Galax is joining the PCIe 5.0 SSD crowd with its newest HOF Extreme 50 SSD that has been launched in China, and should come to the rest of the markets soon. The Galax HOF Extreme 50 will be only available in 1 TB and 2 TB capacities, and comes with thick heatsink with active cooling via PWM fan.

As it is the case with all other PCIe 5.0 SSDs currently on the market, the HOF Extreme 50 is based on Phison E26 controller paired up with Micron 232-layer 3D NAND flash and up to 4 GB of LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The Galax HOF Extreme 50 is not the fastest Phison E26-based PCIe 5.0 SSD announced, as Gigabyte Aorus Gen 5 1000, MSI Spatium M570 Pro, and Crucial T700, are coming and reaching up to 12 GB/s (12.4 GB/s for the Crucial T700).The Galax HOF Extreme 50 reaches sequential speeds of up to 10,000 MB/s for read and 9,500 MB/s for write for the 2 TB version, and up to 9,500 MB/s for sequential read and up to 8,500 MB/s for sequential write on the 1 TB version. The random 4K performance peaks at 1,500,000 IOPS for read and 1,250,000 IOPS for write for the 2 TB version, and 1,300,000 IOPS for read and 1,100,000 IOPS for write on the 1 TB version.

The endurance rating is at 1,400TBW for the 2 TB and while there is no information about the 1 TB version, it should be at 700TBW, which is in line with most of the Micron 232-layer 3D NAND-based SSDs on the market.

Crucial, Gigabyte, and MSI cool their own PCIe Gen 5 SSDs with a passive heatsink, so we are not sure what kind of noise levels we could expect from the Galax HOF Extreme 50, even if it is a 4-pin PWM fan. According to Galax, the cooling systems keeps the HOF Extreme 50 between 40°C and 45°C even under heavy load.

According to the information coming from China, the HOF Extreme 50 is priced at 2,499 yuan ($363.47), and it should launch in the US soon at $349.99.