GIGABYTE Intros 2TB AORUS Gen4 AIC SSD

[btarunr]

GIGABYTE today introduced a 2 TB variant of its AORUS Gen4 AIC SSD. This drive is essentially a PCI-Express 4.0 x16 to four M.2 PCIe Gen 4 x4 riser card that comes with four 500 GB AORUS Gen4 M.2 NVMe SSDs pre-installed. Using it requires a platform with PCIe lane segmentation (most modern platforms since 2016 do), and for the OS to support NVMe RAID.

The riser card component of the AORUS Gen4 AIC SSD has basic logic that controls a lateral blower based on drive temperature, and provides basic disk activity LEDs. Inside, a copper monoblock heatsink pulls heat from all four drives. Each of the four internal M.2 NVMe drives features 96-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, and Phison E16 controllers. With NVMe RAID striped, the card offers peak performance of up to 15,000 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 9,500 MB/s sequential writes. Random access performance is rated at up to 425,000 IPS 4K random reads, and up to 440,000 IOPS 4K random writes. GIGABYTE is backing the drive with a 5-year warranty. The company didn't reveal pricing.



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[trparky]

The company didn't reveal pricing.

That's because you probably don't want to know the price. I'd wager somewhere around $2 thousand USD.

 

[sk8er]

Single slot 1650s/1660s with cooler like this would be awesome, just like 8800/9800GT back then

 

[Caring1]

Single slot 1650s/1660s with cooler like this would be awesome, just like 8800/9800GT back then

Quadro P series has that covered.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

As a storage nerd, this is pretty lame.... Who would waste x16 lanes on a 2TB capacity? I just feel like anyone in the market for such would just buy the AIC separately and add their own drives

 

[btarunr]

As a storage nerd, this is pretty lame.... Who would waste x16 lanes on a 2TB capacity? I just feel like anyone in the market for such would just buy the AIC separately and add their own drives

There's an 8 TB variant of this exact card using 2 TB subunits, too.

 

[InVasMani]

As a storage nerd, this is pretty lame.... Who would waste x16 lanes on a 2TB capacity? I just feel like anyone in the market for such would just buy the AIC separately and add their own drives

Depending on how good M.2 controller's and cache if it uses it. I could see them even doing a 1TB AIC with the right M.2 drives. What it comes down to is how much of a dip in performance you get on the sequential and random I/O based on the controller and/or SLC cache in relation to the M.2 drive capacity paired to it. In better instances a smaller capacity M.2 drive doesn't see a abundance of drop off in other instances it's really pronounced so comes down to implementation and how well that balances out. I don't consider it a waste at all it's a huge cost reduction and if you don't need more than 1TB or 2TB in this case I fail to see the problem with it.

 

[yotano211]

You can buy the cheapest model and put 4x 4tb for 16tb or 4x 8tb for 32tb storage.

 

[bogami]

That a fancy useless accessory that covers a huge cooling surface with an air fan that could be attached to the lid, thus gaining a work surface and reducing noise ... To make it more convenient to offer carrier with support for two M.2 beds (one on each side) ), on a PCIe 4 x8 connection for RAID 0 use based on available PCIe connections on available motherboards.

 

[JAB Creations]

As a storage nerd, this is pretty lame.... Who would waste x16 lanes on a 2TB capacity? I just feel like anyone in the market for such would just buy the AIC separately and add their own drives

4x8TB for RAID 0+1 or 1+0 for speed and redundancy. I have to do some more reading to refresh on the difference between 1+0 and 0+1 though.

As for the price? I'd say between $350 and $450 otherwise it's just overpriced nand with a PCI-Express addon card thrown in and even that price would be pushing it. I've been seeing 1TB NVMe drives pushing below $100 ~summer 2020.

 

[bonehead123]

That's because you probably don't want to know the price. I'd wager somewhere around $2 thousand USD.

Actually, it's probably because they want to avoid liability for the 1000's of heart attacks the price will cause around the world, hahaha

So lets do the math: the average retail price for the drives is ~$100 x 4 = 400 +/-, then add in somefor the card, controllers, switches, connectors, marketing, packaging etc, and it should run approx $500 at retail...

It will be interesting to see if we get gouged or not

But OTOH, this looks suspiciously similar to a ASUS HyperX card (which cost about $60 $85 without any drives)... perhaps they have licensed the design out to other mfgr's ?

 

[DeathtoGnomes]

I'm guessing they dont wanna sell the card and drives separately.

 

[ReHWolution]

Actually, it's probably because they want to avoid liability for the 1000's of heart attacks the price will cause around the world, hahaha

So lets do the math: the average retail price for the drives is ~$100 x 4 = 400 +/-, then add in somefor the card, controllers, switches, connectors, marketing, packaging etc, and it should run approx $500 at retail...

It will be interesting to see if we get gouged or not

But OTOH, this looks suspiciously similar to a ASUS HyperX card (which cost about $60 without any drives)... perhaps they have licensed the design out to other mfgr's ?

