Micron on Tuesday announced that the company has begun shipping its 9th Generation (G9) 276 layer TLC NAND. The next generation of NAND from the prolific memory maker, Micron's latest NAND is designed to further push the envelope on TLC NAND performance, offering significant density and performance improvements over its existing NAND technology.

Micron's G9 TLC NAND memory features 276 active layers, which is up from 232-layers in case of Micron's previous generation TLC NAND. At this point the company is being light on technical details in their official material. However in a brief interview with Blocks & Files, the company confirmed that their 276L NAND still uses a six plane architecture, which was first introduced with the 232L generation. At this point we're assuming Micron is also string-stacking two decks of NAND together, as they have been for the past couple of generations, which means we're looking at 138 layer decks.

On the density front, Micron told Blocks & Files that they have improved their NAND density by 44% over their 232L generation. Which, given what we know about that generation, would put the density at around 21 Gbit/mm². Or for a 1Tbit die of TLC NAND, that works out to a die size of roughly 48.9mm², comparable to the die size of a 512Gbit TLC die from Micron's older 176L NAND.

Besides improving density, the other big push with Micron's newest generation of NAND was further improving its throughput. While the company's 232L NAND was built against the ONFi 5.0 specification, which topped out at transfer rates of 2400 MT/sec, their new 276L NAND can hit 3600 MT/sec, which is consistent with the ONFi 5.1 spec.

Meanwhile, the eagle-eyed will likely also pick up on Micron's ninth-generation/G9 branding, which is new to the company. Micron's has not previously used this kind of generational branding for their NAND, which up until now has simply been identified by its layer count (and before the 3D era, its feature size). Internally, this is believed to be Micron's 7th generation 3D NAND architecture. However, taking a page from the logic fab industry, Micron seems to be branding it as ninth-generation in order to keep generational parity with its competitors, who are preparing their own 8th/9th generation NAND (and thus cliam that they are the first NAND maker to ship 9th gen NAND).

And while this NAND will eventually end up in all sorts of devices – including, no doubt, high-end PCIe Gen5 drives thanks to its high transfer rates – Micron's launch vehicle for the NAND is their own Micron 2650 client SSD. The 2650 is a relatively straightforward PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, using an unnamed, DRAMless controller alongside Micron's new NAND. The company is offering it in 3 form factors – M.2 2280, 2242, and 2230 – with a modest set of capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB.

Micron's 2650 NVMe SSDs offer sequential read performance of up to 7000 MB/s as well as sequential write performance of up to 6000 MB/s. As for random performance, we are talking about up to a million read and write IOPS, depending on the configuration.

The performance of the drives scales pretty significantly with capacity, underscoring how much parallelism is needed to keep up with the PCIe Gen4 controller. The rated capacity of the drives scales similarly, with the smallest drive rated for 200TBW (800 drive writes), while the largest drive is rated for 600 TBW (600 drive writes).

“The shipment of Micron G9 NAND is a testament to Micron’s prowess in process technology and design innovations,” said Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of Technology and Products at Micron. “Micron G9 NAND is up to 73% denser than competitive technologies in the market today, allowing for more compact and efficient storage solutions that benefit both consumers and businesses.”

Micron's G9 276-layer TLC NAND memory is also in qualification with customers in component form, so expect the company's partners to adopt it for their high-end SSDs in the coming quarters. In addition, Micron plans Crucial-branded SSDs based on its G9 NAND memory..

SK hynix this week reported its financial results for the second quarter, as well as offering a glimpse at its plans for the coming quarters. Notably among the company's plans for the year is the release of a SK hynix-branded 60 TB SSD, which will mark the firm's entry into the ultra-premium enterprise SSD league.

"SK hynix plans to expand sales of high-capacity eSSD and lead the market in the second half with 60TB products, expecting eSSD sales to be more than quadrupled compared to last year," a statement by SK hynix reads.

Currently there are only two standard form-factor 61.44 TB SSDs on the market: the Solidigm D5-P5336 (U.2/15mm and E1.L), and the Samsung BM1743 (U.2/15mm and E3.S). Both are built from a proprietary controller (Solidigm's controller still carries an Intel logotype) with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and use QLC NAND for storage.

SK hynix's brief mention of the drive means that tere aren't any formal specifications or capabilities to discuss just yet. But it is reasonable to assume that the company will use its own QLC memory for their ultra-high-capacity drives. What's more intriguing are which controller the company plans to use and how it is going to position its 60 TB-class SSD.

Internally, SK hynix has access to multiple controller teams, both of which have the expertise to develop an enterprise-grade controller suitable for a 60 TB drive. SK hynix technically owns Solidigm, the former Intel SSD and NAND unit, giving SK hynix the option of using Solidigm's controller, or even reselling a rebadged D5-P5336 outright. Alternatively, SK hynix has their own (original) internal SSD team, who is responsible for building their well-received Aries SSD controller, among other works.

