Gigabyte Unveils Aorus Gen5 12000 SSD With Blistering Speeds And A Beastly Cooler
Gigabyte is adding to a small but growing pile of solid state drives (SSDs) that make use of the PCI Express 5.0 bus for faster throughput. That puts the company's new Aorus Gen5 12000 SSD in elite company. By our count, there are around half a dozen PCIe 5.0 SSD models (not including different capacity options) available to buy at places like Amazon and Newegg.
The more the merrier, we say. Even if you don't have a need or desire to upgrade your storage to a PCIe 5.0 SSD, their arrival helps drive down pricing in general, including on still-relevant and fast PCIe 4.0 models. The other benefit is that increasing the footprint of blazing-fast SSDs helps encourage developers to tap into breakneck speeds (DirectStorage, anyone?).
Gigabyte's Aorus Gen5 12000 pretty much spells out the details in the model name. To go into a bit more detail, Gigabyte's latest SSD pairs 232-layer 3D triple-level cell (TLC) NAND flash memory chips (presumably from Micron) with Phison's enthusiast-grade PS5026-E26 controller.
Source: Gigabyte
There are two capacities available: 2TB and 1TB, both with 4GB of LPDDR4 cache. The bulkier 2TB capacity option is the faster of the two with up to 12,400MB/s for sequential reads and 11,800MB/s for sequential writes. Meanwhile, the 1TB model isn't terribly far behind at 11,700MB/s and 9,500MB/s for sequential reads and writes, respectively.
As components tend to do, SSDs throttle performance when thermals start to get overly toasty. This is especially true for PCIe 5.0 models that push the envelope with a new tier of speed capabilities. To help with that, Gigabyte is offering a rather chunky cooler that increases the height from 3.5mm (standalone drive) to 44.7mm, and the width from 22mm to 23.5mm.
"Normally, high-speed SSDs generate heat and may result in throttling under full-speed operation, leading to reduced storage performance or even data loss and damage to the controller. However, the Aorus Gen5 12000 SSD is equipped with the optimal thermal solution of M.2 Thermal Guard Extreme, promising users a cool experience while enjoying throttle-free performance and reliability," Gigabyte states.
Gigabyte didn't say when its Aorus Gen5 12000 SSD will be available at retail or how much it will cost. In the meantime, here are some other PCIe 5.0 options...
- 1TB Crucial T700: $179.99
- 1TB Crucial T700 w/ Heatsink: $167.99
- 2TB Crucial T700: $299.99
- 2TB Crucial T700 w/ Heatsink: $314.99
- 4TB Crucial T700: $499.99
- 4TB Crucial T700 w/ Heatsink: $514.99
- 2TB MSI Spatium M570 w/ Heatsink: $289.99
- 2TB Corsair MP700: $284.99
- 1TB Corsair MP700: $149.99
- 1TB Seagate FireCuda 540: $186.99
- 2TB Seagate FireCuda 540: $302.99
Given the above, Aorus Gen5 12000 SSD will need to fall in the range of $150 to $200 for 1TB and around $300 for 2TB to be competitive.
