GIGABYTE Intros AORUS Gen5 14000 M.2 NVMe SSD

[btarunr]

GIGABYTE today launched its flagship M.2 NVMe SSD, the AORUS Gen5 14000 series. The drive packs the winning combination of Phison PS5026-E26 Max14um controller, with Micron B58R 232-layer 3D TLC NAND flash memory, along with a fast LPDDR4 DRAM cache. The drive comes in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB capacity variants. The maximum speeds vary for the three.

The 2 TB model is the fastest of the three, with a sequential read speed of up to 14,500 MB/s, and sequential write speed of up to 12,700 MB/s. The 4 TB model is the second fastest, with up to 14,100 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 12,600 MB/s sequential writes. The 1 TB model is third, with up to 13,600 MB/s sequential reads, and up to 10,200 MB/s sequential writes. All three models come without a heatsink, with just a metal film label on top. GIGABYTE recommends pairing the drive with M.2 SSD cooling solutions included with your motherboard to minimize performance throttling. The company didn't announce pricing.



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[Waweq]

I bet the heatsink is bigger than my PC

 

[bonehead123]

recommends pairing the drive with M.2 SSD cooling solutions included with your motherboard to minimize performance throttling

Soooo...they are perfectly comfortable admitting right off the bat that this drive will bake itself & throttle, yet they are not willing to even make or provide a cooler with it....

tsk tsk....shame on you Gigabutt

 

[b1k3rdude]

News for news sake, not remotely interested untill @W1zzard reviews one of these.

 

[W1zzard]

News for news sake, not remotely interested untill @W1zzard reviews one of these.

No need, this seems to be identical to the Corsair and MSI 14 GB/s that I reviewed not long ago

 

[phints]

Can't wait to see those blazing fast QD1 RAND benchmarks. /s

 

[AsRock]

Soooo...they are perfectly comfortable admitting right off the bat that this drive will bake itself & throttle, yet they are not willing to even make or provide a cooler with it....

tsk tsk....shame on you Gigabutt

HEHE, how ever $15 can get you some thing like the thermalright HR-09 2280 or even the pro version, i have the none pro's and they work very well in my case more so with the case having fans on the bottom.

I guess they have to keep the cost down some how ^^.

 

[dj-electric]

Soooo...they are perfectly comfortable admitting right off the bat that this drive will bake itself & throttle, yet they are not willing to even make or provide a cooler with it....

tsk tsk....shame on you Gigabutt

Even if it reduces 5 dollars off the price tag, I like these versions to exist.
Ever since coming out, PCIE5 M.2 slots on motherboards got gigantic heatsinks meant exactly for these drives.

 

[Wirko]

No need, this seems to be identical to the Corsair and MSI 14 GB/s that I reviewed not long ago

Not exactly true, that was the plain E26, this is the newer E26 Max-140°C-um

 

[Makaveli]

I bet the heatsink is bigger than my PC

lol heatsink bigger than my future.

 

[AnarchoPrimitiv]

I wish I knew someone in the industry so I could ask them why they keep pumping out these 5.0 SSd's which offer zero discernable improvement in user experience when they could release something like an all SLC drive (smaller capacity for an OS and the most important apps, like 250GB - 512GB) which would actually give an observable improvement in user experience.....I'm sure I'd be given some "answer" couched in marketing, like "it's more difficult to convey the advantage to a consumer when the number is really big" i.e. 14,000 MB/s

 

[Shrek]

They sell us what we want; speed! even if it isn't really faster in practice.

 

[b1k3rdude]

No need, this seems to be identical to the Corsair and MSI 14 GB/s that I reviewed not long ago

Ah some one of these 3 is the ODM....

 

[Frozoken]

Can't wait to see those blazing fast QD1 RAND benchmarks. /s

Gotta love how theyve actually managed to go backwards from the best gen 4 drives

 

[TheLostSwede]

I wish I knew someone in the industry so I could ask them why they keep pumping out these 5.0 SSd's which offer zero discernable improvement in user experience when they could release something like an all SLC drive (smaller capacity for an OS and the most important apps, like 250GB - 512GB) which would actually give an observable improvement in user experience.....I'm sure I'd be given some "answer" couched in marketing, like "it's more difficult to convey the advantage to a consumer when the number is really big" i.e. 14,000 MB/s

See:

Silicon Motion's SM2508 Set to Launch in Q4, Edging Out Phison as Top SSD Controller

Silicon Motion's SM2508 was first revealed in August last year at the Flash Memory Summit 2023, but after that things went pretty quiet. However, the company was demoing the SM2508 up and running at Computex this past week and it's set to edge out Phison's E26 Max14um in the battle of fastest...

www.techpowerup.com

'
In case you can't be asked to click.

The issue is that the largest NAND chips appear to be 16 GB and one 16 GB Micron NAND chip retails for €112.70 if you buy a roll of 1k.
That means a 500 GB SLC NAND based SSD would end up costing somewhere in the region of €4,000.