Ultra-high-capacity SSDs for performance demanding read-intensive storage applications, such as AI inference on the edge or content delivery networks, is a promising premium market. So SK hynix is finding itself highly incentivized to enter it with a compelling offering. 

Micron has introduced its Micron 9550-series SSDs, which it claims are the fastest enterprise drives in the industry. The Micron 9550 Pro and 9550 Max SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface promise unbeatable performance amid enhanced endurance and power efficiency, which will be particularly beneficial for data centersMicron's 9550-series solid-state drives are based on a proprietary NVMe 2.0b controller with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface and 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory. The drives will be available in capacities ranging from 3.2 TB to 30.72 TB with one or three drive writes per day endurance as well as U.2, E1.S, and E3.S form factors to cater to the requirements of different types of servers.

As far as performance is concerned, the Micron 9550 NVMe SSD boasts impressive metrics, including up to sustainable 14.0 GB/s sequential read speeds and 10.0 GB/s sequential write speeds, which is higher compared to the peak performance offered by Samsung's PM1743 SSDs. For random operations, it achieves 3,300 million IOPS in random reads and 0.9 million IOPS in random writes, again surpassing competitor offerings.

Micron says that power efficiency is another standout feature of its Micron 9550 SSD: It consumes up to 81% less SSD energy per terabyte transferred with NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage and up to 35% lower SSD power usage in MLPerf benchmarks compared to rivals. Considering that we are dealing with a claim by the manufacturer itself, the numbers should be taken with caution.

"The Micron 9550 SSD represents a giant leap forward for data center storage, delivering a staggering 3.3 million IOPS while consuming up to 43% less power than comparable SSDs in AI workloads such as GNN and LLM training", said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's’s Data Center Storage group. "This unparalleled performance, combined with exceptional power efficiency, establishes a new benchmark for AI storage solutions and demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to spearheading the AI revolution."

Micron traditionally offers its high-end data center SSDs in different flavors: the Micron 9550 Pro drives for read-intensive applications are set to be available in 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB capacities with one drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance rating, whereas the Micron 9550 Max for mixed-use are set to be available in 3.2 TB, 6.4 TB, 12.8 TB, and 25.6 TB capacities with three DWPD endurance rating. All drives comply with the OCP 2.0 r21 standards and OCP 2.5 telemetry. They also feature SPDM 1.2 and FIPS 140-3 security, secure execution environment, and self-encrypting drive options.

Micron has not touched upon the pricing of the new drives as it depends on volumes and other factors.

HighPoint Technologies has updated their NVMe switch and RAID solutions with PCIe 5.0, and supporting up to eight NVMe drives. The new HighPoint Rocket 1600 (switch add-in card) and 7600 series (RAID adapters) are the successors to the SSD SSD7500 series adapter cards introduced in 2020. Similar to its predecessors, the new Rocket series cards are also based on a Broadcom PCIe switch (PEX 89048). The Rocket 7600 series runs the RAID stack on the integrated ARM processor (dual-core Cortex A15)

The PEX 89048 supports up to 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes, out of which 16 are dedicated to the host connection in the Rocket adapters. The use of a true PCIe switch means that the product doesn't rely on PCIe lane bifurcation support in the host platform.

HighPoint's Gen 5 stack currently has two products each in the switch and RAID lineups - an add-in card with support for M.2 drives, and a RAID adapter with four 5.0 x8 SFF-TA-1016 (Mini Cool Edge IO or MCIO) connectors for use with backplanes / setups involving U.2 / U.3 / EDSFF drives.

The RAID adapters require HighPoint's drivers (available for Linux, macOS, and Windows), and supports RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 arrays. On the other hand, the AIC requires no custom drivers. RAID configurations with the AIC will need to be handled by software running on the host OS. On the hardware side, all members of the Rocket series come with an external power connector (as the solution can consume upwards of 75W) and integrate a heatsink. The M.2 version is actively cooled, as the drives are housed within the full-height / full-length cards.

The solution can theoretically support up to 64 GBps of throughput, but real-world performance is limited to around 56 GBps using Gen 5 drives. It must be noted that even Gen 4 drives can take advantage of the new platform and deliver better performance with the new Rocket series compared to the older SSD7500 series.

The cards are shipping now, with pricing ranging from $1500 (add-in card) to $2000 (RAID adapters). HighPoint is not alone in targeting this HEDT / workstation market. Sabrent has been teasing their Apex Gen 5.0 x16 solution involving eight M.2 SSDs for a few months now (involving a Microchip PCIe switch. Until that solution comes to the market, HighPoint appears to be the only game in town for workstation users requiring access to direct-attached storage capable of delivering 50 GBps+ speeds.

Multiple companies offer high-capacity SSDs, but until recently, only one company offered high-performance 60 TB-class drives with a PCIe interface: Solidigm. As our colleagues from Blocks & Files discovered, Samsung quietly rolled out its BM1743 61.44 TB solid-state drive in mid-June and now envisions 120 TB-class SSDs based on the same platform.

Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB features a proprietary controller and relies on Samsung's 7^th Generation V-NAND (3D NAND) QLC memory. Moreover, Samsung believes that its 7^th Gen V-NAND 'has the potential to accommodate up to 122.88 TB,' 

Samsung plans to offer the BM1743 in two form factors: U.2 for PCIe 4.0 x4 to address traditional servers and E3.S for PCIe 5.0 x4 interfaces to address machines designed to offer maximum storage density. BM1743 can address various applications, including AI training and inference, content delivery networks, and read-intensive workloads. To that end, its write endurance is 0.26 drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years.

Regarding performance, Samsung's BM1743 is hardly a champion compared to high-end drives for gaming machines and workstations. The drive can sustainably achieve sequential read speeds of 7,200 MB/s and write speeds of 2,000 MB/s. It can handle up to 1.6 million 4K random reads and 110,000 4K random writes for random operations.

Power consumption details for the BM1743 have not been disclosed, though it is expected to be high. Meanwhile, the drive's key selling point is its massive storage density, which likely outweighs concerns over its absolute power efficiency for intended applications, as a 60 TB SSD still consumes less than multiple storage devices offering similar capacity and performance.

As noted above, Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB faces limited competition in the market, so its price will be quite high. For example, Solidigm's D5-P5336 61.44 TB SSD costs $6,905. Other companies, such as Kioxia, Micron, and SK Hynix, have not yet introduced their 60TB-class SSDs, which gives Samsung and Solidigm an edge for now.

UPDATE 7/25: We removed mention of Western Digital's 60 TB-class SSDs, as the company does not currently list any such drives on their website

Micron on Tuesday announced that the company has begun shipping its 9th Generation (G9) 276 layer TLC NAND. The next generation of NAND from the prolific memory maker, Micron's latest NAND is designed to further push the envelope on TLC NAND performance, offering significant density and performance improvements over its existing NAND technology.

Micron's G9 TLC NAND memory features 276 active layers, which is up from 232-layers in case of Micron's previous generation TLC NAND. At this point the company is being light on technical details in their official material. However in a brief interview with Blocks & Files, the company confirmed that their 276L NAND still uses a six plane architecture, which was first introduced with the 232L generation. At this point we're assuming Micron is also string-stacking two decks of NAND together, as they have been for the past couple of generations, which means we're looking at 138 layer decks.

On the density front, Micron told Blocks & Files that they have improved their NAND density by 44% over their 232L generation. Which, given what we know about that generation, would put the density at around 21 Gbit/mm². Or for a 1Tbit die of TLC NAND, that works out to a die size of roughly 48.9mm², comparable to the die size of a 512Gbit TLC die from Micron's older 176L NAND.

Besides improving density, the other big push with Micron's newest generation of NAND was further improving its throughput. While the company's 232L NAND was built against the ONFi 5.0 specification, which topped out at transfer rates of 2400 MT/sec, their new 276L NAND can hit 3600 MT/sec, which is consistent with the ONFi 5.1 spec.

Meanwhile, the eagle-eyed will likely also pick up on Micron's ninth-generation/G9 branding, which is new to the company. Micron's has not previously used this kind of generational branding for their NAND, which up until now has simply been identified by its layer count (and before the 3D era, its feature size). Internally, this is believed to be Micron's 7th generation 3D NAND architecture. However, taking a page from the logic fab industry, Micron seems to be branding it as ninth-generation in order to keep generational parity with its competitors, who are preparing their own 8th/9th generation NAND (and thus cliam that they are the first NAND maker to ship 9th gen NAND).

And while this NAND will eventually end up in all sorts of devices – including, no doubt, high-end PCIe Gen5 drives thanks to its high transfer rates – Micron's launch vehicle for the NAND is their own Micron 2650 client SSD. The 2650 is a relatively straightforward PCIe Gen4 x4 SSD, using an unnamed, DRAMless controller alongside Micron's new NAND. The company is offering it in 3 form factors – M.2 2280, 2242, and 2230 – with a modest set of capacities ranging from 256GB to 1TB.

Micron's 2650 NVMe SSDs offer sequential read performance of up to 7000 MB/s as well as sequential write performance of up to 6000 MB/s. As for random performance, we are talking about up to a million read and write IOPS, depending on the configuration.

The performance of the drives scales pretty significantly with capacity, underscoring how much parallelism is needed to keep up with the PCIe Gen4 controller. The rated capacity of the drives scales similarly, with the smallest drive rated for 200TBW (800 drive writes), while the largest drive is rated for 600 TBW (600 drive writes).

“The shipment of Micron G9 NAND is a testament to Micron’s prowess in process technology and design innovations,” said Scott DeBoer, executive vice president of Technology and Products at Micron. “Micron G9 NAND is up to 73% denser than competitive technologies in the market today, allowing for more compact and efficient storage solutions that benefit both consumers and businesses.”

Micron's G9 276-layer TLC NAND memory is also in qualification with customers in component form, so expect the company's partners to adopt it for their high-end SSDs in the coming quarters. In addition, Micron plans Crucial-branded SSDs based on its G9 NAND memory..

