Intel Alder Lake desktop processors include support for the PCIe 5.0 interface. The big problem with this is that there is currently no component that supports this interface, at least to date. The existence of the SSD hard drive, Samsung 990 PRO with M.2 PCIe 5.0 format, has just been confirmed.
Currently, SSD manufacturers seem to have finished with the SATA interface, which has become obsolete. If we want the best performance, we should buy M.2 SSD drives. Those based on PCIe 3.0 offer about 3,500 MB/s of reading and/or writing, while PCIe 4.0 can reach up to 7,000 MB/s. Well, PCIe 5.0-based drives could be around 14,000 MB/s.
Samsung has its first M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD ready
One of the main manufacturers of solid state hard drives today is undoubtedly the South Korean company Samsung. They offer high performance units and features, far superior to those of the competition in some cases. In addition, they have the strength to design and manufacture their own measurement chips.
We know about the Samsung 990 PRO drive thanks to PCI-SIG, who has certified this drive to be based on the PCIe 5.0 interface . At the moment 1 TB (MZ-V9P1T0) and 2 TB (MZ-V9P2T0) drives are known. These units would replace the current Samsung 980 PRO based on PCIe 4.0.
The new generation M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs could reach maximum speeds of 14,000 MB/s , double that of PCIe 4.0. In addition, we will see units of up to 8TB of capacity , at least in principle. It is true that the capacity could be increased if the number of layers and the number of bits per cell are increased, although this is another matter.
But not everything will be lights on the M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSDs , very predictably we will see significant temperature problems. We have already seen some coolers for M.2 SSDs based on PCIe 4.0 that include a fan, to improve cooling.
The problem with the M.2 is that with the heat they lose a lot of performance. Hence, all mid-range and high-end gaming motherboards include passive heatsinks for M.2 SSDs . We also see many M.2 SSDs from Samsung, Kingston, Crucial, Corsair and many other manufacturers that include a heatsink.
Everything indicates that Samsung will present the 990 PRO based on PCIe 5.0 during CES 2022. By then the new Intel and AMD processors with support for PCIe 5.0 would already be on the market.
Unfortunately, you can only dream of this SSD
When the first PCIe 4.0-based SSDs were released, they were twice the price or more than PCIe 3.0-based drives of the same capacity. Possibly we see the same in this case, it would be the most logical.
Now, after years on the market, M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs are catching up in price to PCIe 3.0 SSDs. A price reduction that would be enhanced by the upcoming arrival of these new units (and that new computers are hardly sold)
Realistically, you won’t notice the difference between an M.2 PCIe 5.0 SSD and a PCIe 4.0 SSD. We are talking about very high read/write speeds that for practical purposes of the user have little relevance beyond certain very specific cases. We may notice a few seconds less when starting Windows or in game loading times, but come on, a fairly negligible difference.