 

[W1zzard]

Not exactly true, that was the plain E26, this is the newer E26 Max-140°C-um

afaik all 14 GB/s drives are Max14um, which is the exact same silicon with firmware improvements

 

[kiniku]

Gotta love how theyve actually managed to go backwards from the best gen 4 drives View attachment 351343

Random file access applies to small scattered files like Office documents, etc. It has a minimal impact on the overall client performance experience. Sequential performance impacts the majority of SSD operations, including large file copies, moves, and more. Sequential performance also impacts the speed of opening large applications, including loading games. When you see that loading bar go across your screen, that's a large sequential read.

If random access speeds were so important and impactful, the Intel Optane drives would have been the fastest drives even today. But their overall performance was best experienced with demanding server applications with multiple users. Intel tried to market them to consumer desktops, and we know how that went.

 

[Wirko]

afaik all 14 GB/s drives are Max14um, which is the exact same silicon with firmware improvements

I see. The Max14um is Phison's reference design with optimised firmware and fastest available NAND, not a new controller.

 

[Tropick]

They sell us what we want; speed! even if it isn't really faster in practice.

I was just thinking about this. Over 12GB/s read/write performance is absolutely bonkers from a raw numbers standpoint, and many prosumers will benefit from that, but I'm wondering how the average joe gamer will benefit from these extreme advancements (honest question). I have a couple of buddies who have Samsung 970 Pro 2TB drives which are PCIe 3.0 x4 and are still perfectly happy with the performance. My SN850X is supposed to be quite literally double the performance but I hardly see any tangible benefit outside of large file copy. Do we think there will be specific optimizations in games/applications for these extremely high throughput drives in the future? I know DirectStorage was supposed to be the next big thing when it was announced in like, 2022, but I've hardly heard anything about it since then. Just been seeing all of these absolutely nuts PCIe 5.0 x4 drives coming out of Computex with their gargantuan heatsinks and wondering what's the real world application here (outside of the usual use cases that benefit from high storage throughput). Or am I just being obtuse and the usual use cases are the reason why one would buy these drives?

 

[Wirko]

Here's what Chris Ramseyer, a Phison representative, mentioned here in the forums ... has anyone heard of any updates?

A few companies will have Gen4 (Phison E18) for sale soon with SLC in 160, 320, 640, 1280, 2560GB sizes. 42 DWPD and around 6GB/s sustained write speeds.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1689360447042940931

 

[Shrek]

Pity the thread "not impressed - nvme vs ssd" got closed as I didn't get so far as to understand "Where is the bottleneck to explain why NVMe is only about 10% faster than SSD in practice?"

 

[Minus Infinity]

Couldn't they wait for a better controller? Pointless and worthless products at this stage.

 

[Launcestonian]

Unless a game engine with a product that I'm actually interested in, can demonstrate significant improvements over Gen 4.0 NVME speeds, than Gen 5.0 is a no go for me.
I think the vast majority of gamers would agree with that.

 

[chrcoluk]

I wish I knew someone in the industry so I could ask them why they keep pumping out these 5.0 SSd's which offer zero discernable improvement in user experience when they could release something like an all SLC drive (smaller capacity for an OS and the most important apps, like 250GB - 512GB) which would actually give an observable improvement in user experience.....I'm sure I'd be given some "answer" couched in marketing, like "it's more difficult to convey the advantage to a consumer when the number is really big" i.e. 14,000 MB/s

Well you already know the answer, marketing.

In the PC market "speed" is often the prime driver of sales, I am frustrated as well though as I want larger capacity NVME's even if it means they are PCIe form factor (I would actually prefer it), and drives that are also lower power draw as I feel NVME has gone in a bad direction in that area, but the focus will continue to be max sequential speed unless sales take a massive sustained dive forcing them to go in a new direction.

Pity the thread "not impressed - nvme vs ssd" got closed as I didn't get so far as to understand "Where is the bottleneck to explain why NVMe is only about 10% faster than SSD in practice?"

Usually CPU bottleneck loading the data into the game, direct storage optimisation is getting round that bottleneck.

 

[Wirko]

Well you already know the answer, marketing.

In the PC market "speed" is often the prime driver of sales, I am frustrated as well though as I want larger capacity NVME's even if it means they are PCIe form factor (I would actually prefer it), and drives that are also lower power draw as I feel NVME has gone in a bad direction in that area, but the focus will continue to be max sequential speed unless sales take a massive sustained dive forcing them to go in a new direction.

Agreed. BUT! Let's say 10,000 people have bought a Gen 5 SSD so far. If no such SSDs existed yet, at least 100,000 angry individuals would be complaining every day on all tech forums because they would have nothing to plug into their shiny, expensive Gen 5 M.2 slots. Isn't it better the way it is?