SK hynix this week reported its financial results for the second quarter, as well as offering a glimpse at its plans for the coming quarters. Notably among the company's plans for the year is the release of a SK hynix-branded 60 TB SSD, which will mark the firm's entry into the ultra-premium enterprise SSD league.

"SK hynix plans to expand sales of high-capacity eSSD and lead the market in the second half with 60TB products, expecting eSSD sales to be more than quadrupled compared to last year," a statement by SK hynix reads.

Currently there are only two standard form-factor 61.44 TB SSDs on the market: the Solidigm D5-P5336 (U.2/15mm and E1.L), and the Samsung BM1743 (U.2/15mm and E3.S). Both are built from a proprietary controller (Solidigm's controller still carries an Intel logotype) with a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface and use QLC NAND for storage.

SK hynix's brief mention of the drive means that tere aren't any formal specifications or capabilities to discuss just yet. But it is reasonable to assume that the company will use its own QLC memory for their ultra-high-capacity drives. What's more intriguing are which controller the company plans to use and how it is going to position its 60 TB-class SSD.

Internally, SK hynix has access to multiple controller teams, both of which have the expertise to develop an enterprise-grade controller suitable for a 60 TB drive. SK hynix technically owns Solidigm, the former Intel SSD and NAND unit, giving SK hynix the option of using Solidigm's controller, or even reselling a rebadged D5-P5336 outright. Alternatively, SK hynix has their own (original) internal SSD team, who is responsible for building their well-received Aries SSD controller, among other works.

Ultra-high-capacity SSDs for performance demanding read-intensive storage applications, such as AI inference on the edge or content delivery networks, is a promising premium market. So SK hynix is finding itself highly incentivized to enter it with a compelling offering. 

Micron has introduced its Micron 9550-series SSDs, which it claims are the fastest enterprise drives in the industry. The Micron 9550 Pro and 9550 Max SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface promise unbeatable performance amid enhanced endurance and power efficiency, which will be particularly beneficial for data centersMicron's 9550-series solid-state drives are based on a proprietary NVMe 2.0b controller with a PCIe Gen5 x4 interface and 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory. The drives will be available in capacities ranging from 3.2 TB to 30.72 TB with one or three drive writes per day endurance as well as U.2, E1.S, and E3.S form factors to cater to the requirements of different types of servers.

As far as performance is concerned, the Micron 9550 NVMe SSD boasts impressive metrics, including up to sustainable 14.0 GB/s sequential read speeds and 10.0 GB/s sequential write speeds, which is higher compared to the peak performance offered by Samsung's PM1743 SSDs. For random operations, it achieves 3,300 million IOPS in random reads and 0.9 million IOPS in random writes, again surpassing competitor offerings.

Micron says that power efficiency is another standout feature of its Micron 9550 SSD: It consumes up to 81% less SSD energy per terabyte transferred with NVIDIA Magnum IO GPUDirect Storage and up to 35% lower SSD power usage in MLPerf benchmarks compared to rivals. Considering that we are dealing with a claim by the manufacturer itself, the numbers should be taken with caution.

"The Micron 9550 SSD represents a giant leap forward for data center storage, delivering a staggering 3.3 million IOPS while consuming up to 43% less power than comparable SSDs in AI workloads such as GNN and LLM training", said Alvaro Toledo, vice president and general manager of Micron's’s Data Center Storage group. "This unparalleled performance, combined with exceptional power efficiency, establishes a new benchmark for AI storage solutions and demonstrates Micron’s unwavering commitment to spearheading the AI revolution."

Micron traditionally offers its high-end data center SSDs in different flavors: the Micron 9550 Pro drives for read-intensive applications are set to be available in 3.84 TB, 7.68 TB, 15.36 TB, and 30.72 TB capacities with one drive writes per day (DWPD) endurance rating, whereas the Micron 9550 Max for mixed-use are set to be available in 3.2 TB, 6.4 TB, 12.8 TB, and 25.6 TB capacities with three DWPD endurance rating. All drives comply with the OCP 2.0 r21 standards and OCP 2.5 telemetry. They also feature SPDM 1.2 and FIPS 140-3 security, secure execution environment, and self-encrypting drive options.

Micron has not touched upon the pricing of the new drives as it depends on volumes and other factors.

HighPoint Technologies has updated their NVMe switch and RAID solutions with PCIe 5.0, and supporting up to eight NVMe drives. The new HighPoint Rocket 1600 (switch add-in card) and 7600 series (RAID adapters) are the successors to the SSD SSD7500 series adapter cards introduced in 2020. Similar to its predecessors, the new Rocket series cards are also based on a Broadcom PCIe switch (PEX 89048). The Rocket 7600 series runs the RAID stack on the integrated ARM processor (dual-core Cortex A15)

The PEX 89048 supports up to 48 PCIe 5.0 lanes, out of which 16 are dedicated to the host connection in the Rocket adapters. The use of a true PCIe switch means that the product doesn't rely on PCIe lane bifurcation support in the host platform.

