the PNY CS3140, but it’s pretty good for an SSD in this kind of form factor.

We also run the benchmark directly on the ROG Ally itself for good measure – and this is the numbers you should expect. Pro tip: installing a new SSD on ROG Ally requires a special installation process that isn’t quite cut-and-dry like a conventional PC does. You’ll be required to re-install a custom version of Windows from ASUS’s servers to make this work – which takes around 45 minutes – but when it’s done you can pretty much get going immediately, no additional configuration required.

AS SSD Benchmark

AS SSD presents a rather different outcome, with the 1TB performing faster in one of the random read tests, it’s worth noting that the figures from this benchmarking software is less consistent than others, so your mileage may slightly vary here.

Anvil’s Storage Utilities

Anvil’s results point to an average of 3.54GB/s sequential writes (4MB block), and similar figures on sequential writes – which also happens to be higher than what the specs say. In any case, the performance on both drives are similar enough that you are extremely unlikely to notice.

ATTO Disk Benchmark

Finally, ATTO Disk Benchmark let us take a look at how the drive performs on different block sizes (smaller block size is more akin to random I/O workloads). Again, little differences between the two – hence we can establish that capacity and value will be the more important aspects in comparing these two drives.

Value

So how much are you getting for the price you’re expected to pay? Unsurprisingly, given that M.2 2230 SSDs – especially high-performance ones – remains a rare breed (hopefully that changes as handhelds become popular), you’re paying quite a bit more than the usual price to get the same amount of storage capacity.

We’ve looked at the prices of similar products from other brands including Corsair (MP600 Mini) and Silicon Power (UD90), and both commands prices that sits slightly higher than what PNY offers here. Western Digital’s SN770M meanwhile isn’t officially available here – at least not yet – so that’s pretty much all the options you have when it comes to SSDs designed with handheld in mind.

Warranty

PNY offers 5 years of warranty for both CS2142 models, customers can refer to Fusion Tech Supply Sdn Bhd (PNY local distributor) or PNY Malaysia’s Facebook page for any warranty-related matters. Make sure your product has the yellow sticker as shown above to be eligible for local technical support.

Conclusion

So, what’s good about the PNY CS2142? The performance is pretty much in line of what we can expect out of these tiny SSDs. While not reaching the limits PCIe 4.0 protocol, it’s still plenty fast considering just how tiny they are. You have two capacity to choose from: 1TB and 2TB, and it ultimately depends on your appetite and the size of your Steam Library. The price of RM439 (1TB) and RM875 (2TB) makes the value very much equal, so the question becomes very simple:

How far are you willing to future-proof your gaming handheld? 1TB, or 2TB? Just keep in mind that games can be massive these days, and will probably be even bigger in the future – assuming you want to fit GTA VI when that eventually comes, that is.

You can purchase both variants of the PNY CS2142 SSD by clicking through this link. Special thanks to PNY Malaysia for providing both 1TB and 2TB variants of the CS2142 SSD for this review.