Monday, May 9th 2022
ASUS is Getting Ready to Launch its First Internal SSD
With Gigabyte and more recently MSI offering internal consumer SSDs, it now looks like ASUS is getting ready to join the fray. There's no shortage of companies that are selling SSDs and most are based on very similar hardware and firmware, so the question is what ASUS is going to bring to the market to differentiate itself from the competition. The company hasn't provided any real details at this point in time, beyond a picture posted on its Taiwanese Facebook page.
The picture doesn't give away a ton of details, but what's clear is that ASUS aims to use its ROG gaming brand for the first product that ends up under the Strix sub-brand. The first drive will be called SQ7 and it's a standard M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive that not unsurprisingly uses four PCIe lanes and will come in at least a 1 TB size. It's possible that ASUS will launch its new SSD either during its "Boundless" event on the 17th of May, or during Computex, which kicks off on the 24th of May.
Update: Based on the sharp-eyed observations of our Editor-In-Chief, its highly likely that the ASUS ROG Strix SSD will be based on Phison's E18 controller, paired with Micron's 176-layer NAND, using Phison's reference PCB design. This means that ASUS would go straight after other high-performance drives, like the Kingston KC3000, Corsair MP600 Pro LPX and MSI's Spatium M480. Keep in mind that not all early product shots are of the actual product though, so we're just going to have to wait and see what ASUS brings to the table.
Sources:
ASUS Taiwan Facebook, via VideoCardz
The picture doesn't give away a ton of details, but what's clear is that ASUS aims to use its ROG gaming brand for the first product that ends up under the Strix sub-brand. The first drive will be called SQ7 and it's a standard M.2 PCIe 4.0 drive that not unsurprisingly uses four PCIe lanes and will come in at least a 1 TB size. It's possible that ASUS will launch its new SSD either during its "Boundless" event on the 17th of May, or during Computex, which kicks off on the 24th of May.
Update: Based on the sharp-eyed observations of our Editor-In-Chief, its highly likely that the ASUS ROG Strix SSD will be based on Phison's E18 controller, paired with Micron's 176-layer NAND, using Phison's reference PCB design. This means that ASUS would go straight after other high-performance drives, like the Kingston KC3000, Corsair MP600 Pro LPX and MSI's Spatium M480. Keep in mind that not all early product shots are of the actual product though, so we're just going to have to wait and see what ASUS brings to the table.
45 Comments on ASUS is Getting Ready to Launch its First Internal SSD
I mean there is already not a big difference between a 2.5" SSD and a decent NVMe SSD when it comes to game loading times.
I only have a Kingston A2000 NVMe 'updated firmware' 1TB as my main game drive and I can't see how 1 maybe 2 seconds lower loading times would make me spend more on a SSD when its already damn fast.
Some of my rarely played/not that important games are still on my 7200 rpm HDDs and tbh it doesn't even bother me that much.:oops:
Strictly talking about games here cause RoG is focused on that or what.
Also since some ppl mentioned the possible RGB functions being a problem cause of heat, yeah I guess it was a problem with the early RGB SSDs and if you do heavy productivity/synthetic stuff on it but for gaming purposes nope.
I have an Adata Spectrix RGB NVMe as a system drive but I tried games on it and the temps are fine/no throttling even tho its sandwiched between my GPU and CPU cooler.
I'll continue to always prefer OEM solutions (Samsung, Crucial, WD, Kioxia, SkHynix) that do their own stuff, even if they sometimes also bait and switch, they're a lot more consistent.
5900X on a Strix Gaming E X570.
If you want lower capacity, you still have similar manufacturing, component, packaging, distribution costs, so 500GB isn't much cheaper to make.
If you want higher capacity, you need to buy 16Tbit modules which are high-end, lower volume parts that have inferior yield, and don't get the economy of scale benefits that the 8Tbit packages get. Alternatively you can go down the multi-package option and use more 8Tbit modules but then you require a more expensive controller and PCB.
The TL;DR is that the sweet spot for the phone/tablet/laptop/desktop NAND markets is a 1TB module; It costs extra to use other density modules, and costs extra to add multiple modules.
ROG tax, it's already really bad on boards so why not a m.2 push.
I do think ssd market getting saturated though and hope drives sold today still work properly in five years.
Samsung messed up somehow and produced a fairly mediocre product.
The TUF boards aren't bad at all, but they're priced well above their place in the model range which is basically just above Prime with a different paintjob and maybe slightly better VRM heatsinks. If you assess a board on IO, heatsinks, VRM design, and features, TUF really is at the low and and they're good low-end boards ruined by upper-midrange price tags.
Tuf boards or at least x99 sabertooth had a 5 year warranty, not looked at the tuf to see if that continued but might make the cost understandable a tad
Prime and prime deluxe are just cheap bloated boards no doubt I killed several micro center wasn't to happy but that is what instore warranty is for plus avoiding asus rma :laugh:
I've probably bought my last asus board might give asrock a try if I ever build another rig.