HighPoint's Gen 5 stack currently has two products each in the switch and RAID lineups - an add-in card with support for M.2 drives, and a RAID adapter with four 5.0 x8 SFF-TA-1016 (Mini Cool Edge IO or MCIO) connectors for use with backplanes / setups involving U.2 / U.3 / EDSFF drives.

The RAID adapters require HighPoint's drivers (available for Linux, macOS, and Windows), and supports RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 10 arrays. On the other hand, the AIC requires no custom drivers. RAID configurations with the AIC will need to be handled by software running on the host OS. On the hardware side, all members of the Rocket series come with an external power connector (as the solution can consume upwards of 75W) and integrate a heatsink. The M.2 version is actively cooled, as the drives are housed within the full-height / full-length cards.

The solution can theoretically support up to 64 GBps of throughput, but real-world performance is limited to around 56 GBps using Gen 5 drives. It must be noted that even Gen 4 drives can take advantage of the new platform and deliver better performance with the new Rocket series compared to the older SSD7500 series.

The cards are shipping now, with pricing ranging from $1500 (add-in card) to $2000 (RAID adapters). HighPoint is not alone in targeting this HEDT / workstation market. Sabrent has been teasing their Apex Gen 5.0 x16 solution involving eight M.2 SSDs for a few months now (involving a Microchip PCIe switch. Until that solution comes to the market, HighPoint appears to be the only game in town for workstation users requiring access to direct-attached storage capable of delivering 50 GBps+ speeds.

Multiple companies offer high-capacity SSDs, but until recently, only one company offered high-performance 60 TB-class drives with a PCIe interface: Solidigm. As our colleagues from Blocks & Files discovered, Samsung quietly rolled out its BM1743 61.44 TB solid-state drive in mid-June and now envisions 120 TB-class SSDs based on the same platform.

Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB features a proprietary controller and relies on Samsung's 7^th Generation V-NAND (3D NAND) QLC memory. Moreover, Samsung believes that its 7^th Gen V-NAND 'has the potential to accommodate up to 122.88 TB,' 

Samsung plans to offer the BM1743 in two form factors: U.2 for PCIe 4.0 x4 to address traditional servers and E3.S for PCIe 5.0 x4 interfaces to address machines designed to offer maximum storage density. BM1743 can address various applications, including AI training and inference, content delivery networks, and read-intensive workloads. To that end, its write endurance is 0.26 drive writes per day (DWPD) over five years.

Regarding performance, Samsung's BM1743 is hardly a champion compared to high-end drives for gaming machines and workstations. The drive can sustainably achieve sequential read speeds of 7,200 MB/s and write speeds of 2,000 MB/s. It can handle up to 1.6 million 4K random reads and 110,000 4K random writes for random operations.

Power consumption details for the BM1743 have not been disclosed, though it is expected to be high. Meanwhile, the drive's key selling point is its massive storage density, which likely outweighs concerns over its absolute power efficiency for intended applications, as a 60 TB SSD still consumes less than multiple storage devices offering similar capacity and performance.

As noted above, Samsung's BM1743 61.44 TB faces limited competition in the market, so its price will be quite high. For example, Solidigm's D5-P5336 61.44 TB SSD costs $6,905. Other companies, such as Kioxia, Micron, and SK Hynix, have not yet introduced their 60TB-class SSDs, which gives Samsung and Solidigm an edge for now.

UPDATE 7/25: We removed mention of Western Digital's 60 TB-class SSDs, as the company does not currently list any such drives on their website

This week, Kioxia introduced its new 3D QLC NAND devices aimed at high-performance, high-capacity drives that could redefine what we typically expect from QLC-based SSDs. The components are 1 Tb and 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND ICs with a 3600 MT/s interface speed that could enable M.2-2230 SSDs with a 4 TB capacity and decent performance.

Kioxia's 1 Tb (128 MB) and 2 Tb (256 TB) 3D QLC NAND devices are made on the company's BICS 8 process technology and feature 238 active layers as well as CMOS directly Bonded to Array (CBA) design, which implies that CMOS (including interface and buffers circuitry) is built on a specialized node and bonded to the memory array. Such a manufacturing process enabled Kioxia (and its manufacturing partner Western Digital) to achieve a particularly high interface speed of 3600 MT/s.

In addition to being one of the industry's first 2 Tb QLC NAND devices, the component features a 70% higher write power efficiency compared to Kioxia's BICS 5 3D QLC NAND devices, which is a bit vague statement as the new ICs have higher capacity and performance in general. This feature will be valuable for data centre applications, though I do not expect someone to use 3D QLC memory for write-intensive applications in general. Yet, these devices will be just what the doctor ordered for AI: read-intensive, content distribution, and backup storage.

It is interesting to note that Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC NAND, optimized for performance, has a 30% faster sequential write performance and a 15% lower read latency than the 2 Tb 3D QLC component. These qualities (alongside a 3600 MT/s interface) promise to make Kioxia's 1 Tb 3D QLC competitive even for higher-end PCIe Gen5 x4 SSDs, which currently exclusively use 3D TLC memory.

