First Consumer PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD Gets Tested, Makes a Lot of Noise

[TheLostSwede]

In Japan, the first consumer focused PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs have gone on sale and one of these drives has been put through some quick synthetic benchmarks by @momomo_us on Twitter. We're not familiar with the CFD Gaming brand which the drive is sold under, but the CSSD-M2M2TPG5NFZ—as the drive is called—is based on Phison's E26 controller and it's paired with Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND, suggesting it's based around a reference design from Phison. CFD Gaming offers the drive in 1, 2 and 4 TB sizes and @momomo_us tested the 2 TB version.

Before we go into the performance figures, there's one thing that needs to be highlighted about this drive, it produces a high pitch noise during use, thanks to its tiny 17x17 mm, 21,000 rpm fan from Sunon. @momomo_us provided a video on Twitter which is linked below, so you can hear it in action for yourself. Hopefully this isn't the future of NVMe SSDs, as it's going to put off many potential customers from getting one. @momomo_us only tested the drive with CrystalDiskMark 8.0.4, which shows that sequential write speeds are slightly faster than claimed by CFD Gaming, with the sequential write speeds being bang on the money. For those hoping for higher random performance, things aren't looking so great, as the drive only performs slightly better than the best PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives.



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[sephiroth117]

lmao the fan has its own SATA/molex power input..

I don't see the point in going above GEN 4 (passive heatsink cooling) besides genuine professional applications that requires enormous read/write speeds frankly.

At one point controllers will be far more efficient and we will see GEN 5 consuming respectable amount of W and passively cooled hopefully

 

[Assimilator]

Good that we're finally starting to see 1TB as the minimum size. The rest... all bad.

 

[erocker]

I had to chuckle at the title because SSD's are getting... Loud. lol.

 

[KrazyT]

CFD (born in 1974 !), if i unsderstand is a brand of Melco Holding Co.
Do you remember the Buffalo brand ? It's Melco too, i guess CF is the gaming part of Buffallo.
Globally, they're distributor of foreign DIY PC part in Japan ...
... and via CFD company, you can rent underwater drones too ...

 

[Tomgang]

21000 rpm. I wunder how long that fan will last at those rpm or if the
Owner would throw it out of the window because of irritation before the fan dies.

I have active fans on the coolers I have on my Samsung 980 pro nvme ssd's. They max out at 10500 rpm amd they are not silent. So I have them hooked up to my fan controllers, so I can turn them of when not needed and I can variable fan rpm as well and keep cooling and noise at acceptable levels.

 

[Gmr_Chick]

21,000 RPM fan...hehe, anyone wanna stick their finger in it while it's whirring away?

Also, where the hell did the person get that ALF figure?! I loved that show as a kid. And now I feel old.

SSD go wrrr!

 

[Tomgang]

21,000 RPM fan...hehe, anyone wanna stick their finger in it while it's whirring away?

Also, where the hell did the person get that ALF figure?! I loved that show as a kid. And now I feel old.

SSD go wrrr!

View attachment 282479

I'll be doing it. Putting my finger in mibi Blowymatron. I mean I am tired of gaming and using a pc anyway. So I don't need my fingers anymore.

 

[hat]

I'll stick to my "slow", low power, cool running drives, thanks.

 

[Tomorrow]

But how nessesary is active cooling for Gen5 anyway?

Remember AMD's X570 and the active cooling debacle in 2019?

Well it turned out that with a good enough motherboard design X570 could run passively just fine. I even "modded" my X570 Aorus Master by taking it apart, replacing the stock black stiff thermal pad with Kryonaut paste and disconnecting the fan from the header. Result was ~50c even with a 375W GPU dumping heat on top of it and 3 Gen4 drives active in the system.

I suspect the same will be true with Gen5 drives where the first generation will be limited to ~10GB/s and most having active cooling just in case but with modding or large heatsink/good airflow could run passive. Then second generation in 2024 or 2025 coming with 13-14/GB/s speeds and passive design (like with happened to Gen4 speeds and X570S passive design).

 

[rainwilds]

Incredible sequential speeds. Though, my Intel Optane 900P (still at 100% endurance) smashes it in the critical 4K random read for general OS stuff.

 

[kapone32]

21000 rpm. I wunder how long that fan will last at those rpm or if the
Owner would throw it out of the window because of irritation before the fan dies.

I have active fans on the coolers I have on my Samsung 980 pro nvme ssd's. They max out at 10500 rpm amd they are not silent. So I have them hooked up to my fan controllers, so I can turn them of when not needed and I can variable fan rpm as well and keep cooling and noise at acceptable levels.

It would probably be good at slicing carrots.

 

[Space Lynx]

that 4k read is no good for gen5 imo. 176 layer gen4 nvme's do that same read now, mine hits 97 actually. so heh I guess there was no reason to wait on upgrading anyway, as that is the number that only really matters.

 

[kapone32]

Incredible sequential speeds. Though, my Intel Optane 900P (still at 100% endurance) smashes it in the critical 4K random read for general OS stuff.

I want an Optane just for the 4K.

 

[freeagent]

I wonder if my Thermalright nvme heatsinks would work well with pcie5..

 

[maxfly]

I wonder if my Thermalright nvme heatsinks would work well with pcie5..

That's exactly what I thought when I read "sunon fan" lol.

 

[Crackong]

View attachment 282479

Challenge accepted

 

[Chaitanya]

So lazy engineers who worked on X570 boards and Z690 boards seem to have provided their expertise on these PCI-e 5.0 drives. Instead of having proper heatsinks most seem to have gone down the route of slapping whiny fans.

 

[freeagent]

Systems are too quiet nowadays anyways

 

[InVasMani]

These desperately need a more proper cooler and heatsink solution.Two to four of these in a PCIE 2-slot vertical mount enclosure with blower fan on the end to exhaust the heat would be nice. Something akin to mounting a GTX980 cooler on a x2-4 PCIE 5.0 M.2's with a riser cable would be pretty great. I think a more sizable cooler and fan combination would even be a little overkill for that scenario perhaps, but that's fine because at least it could run at a lower fan curve and/or passively at times.

 

[toooooot]

Maybe for a case with good noise isolation...Like fractals.
I amd personally done with noise in my PCs, undervalting, water, quiet fans ar e my weapons of silence

 

[HairyLobsters]

Just make gen 5 drives the size of a 2.5" drive.

 

[chodaboy19]

The random R/W is still pedestrian.

 

[kapone32]

My issue with Gen 5 drives is they are no different than 4.0 or 3.0 at 4K.

 

[Wirko]

Systems are too quiet nowadays anyways

It's fine if a Gen 5 SSD is loud when it's overtaking a Gen 4 SSD. Enjoyable even.
It's quite bad if it's louder while doing the same things at same speed.