Gigabyte Shows Off 15 GB/s PCIe 4.0 SSD

[AleksandarK]

With AMD chipset based motherboards like X570 and next-generation Ryzen 3000 series CPUs delivering the 4.0 version of the PCIe protocol for consumers, products based on the faster protocol are bound to take advantage of its improvements - especially in terms of better bandwidth.

At their Computex booth, Gigabyte showed off some pretty impressive results of their PCIe 4.0 based SSD card. The so-called "Auros AIC Gen4 SSD" is a performance monster. It is able to pack up to four PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSDs that can go up to 2 TB of density each, for a maximum 8 TB total storage. Put them in RAID 0 configuration, though, and you will get some amazing performance numbers. Gigabyte demonstrated speeds exceeding 15 GB/s in sequential reads and writes, providing much more bandwidth than what has ever seen before ina consumer-geared product. The SSD comes with an aluminum shroud with pre-applied thermal pads to facilitate heat dissipation. Additionally, there is a blower fan attached to the card to keep a constant flow of fresh air, which seems like a must if you're packing four M.2 drives inside a tiny aluminum case.



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[Vya Domus]

People lost their shit about that tiny fan on the chipset. What about a blower style SSD ?

 

[Ferrum Master]

Sequental writes... gosh... PR geeks... bigger number, bigger epeen... yet it is slower than some existing solution in the marker un other things.

 

[JAB Creations]

People lost their shit about that tiny fan on the chipset. What about a blower style SSD ?

LOL! I know right! People were like, "OMG AMD CAN BUT WON'T FIGHT THE LAWS OF PHYSICS!" It's a dinky little fan. What they SHOULD be saying is, "Can I easily replace it should it die considering the cost of the motherboard?"

Also what are RAM speeds? Because I think this is a solid fraction of what RAM is capable of and I know it's a good possibility that RAM and storage will eventually merge sometime in the 2020s.

I also know that there is always some edge-case where that much storage bandwidth is somehow useful and for more than just moving large files between drives. I installed an NVMe drive with crazy two or three gigabyte read speeds on a client computer about two years ago though the boot and application load speeds didn't improve, at least noticeably. I'm mostly curious where that performance starts to make a difference for someone, even if it's really niche.

 

[robal]

It has a faaaan !
Wheeeezzeebbbzeeeebbebeezbebebebze !

 

[bug]

4kQD1 random reads, a little above 100MB/s. That's the performance you can expect from these. Still faster than most drives tho.

 

[aQi]

Well a word to the wise. If someone is planning to put this monster in x570 better not as it will occupy the only x16 gen 4 slot. But what gives, i cant take into consideration the navi with pci x16 gen 4 ready, however not complete bandwidth is used by any gpu in terms of gaming.

 

[Vayra86]

So basically Gigabyte picked up a budget GPU shroud and stuffed a few drives in it.

Fan tas tic

 

[aQi]

So basically Gigabyte picked up a budget GPU shroud and stuffed a few drives in it.

Fan tas tic

Exactly an all in one solution. Not only this but it is customisable, means it contains 4 m2 nvme ready slots each with 4 lanes. A total of 16 lanes consumed in raid. Intel should definitely introduce pci e gen 4 not for competition but for end user deliverance. Lanes wont be a problem for amd after all as AMD with Threadripper is just waiting Intel to expose there refresh of X series cpus this fall. So we wont have a Threadripper that often.

 

[cucker tarlson]

People lost their shit about that tiny fan on the chipset. What about a blower style SSD ?

Yes sir cause a mid range mobo chipset and four nvme drives packed onto a single card are not the same.
Just cause a gpu has a fan doesn't mean I'll want one on my regular memory sticks

 

[xorbe]

Real world gains from sata ssd to nvme are barely there. The benchmarks are huge here, but will it make anything faster day to day, short of video/multimedia editing or server environments.

 

[windwhirl]

People lost their shit about that tiny fan on the chipset. What about a blower style SSD ?

Add some RGB lighting and voila! Perfect... For people to throw their complaints at.

 

[cucker tarlson]

Also,LOL at 15000mb/s while no one noticed 4k write is at 140mb.
My 128gb Sata SSD does 110.

 

[kapone32]

I was reading that the chipset for X570 can support a maximum of 3 NVME drives but I also am thinking that they used an expansion card in the 1st PCI-E slot because unless I am mistaken it is the only place to put in a 16 lane expansion card. Unless the PCI-E lanes have grown from 16-8-4 to 16-16-4.

 

[aQi]

Real world gains from sata ssd to nvme are barely there. The benchmarks are huge here, but will it make anything faster day to day, short of video/multimedia editing or server environments.

Well think the other way around its a complete solution where you dont have to buy extra hardware, fill in slots and all. Its not limited to end user only. Its targeted towards growing data centers.

I was reading that the chipset for X570 can support a maximum of 3 NVME drives but I also am thinking that they used an expansion card in the 1st PCI-E slot because unless I am mistaken it is the only place to put in a 16 lane expansion card. Unless the PCI-E lanes have grown from 16-8-4 to 16-16-4.

True that !!!