The remarkable storage density of Kioxia's 2Tb 3D QLC NAND devices will allow customers to create high-capacity SSDs in compact form factors. For instance, a 16-Hi stacked package (measuring 11.5 mm × 13.5 mm × 1.5 mm) can be used to build a 4TB M.2-2230 drive or a 16TB M.2-2280 drive. Even a single 16-Hi package could be enough to build a particularly fast client SSD.

Kioxia is now sampling its 2 Tb 3D QLC NAND BiCS 8 memory with customers, such as Pure Storage.

"We have a long-standing relationship with Kioxia and are delighted to incorporate their eighth-generation BiCS Flash 2Tb QLC flash memory products to enhance the performance and efficiency of our all-flash storage solutions," said Charles Giancarlo, CEO of Pure Storage. "Pure's unified all-flash data storage platform is able to meet the demanding needs of artificial intelligence as well as the aggressive costs of backup storage. Backed by Kioxia technology, Pure Storage will continue to offer unmatched performance, power efficiency, and reliability, delivering exceptional value to our customers."

"We are pleased to be shipping samples of our new 2Tb QLC with the new eighth-generation BiCS flash technology," said Hideshi Miyajima, CTO of Kioxia. "With its industry-leading high bit density, high speed data transfer, and superior power efficiency, the 2Tb QLC product will offer new value for rapidly emerging AI applications and large storage applications demanding power and space savings."

There is no word on when the 1 Tb 3D QLC BiCS 8 memory will be sampled or released to the market.

Western Digital expanded its WD Blue NVMe family of budget SSDs this week with the introduction of the the WD Blue SN5000 series, an updated lineup of SSDs that, among other things, adds a 4 TB model. Being budget drives, the SN5000 series is not going to be a performance monster, but their combination of capacity, reliability, and relatively low price could make them popular both among casual buyers and among enthusiasts looking for relatively cheap bulk solid-state storage.

Western Digital's WD Blue SN500 NVMe drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are based around an in-house WD controller (the company rarely discloses their codenames these days). WD's controller is a 4 channel, DRAMless design, which is what we typically see for budget and mainstream SSDs. Externally, the controller supports a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection, and per WD's specifications, even this budget drive should be fast enough to put the additional bandwidth of PCIe 4.0 to good use. All of the drives are single-sided, and are covered with a thin graphene heatspreader for heat dissipation.

More surprising here is WD's choice of NAND. According to the company, they are using a mix of different generations and different types of NAND, depending on the model. The 500GB/1TB/2TB models are using WD/Kioxia's older 112 layer BiCS 5 TLC NAND. Meanwhile the new 4TB capacity is being enabled with the company's newer BiCS 6 NAND – but the QLC variety. All drive capacities are being backed by the same controller, so there is a thread of commonality between them, but at a high level WD seems to be using the higher performance of BiCS 6 to offset the switch from TLC to QLC.

When it comes to performance, the WD Blue SN5000 series drives are rated for read speeds between 5000 MB/sec and 5500 MB/sec depending on the capacity, while write speeds range from 4000 MB/sec to 5000 MB/sec. As for random performance, we are looking at up to 690K 4K IOPS random read speeds as well as up to 900K 4K IOPS random write speeds for the highest capacity model, while the lower-end 500 GB model is rated for 460K/770K 4K random read/write IOPS.

Overall, even with the 4TB model using QLC NAND, WD is touting it at offering better performance than any of the lower capacity models. We're accustomed to seeing QLC drives come in behind TLC drives in this respect, so that newer generation of NAND is doing a lot of heavy lifting to put it ahead of the other models.

This goes for write endurance as well; the 4TB QLC model has the highest endurance rating, at 1200 TB written, followed by 900, 600, and 300 TBW for the lower capacity models respectively. Depending on the specific drive model, this works out to between 300 to 600 drive writes in total, or around 0.164 drive writes per day, which is typical for drives in this class.

Overall, the new drive family supplants WD's previous generation of Blue drives, last year's SN580 series. Comparatively, the SN5000 drives are rated to offer better sequential and random drive performance at every tier. And the the tiny 250GB drive has been dropped entirely, making room for the new high-capacity 4TB model at the high-end while the 500GB drive model is the new entry-level capacity.

While the WD Blue SN5000 NVMe family seems to be well positioned to be a low-cost drives meant to compete aggressively on the pricing, for now WD's launch prices are a bit ambitious. The $70 price tag for the 500 GB version is pretty typical, while the $280 recommended price for a 4TB model puts it in a weird spot between a number of other 4TB drives. The tad slower Crucial P3 Plus 4TB can be found for $217, while WD's own considerably faster WD_Black SN850X 4TB is only $30 more, at $310. Ultimately, given that Western Digital's Blue drives are meant to be inexpensive SSDs, we expect retail drive prices to catch up with market realities shortly.

