The storage market has been dominated by SSDs, displacing HDDs. Although they offer great advantages, the problem of the temperature of the SSDs begins to be a quite important problem. So much so, that the first PCIe 5.0 SSD with a fan has already been seen and it is bad news.
It is true that we have seen the occasional SSD based on PCIe 4.0, but they have been isolated cases. Drives based on PCIe 5.0 will in most cases require a fan, due to the high transfer speeds. This is a major problem, as more noise will be generated and if the fan fails, we could lose the unit.
PCIe 5.0 SSD up to 4TB with integrated fan
PCIe 5.0-based storage drives have (more or less) double the speeds of PCIe 4.0 . This increase in performance brings with it a problem, the increase in temperature. So much so that they are already presenting the first units with an integrated fan.
CFD Gaming is the first company (to our knowledge) to show off a PCIe 5.0 SSD with a fan. This drive is named PG5NFZ PCIE 5.0, specifically based on the PCIe 5.0 x4 configuration. Said drive has an M.2 2280 form factor, which is the standard.
It is stated that this new storage unit is based on the Phison PS5026-E26 controller. It is also indicated that it makes use of 3D TLC NAND B58R flash memories produced by Micron. Naturally, this drive is based on the NVMe 2.0 specifications.
We will have three different versions of these storage units. The one that offers 1 TB of capacity has 2 GB of LPDDR4 cache memory with read speeds of up to 9.5 GB/s and write speeds of up to 8.5 GB/s. On the other hand, the 2TB and 4TB drives will offer read speeds of up to 10GB/s and write speeds of up to 9.5GB/s. Say the 2TB drive has 4GB of LPDDR4 cache and the 4TB drive has 8GB of LPDDR4 cache.
To avoid performance and temperature problems, the 20 mm high Phnix active heatsink has been used. The most striking thing about this heatsink is that it has a small fan to prevent excess heat. It is evident that a simple passive heatsink is not enough.
It is something that has been seen for a long time.
As we have mentioned, we have already seen the odd PCIe 4.0-based SSD with a fan to dissipate heat. Something that made us think that when it jumps to PCIe 5.0, we would see fan coolers. This Japanese unit is just a sample of what is about to hit the market in the coming weeks.
Although it is not very relevant either, since we will see very inflated prices, like when PCIe 4.0 SSDs arrived. When they came out, they cost twice as much as PCIe 3.0 SSDs, at least. Now prices have become quite normal and despite being expensive, they already have more reasonable prices.
It would not be strange that a PCIe 5.0 based SSD will cost 300 euros, more or less. When a new technology is released, it is usually expensive and it comes with significant problems.