Nah it's different from the ASUS one. Also, everyone except MSI has a similar card, including ASRock, but AORUS's one has the biggest fan among these add-in cards. With that said, the ASUS one has a particular design with a channel and some milled fins inside of it.

I'm guessing they dont wanna sell the card and drives separately.

They DO sell the drives and the card separately.
Adaptor: https://www.gigabyte.com/it/Solid-State-Drive/AORUS-Gen4-AIC-Adaptor#kf
SSD: https://www.gigabyte.com/it/Solid-State-Drive/AORUS-NVMe-Gen4-SSD-500GB#kf

 

[kapone32]

I hope people do realize that this will only work with X399 and X299. However to get the full throughput you need STRX40 as that is the only chipset that has a x16 PCIe4 free lane. X570 and B550 will only give you 8 lanes even if you use an APU. bonehead123 the Asus card is a PCIe 3.0 interface card. Asus has muddied the waters a little though as they also sell a 4.0 adapter card that looks exactly the same.

 

[ReHWolution]

I hope people do realize that this will only work with X399 and X299. However to get the full throughput you need STRX40 as that is the only chipset that has a x16 PCIe4 free lane. X570 and B550 will only give you 8 lanes even if you use an APU. bonehead123 the Asus card is a PCIe 3.0 interface card. Asus has muddied the waters a little though as they also sell a 4.0 adapter card that looks exactly the same.

Yes, those will work on X299, X399, LGA3647 and TRX40 but no, the ASUS 3.0 and 4.0 cards are veeeeeery different. I had both, the PCB is completely different, the SSDs mount in different positions (3.0 is a vertical arrangement, 4.0 is fishbone arrangement), the 3.0 is a closed enclosure with a fan inside, the 4.0 has a hole to let more air inside.
They couldn't be more different.
What you meant maybe was the ASROCK one. They're almost identical, except for some power management onboard. Also, the 3.0 ASRock one can easily manage 4.0 speeds on all 4 slots (I tested it, I all of them except the AORUS) while the ASUS one can't because of the vertical arrangement (i.e. the further slots lose integrity with 4.0 speeds).

 

[kapone32]

Yes, those will work on X299, X399, LGA3647 and TRX40 but no, the ASUS 3.0 and 4.0 cards are veeeeeery different. I had both, the PCB is completely different, the SSDs mount in different positions (3.0 is a vertical arrangement, 4.0 is fishbone arrangement), the 3.0 is a closed enclosure with a fan inside, the 4.0 has a hole to let more air inside.
They couldn't be more different.
What you meant maybe was the ASROCK one. They're almost identical, except for some power management onboard. Also, the 3.0 ASRock one can easily manage 4.0 speeds on all 4 slots (I tested it, I all of them except the AORUS) while the ASUS one can't because of the vertical arrangement (i.e. the further slots lose integrity with 4.0 speeds).

I stand corrected, yes the Asus 4.0 card does look like the As Rock card though based on the way the M2 headers are aligned. It makes sense though in terms of alignment that it doesn't .It sucks that you can get a nice 2 to 8 TB scratch drive for less than a 4+TB single NVME drive. For users of some B450, B550, 1151, 1200, X370, X470 and X570 this one is what you can use to fill the extra x8 slot.

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I have been using the Asus 3.0 card with 4 Intel 660P 1TB that cost me an aggregate cost of $469 in 2018.

4x8TB for RAID 0+1 or 1+0 for speed and redundancy. I have to do some more reading to refresh on the difference between 1+0 and 0+1 though.

As for the price? I'd say between $350 and $450 otherwise it's just overpriced nand with a PCI-Express addon card thrown in and even that price would be pushing it. I've been seeing 1TB NVMe drives pushing below $100 ~summer 2020.

This drive will probably be somewhere in the range of $549 to $700 US or $749 to $900 Canadian.

 

[Fleurious]

Could be interesting to load with sx8200 2TB drives, going with 2 of them for my next build but on the mobo. I’m sure some people will find a good use case for this product.

 

[goodeedidid]

Bad product, only offering 2TB for such a big piece of junk taking up real estate.

 

[ReHWolution]

Bad product, only offering 2TB for such a big piece of junk taking up real estate.

2 TB at those speeds would be ideal for a scratch disk for 4K RAW / 8K High Bitrate timelines in any NLE. Just because you can't find it useful, doesn't mean it's useless.

 

[goodeedidid]

2 TB at those speeds would be ideal for a scratch disk for 4K RAW / 8K High Bitrate timelines in any NLE. Just because you can't find it useful, doesn't mean it's useless.

I don't think 2TB is even nearly enough for 8K and whatever you mean by "High Bitrate"-(those words don't need to be in capital letters.) So that SSD isn't even good for that, not to mention that now 8K isn't really important for content creators and even probably for movies.

 

[Dexsil]

That's because you probably don't want to know the price. I'd wager somewhere around $2 thousand USD.

Considering the 8TB version is around 2K USD I would say that you're a bit high on the pricing