Thursday, January 5th 2023
ADATA XPG PCIe Gen 5 SSD with Active Cooling Pictured
Here are some of the first pictures of the yet-unnamed PCIe Gen 5-based NVMe SSD by ADATA XPG. Built in the M.2-2580 form-factor, the drive features a PCI-Express 5.0 x4 host interface and NVMe 2.0 protocol. At its core is a Silicon Motion SM2508 series controller, coupled with the latest generation 3D TLC NAND flash over a large number of flash channels; and a faster DRAM cache. The drive offers sequential transfer rates of up to 14 GB/s reads, with up to 12 GB/s writes. and 2 million IOPS 4K random transfers. It comes in capacity-based variants, with 8 TB being the largest one.
The most striking aspect about this drive is its active cooling solution. A ridged aluminium monoblock heatsink is used to cool the SM2508 controller. nestled in its center is what appears to be a miniature 10 mm lateral fan. The heatsink has surface-crystallization treatment to increase surface area for heat dissipation. A die-cast aluminium top-plate and 3-sided backplate sandwich the fan-heatsink and the main PCB. The fan is tightly controlled by temperature, and ADATA claims you should barely notice it. To use the drive to its fullest, you'll either need an AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" platform that has dedicated PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slots wired to the processor, or an Intel 700-series chipset motherboard that puts out a Gen 5 M.2 slot by subtracting lanes from the Gen 5 PEG slot.
The most striking aspect about this drive is its active cooling solution. A ridged aluminium monoblock heatsink is used to cool the SM2508 controller. nestled in its center is what appears to be a miniature 10 mm lateral fan. The heatsink has surface-crystallization treatment to increase surface area for heat dissipation. A die-cast aluminium top-plate and 3-sided backplate sandwich the fan-heatsink and the main PCB. The fan is tightly controlled by temperature, and ADATA claims you should barely notice it. To use the drive to its fullest, you'll either need an AMD Ryzen 7000 "Zen 4" platform that has dedicated PCIe Gen 5 M.2 slots wired to the processor, or an Intel 700-series chipset motherboard that puts out a Gen 5 M.2 slot by subtracting lanes from the Gen 5 PEG slot.
11 Comments on ADATA XPG PCIe Gen 5 SSD with Active Cooling Pictured
I hope we get 1x and 2x PCI-e 5.0 drives for consumers with decently low power consumption figures and high capacities.
The problem is one of those things where there are lots of solutions, but if nobody pushes to make narrower lane count storage devices platforms won't change either because why support something that doesn't exist.
Anything more granular isn't supported.
PLX chips are too costly now, but ASMedia and Microchip have equivalent parts, but none make anything as simple as ane eight lane PCIe switch (4 in 4 out that is).