Gigabyte has launched its latest PCIe Gen 5 SSD, the AORUS Gen5 10000, and Newegg is listing it for pre-order at a whopping $339.
The new model boasts some impressive sequential transfer numbers, coming in at 9500MB/s read, and 8500MB/s write. The new drive uses Phison's E26 controller to manage that bandwidth, and comes with the optional heatsink, which I'll admit, does look pretty cool, and since it's passive, is a quieter solution than CFD Gaming's s active cooling for their Gen 5 SSD.
The AORUS line of products is squarely aimed at enthusiasts and gamers, but even Gigabyte isn't promoting the new SSD as a gamer's drive, instead opting to word the descriptions very carefully. Gigabyte highlight the transfer speeds especially such as shown on its website. So, whilst the new drive, on paper, could load games much faster, the reality is that the loading time difference even in games that support Microsoft's DirectStorage is minimal at best, and only measurable with a benchmark rather than something any gamer will actually notice.
A prime example of this is when we reviewed Sabrent's latest Gen 4 SSD which ships with a DirectStorage-optimised firmware. The Rocket 4-Plus-G was on average only 0.1s faster than a Gen 3 Samsung 970 Evo Plus. How much of a difference adding a Gen 5 drive into the mix makes remains to be seen, but the practical numbers speak for themselves.
A note to our readers before anyone rushes out to order one: Outside of DirectStorage, I have yet to see a game using more than 1500MB/s read speed from any SSD, meaning even a Gen 3 SSD loading a game that has only NVMe SSD optimizations and no DirectStorage, will not even saturate the 3500MB/s read bandwidth that a PCIe Gen 3 SSD has to offer.
For now, then, it does seem these new Gen 5 SSDs are mostly for bragging rights, unless you routinely need up to 8500/9500MB/s transfer speed. Though on a more positive note, these drives need to come to market so that competition results in lower prices down the line.
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