Rounding out our Computex 2024 SSD controller news, let's talk about the final major controller vendor at the show: Silicon Motion. Silicon Motion has been somewhat late to the PCIe Gen5 SSD party, as its rival Phison has been offering their high-end PS5026-E26 controller for almost 18 months now. But as Silicon Motion gets ready to make the transition to PCIe 5.0, the company has a trump card up its sleeve: the SM2508 controller, an energy-efficient high-end SSD controller that is intended for lower-power drives.

A PCIe Gen5 x4 controller, SMI's SM2508 boasts a very low active power consumption of 3.5W. Which, installed in an M.2 SSD, is intended to allow drive manufacturers to built 7 Watt (or lower) SSDs, according to the company. The SM2508 is made on TSMC's N6 process technology, which is a 7nm-class fabrication node with an optical shrink, which will make it one of the (if not the) most advanced controllers on the market once it ships. The relatively sophisticated node allows Silicon Motion to pack more cores and more features into its controller while keeping its power consumption in check – not to mention the chip size.

Under the hood, the front-end of the SM2508 SSD controller is based around four Arm Cortex-R8 cores, which will make it a notably powerful controller (Phison's E26, for reference, is two Arm Cortex R5 cores with an accelerator). This controller is meant to be used with DRAM, as well, and will support both DDR4 and LPDDR4.

The back-end of the chip offers eight NAND channels with 32 CE targets, supporting interface speeds up to 3600 MT/s. Altogether, SMI says that the controller can hit sequential read speeds of up to 14.5GB/sec and write speeds of up to 14 GB/s, while 4K random read and write performance will reach up to 2.5 million IOPS. And SMI's demo drive at Computex did even better than that, achieving a 14.9GB/sec read speed under CrystalDiskMark.

Silicon Motion and its partners are currently finalizing the firmware for the SM2508 and qualifying it with various manufacturers' TLC NAND. The chip also supports QLC NAND, though we'd be surprised to see anyone pair such a powerful controller with slower NAND so soon.

At Computex, Silicon Motion itself demonstrated an SM2508 drive in action at its booth. Various drive manufacturers also had SM2508-based drives on the floor as well, though only as static samples.

While Realtek is best known in the enthusiast space for for its peripheral controllers such as audio codecs and network controllers, the company also has a small-but-respectable SSD controller business that tends to fly under the radar due to its focus on entry-level and mainstream drives. But Realtek's stature in the SSD space is on the rise, as the company is not only planning new PCIe Gen5 SSD controllers, but also their first high-end, DRAM-equipped SSD controller.

For this year's Computex trade show, Realtek laid out a new SSD controller roadmap that calls for the company to release a trio of new SSD controllers over the next couple of years. First up is a new four-channel entry-level PCIe 4.0 controller, the RTS5776DL, which will be joined a bit later by a PCIe 5.0 variant, the RTS5781DL. But most interesting on Realtek's new roadmap is the final chip being planned: the eight-channel, DRAM-equipped RTS5782, which would be the company's first high-end SSD controller, capable of hitting sequential read rates as high as 14GB/second.

Diving a bit deeper into Realtek's roadmap, the RTS5776DL is traditional DRAM-less PCIe Gen4 x4 controller with four NAND channels, and is aimed at entry-level drives. The controller's NAND support is quite modern, however, supporting the latest ONFI/Toggle standards, which will allow it to hit NAND transfer rates up to 3600 MT/second. Across four channels, that's enough bandwidth to fully saturate a PCIe 4.0 x4 connection with sequential read/writes, while random 4K IOPS can burst as high as 1.2 million. Engineering samples of the controller are set to emerge in Q4 2024, so do not expect actual drives based on this chip to emerge for sale until the second half of next year at the earliest.

Realtek is also preparing the RTS5781DL, which can be thought of as a PCIe 5.0 version of their DRAM-less controller platform. The RTS5781DL features the same four-channel NAND layout and 3600 MT/sec max NAND transfer rates, which with the additional bandwidth afforded by PCIe 5.0, shifts the performance bottleneck back to the NAND. Overall, Realtek expects drives with its first PCIe Gen5 SSD controller to hit sustained transfer rates up to 10GB/second, and up to 1.4 million random read/write IOPS. The company aims to make engineering samples of this controller available in the first quarter of 2025, so actual drives will hit the market in late 2025 at best.

Finally, the pinnacle of Realtek's roadmap will be its RTS5782, which is the company's first high-end SSD controller. Besides including support for on-drive DRAM (DDR4/LPDDR4X) for higher performance, the back-end of the RTS5782 will feature an eight NAND channel design that supports transfer rates up to 3600 MT/second. Drives built with the controller are expected to be able to sustain 14GB/second sequential read rates and 12GB/second sequential writes, while the 4K random IOPS performance jumps to 2.5 million 4K read and write IOPS.

Unfortunately, the RTS5782 is also the farthest out of the three controllers, as it's still in the planning stages at Realtek. Consequently, for the moment the company isn't offering any guidance on when the new controller will be ready. No doubt the company will have more to show off next year for Computex 2025.

