PNY CS2241 SSD Review – Who Says SSDs Can’t Be Cheap?
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Appearance - 7.5/10
7.5/10
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Features - 8/10
8/10
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Materials - 8/10
8/10
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Performance - 7.5/10
7.5/10
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Value - 8.7/10
8.7/10
Summary
For its price, the PNY CS2241 offers decent performance and huge amounts of capacity on offer.
Overall
7.9/10Pros
+ Good I/O performance
+ Four storage capacities on offer
+ 5-year warranty
+ Excellent value for SSDs
Cons
– Slow NAND performance once SLC cache runs out
– No heatsinks included
– QLC NAND comes with relatively low endurance
PNY this time around has sent us the CS2241 SSD – though as you see from the thumbnail above, we didn’t get just one to test drive. In fact, PNY has given us four of them, from the 500GB all the way up to 4TB to see the their performances in different capacities.
Unboxing & Appearance

The packaging is fairly straightforward: it’s essentially just a paper-based packaging and plastic shroud with the SSD housed inside. You’ll need a knife to cut open the rear in order to access the SSD, or perhaps tear it off if you’re rather desperate. All the basic numbers are labeled on the top left, which should give you a brief idea on what segment the CS2241 SSD is aiming for.


As for the design of the SSD itself, it’s nothing too fancy. It’s worth noting that all four models utilize just one side of the SSD (even with 4TB capacities), leaving the other side completely flat – which should make it fit within the thinnest of laptops. It also lacks dedicated DRAM for write buffers, which also helps saving the extra space in this M.2 2280 form factor to fit more NAND chips, giving it higher data density.
Specifications
PNY CS2241 SSD
Capacity | 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, 4TB |
Form Factor | M.2 2280 |
Interface | PCIe 4.0 x4, NVMe 1.4 |
Controller | Phison E21T |
NAND Type | Micron 176-layer QLC NAND |
DRAM | None, HMB (Host Memory Buffer) only |
Read/Write Speed (Rated) | 500GB: 4,700 MB/s (Read), 1,700 MB/s (Write) 1TB: 5,100 MB/s (Read), 3,200 MB/s (Write) 2TB: 5,000 MB/s (Read), 4,200 MB/s (Write) 4TB: 5,000 MB/s (Read), 4,200 MB/s (Write) |
IOPS | Unspecified |
Write Endurance | 500GB: 160TBW 1TB: 320TBW 2TB: 640TBW 4TB: 900TBW |
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) | 1,500,000 hours |
Warranty | 5 years |
Test System
CPU | Intel Core i9-13900K |
Cooling | ASUS ROG Ryujin II 360 AIO 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 CS2241 500GB PNY CS2241 1TB PNY CS2241 2TB PNY CS2241 4TB |
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
Performance-wise, this is pretty respectable as far as rated speeds go. In fact, PNY may have slightly undersold the performance of the 2TB and 4TB variants, with the measured write speed 200MB/s and 300MB/s higher respectively than the rated 4,200MB/s figure seen on the label. In terms of random 4K I/O, the 2TB variant is the “sweet spot” where it achieves the highest read and write I/O in average.
On the 500GB model, the write speed is significantly lower than its larger capacity siblings, down to just 1,785MB/s as tested (the drive is rated at 1,700MB/s). Still, in realistic usage scenarios you’re very unlikely to see any performance differences between all four drives, given that A – all drives achieves similar I/O performance; and B – you really have to be comparing it side-by-side to see the differences, which by SSD standards are measured in mere milliseconds.
AS SSD Benchmark
AS SSD’s numbers are slightly different than what CrystalDiskMark says. On one hand, the results sees universally lower read/write speeds, and not in the values that PNY advertised. The other fact is that according to the software, the 4TB model achieves the highest score. Still, you’re looking at access times in the nanosecond range – 18 nanoseconds at most.
Anvil’s Storage Utilities
As for Anvil, the similar trend continues. Scores point to all three larger drives are within the same ballpark of performance, with the 500GB model drops quite a few bit of scores due to its relatively weak write performance (emphasis on ‘relatively’).
AIDA64 Disk Benchmark
AIDA64’s benchmark pushes the drives with sustained write test. All four drives here shares one single exact same trait: the maximum write speed can only sustain up to 25% of the total capacity before it tanked to figures that at best matches HDDs (for 2TB and 4TB models), and at worse slower than that.
The CS2241 would be perfectly fine in most use cases though, as you rarely do file transfers large enough to overwhelm the SLC cache it contains (on top of overprovisioning space). We don’t recommend using this drive for full drive transfers however – as you can see with the timer in all the images above, it’s not gonna be a quick one.
Value
Here’s the killer part. Thanks to ongoing NAND oversupply issue, SSDs can be had for incredibly cheap prices these days. For this particular drive which is already budget-oriented to begin with, you’re looking at capacity so cheap that it’s almost unthinkable just two years ago the price would’ve been doubled from what you see here (or half the capacity, if you look at it the other way). If you want the absolute best value, both 1TB and 2TB versions land right on that sweet spot.
Warranty
PNY offers 5 years of warranty for all CS2241 models, and as usual – warranty enquiries can be directed at Fusion Tech Supply Sdn Bhd (PNY local distributor) or simply head to PNY Malaysia’s Facebook page. Just make sure your product contains the sticker as seen above, and you’re well covered.
Conclusion
While we have four of the CS2241 SSD here, and each of them perform slightly differently to each other, they all have the same traits: value. Value is a good thing, but of course corners has to be cut to keep prices relatively reasonable – especially for those who may be still hanging on with HDDs that may soon become obsolete (Bethesda’s Starfield is set to be the very first game that completely eliminates HDDs, and Cyberpunk 2077 is in the process of phasing out HDDs in their latest content expansion update).
Being a budget SSD meant it also have a few quirks: namely, the lack of DRAM onboard, as well as QLC-based NAND chips that bogged down the overall performance to some extent. You may want to avoid doing super long sustained write operations, as the speeds will tank once SLC cache dries up. That said, filling up your drive will not affect short-term performance thanks to overprovisioned space. Still, if you need absolute performance – PNY also has the XLR8 gaming line to scratch that itch if you need to.
Thankfully, the Phison E21T controller which comes with HMB (Host Memory Buffer) mitigates the lack of DRAM somewhat by using your PC’s RAM to assist in copying and disk writing operations – just make sure you have a good amount of RAM available, as it may take up a few GBs in your system during large file transfers. On that note, thermals largely isn’t a concern here – especially with motherboard heatsinks involved. The single-sided chip design should make it fit within ultrathin laptops as well.
The pricing for PNY CS2241 SSD are RM155 for 500GB, RM225 for 1TB, RM435 for 2TB and RM1,179 for the uber-large 4TB version. It’s definitely on the cheaper side, and as far as limited number of 4TB SSDs that exists out there, it’s among the cheapest option you can get if you really need all that space to, presumably, fit in your massive Steam library. In any case, if you need an abundance of storage on the cheap while still need that sweet SSD speeds, this makes for a very compelling option indeed.
Thanks to PNY Malaysia for providing us all four CS2241 SSD models for this review.
I’m thinking about buying the 1 TB Model.