But Threadripper has yet to offer more

 

[FreedomEclipse]

I want one of these purely for the fact that i can load into new maps before the server thats hosting the game can load up a new map.

 

[cucker tarlson]

I want one of these purely for the fact that i can load into new maps before the server thats hosting the game can load up a new map.

need ramdisk

 

[kapone32]

Well think the other way around its a complete solution where you dont have to buy extra hardware, fill in slots and all. Its not limited to end user only. Its targeted towards growing data centers.



True that !!!

But Threadripper has yet to offer more

I know that is why I went with TR4. I am just waiting to see if they will release a 3rd Gen TR4 CPU. I also fear that these Mbs for X570 will be more expensive than some of the X399 boards. I was reading that the lowest PCB will be 6 layers. I know Gigabyte used 4 layers on the Aorus Gaming 7.

 

[aQi]

I know that is why I went with TR4. I am just waiting to see if they will release a 3rd Gen TR4 CPU. I also fear that these Mbs for X570 will be more expensive than some of the X399 boards. I was reading that the lowest PCB will be 6 layers. I know Gigabyte used 4 layers on the Aorus Gaming 7.

Yes its correct, take an example of 1000$ Asrock Aqua. Each and every company is offering alot of features packed into X570 classification. PCB is expensive and will be alike because of PCIe Gen 4.
Threadripper is just behind the curtain until Intel refreshes its X series line up which it announced to be happening this fall.

 

[InVasMani]

My initial thoughts on this are that I'd have rather seen Gigabyte make a modern I-Ram based on PCIE 4.0 x16. This device would still be crazy paired with primo cache though.

Also,LOL at 15000mb/s while no one noticed 4k write is at 140mb.
My 128gb Sata SSD does 110.

Small random queue depths don't exactly favor all that additional overhead and I'm guessing it was formatted for higher sequential speeds as well on top of that for the wow factor. This thing is targeting a certain crowd of buyers in the first place which I don't think really care about that random I/O speed nearly as much.

I know that is why I went with TR4. I am just waiting to see if they will release a 3rd Gen TR4 CPU. I also fear that these Mbs for X570 will be more expensive than some of the X399 boards. I was reading that the lowest PCB will be 6 layers. I know Gigabyte used 4 layers on the Aorus Gaming 7.

If you can wait I think 7nm Threadripper will be better value more surface area for cooling with higher core count and cache sizes and quad channel support for more memory bandwidth. One thing I'd love to know is if some X399 motherboard could support PCIE 4.0 with a bios update they way a few of them do for AM4. In theory I don't see why not and might even be more likely the X399 motherboards are a bit more substantial to begin with. I'd be more surprised if none of them do and it's skipped entirely, but who knows.

 

[JAB Creations]

If someone is planning to put this monster in x570 better not as it will occupy the only x16 gen 4 slot.

Aqueel, for all x570 and (vendor supported) older AM4 boards all the slots will be PCI-Express 4.0. I think you got confused because of where the PCI-E lanes come from. It's 20 from the CPU (so 16X to the first GPU) plus four then the rest from the chipset. They kept mentioning that they can only get to the first PCI-E slot from the CPU because of the limitation of the physical distance before the signal begins to degrade. Makes me wonder how much more effort would have gotten another half a foot to a foot?

 

[king of swag187]

Title is a little clickbaity, but amazed by this.

 

[aQi]

Aqueel, for all x570 and (vendor supported) older AM4 boards all the slots will be PCI-Express 4.0. I think you got confused because of where the PCI-E lanes come from. It's 20 from the CPU (so 16X to the first GPU) plus four then the rest from the chipset. They kept mentioning that they can only get to the first PCI-E slot from the CPU because of the limitation of the physical distance before the signal begins to degrade. Makes me wonder how much more effort would have gotten another half a foot to a foot?

Its Aqeel not Aqueel

My friend you are going off shores now. You see achieving PCIe Gen 4 speeds and its solid implementation is not easy. The number of lanes coming from the processor is “24”. And yes they are all PCIe Gen 4. Out of which 4 are provided to the southbridge (x570 chipset) and further down stream lanes are offered by x570 they are too PCIe Gen 4. So now comes x470 where the chipset isnt offering any PCIe Gen 4 Support. If you put a ryzen 3rd gen into those boards we have to bear one thing more only the x16 slot will be offered as PCIe Gen 4 in older boards rather then all.
X570 TDP(upto 15w) is higher and has a fan. This has many reason and the most obvious is offering of PCIe Gen 4. The chip itself is expensive and to implement its solid grounds arrangements have to be made. Not all previous motherboards will be delivering PCIe Gen 4 support to us where as x570 will offer full potential of PCIe Gen4.

 

[Prima.Vera]

Judging by the 4K speeds, this abomination it's almost as fast as a crappy SATA SSD drive

 

[bug]

Judging by the 4K speeds, this abomination it's almost as fast as a crappy SATA SSD drive

Neah, SATA SSDs can do like 50-60MB/s (https://www.anandtech.com/show/13761/the-samsung-970-evo-plus-ssd-review/6).
But if you go by sequential numbers, you may tricked into thinking these new drives are several times faster than what you already have.