Although consumer SSDs based on Phison's PS5026-E26 controller have been on the market for almost a year and a half now, the class-leading drives still carry a distinct price premium, and to some degree that's because it's still one of the only options for a PCIe 5.0 SSD. But it looks like the situation is going to change in the coming quarters, as SSDs based on Phison's PS5031-E31T controller are incoming, with at least one Phison customer demoing an E31T drive on the Computex show floor.

Phison's PS5031-E31T controller uses two Arm Cortex-R5 cores accelerated by the Andes N25 CoXProcessor, just like its bigger brother Phison PS5026-E26. But this is where their major hardware similarities seem to end. The new E31T controller is a DRAM-less controller with four NAND channels (16 CE targets) that is produced on one of TSMC's 7nm processes, whereas the E26 is an eight-channel controller made on TSMC's 12nm production node.

Besides cutting down on memory channels and the use of DRAM to drive down costs, the E31T also picks up a couple of new tricks by virtue of being nearly two years newer. In particular, the E31T sports Phison's 7th Generation LDPC error correction technology, as opposed to the E25's 5th-gen LDPC

Phison itself calls its E31T platform 'the first mainstream 10 GB/s platform,' which pretty much gives a performance indicator for some of the upcoming inexpensive PCIe Gen5 SSDs. As for random performance, we are talking about 1.5M IOPS per second, which is in line with performance offered by some of enterprise-grade PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

Meanwhile, a Silicon Power ad at Computex indicates that that the company at least hopes to get to 12 GB/sec with its "US85" drive. Which at 4 NAND channels would require pairing up the controller with cutting-edge 3200 MT/sec NAND. It's a bit of an odd pairing given the mainstream, cost-conscious status of the E31T controller, but then the savings on the controller supporting DRAM can be invested back into the NAND on the drive itself. And more importantly, with 12 GB/sec reads and writes, Silicon Power's US85 SSD will be able to compete against earlier E26-based drives that are still being sold on the market, which brings this product to a whole new level. Though Silicon Power will have to be able to procure enough fast 3D NAND to meet demand.

Both Phison and Silicon Power expect E31T to start shipping in Q4, so by the start of next year, mainstream SSDs should be receiving a nice speed boost.

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market.

Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups that to 290 layers, though this remains to be confirmed.

Regardless, Samsung says that its 9th generation V-NAND memory boasts an approximate 50% improvement in bit density over its 8th generation predecessor. Driving this gains, the company cites the miniaturization of the cell size, as well as the integration of enhanced memory cell technologies that reduce interference and extend the lifespan of the cells. With their latest NAND technology, Samsung has also been able to eliminate dummy channel holes, thus reducing the planar area of the memory cells.

Interestingly, today's announcement also marks the first time that Samsung has publicly confirmed their use of string stacking in their NAND, referring to it as their "double-stack structure." The company is widely believed to have been using sting stacking back in their 8th generation NAND as well, however this was never confirmed by the company. Regardless, the use of string stacking is only going to increase from here, as vendors look to keep adding layers to their NAND dies, while manufacturing variability and channel hole tolerances make it difficult to produce more than 150-200 layers in a single stack.

Speaking of channel holes, another key technological enhancement in the 9th gen V-NAND is Samsung's advanced 'channel hole etching' technology. This process improves manufacturing productivity by enabling the simultaneous creation of electron pathways within a double-stack structure. This method is crucial as it enables efficient drilling through more layers, which is increasingly important as cell layers are added.

The latest V-NAND also features the introduction of a faster NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.1, which boosts peak data transfer rates by 33% to 3.2 GT/s, or almost 400MB/sec for a single die. Additionally, 9th gen V-NAND's power consumption has been reduced by 10%, according to Samsung. Though Samsung doesn't state under what conditions – presumably, this is at iso-frequency rather than max frequency.

Samsung's launch of 1Tb TLC V-NAND is set to be followed by the release of a quad-level cell (QLC) model later this year.

"We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product. Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market.

Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups that to 290 layers, though this remains to be confirmed.

Regardless, Samsung says that its 9th generation V-NAND memory boasts an approximate 50% improvement in bit density over its 8th generation predecessor. Driving this gains, the company cites the miniaturization of the cell size, as well as the integration of enhanced memory cell technologies that reduce interference and extend the lifespan of the cells. With their latest NAND technology, Samsung has also been able to eliminate dummy channel holes, thus reducing the planar area of the memory cells.

Interestingly, today's announcement also marks the first time that Samsung has publicly confirmed their use of string stacking in their NAND, referring to it as their "double-stack structure." The company is widely believed to have been using sting stacking back in their 8th generation NAND as well, however this was never confirmed by the company. Regardless, the use of string stacking is only going to increase from here, as vendors look to keep adding layers to their NAND dies, while manufacturing variability and channel hole tolerances make it difficult to produce more than 150-200 layers in a single stack.

Speaking of channel holes, another key technological enhancement in the 9th gen V-NAND is Samsung's advanced 'channel hole etching' technology. This process improves manufacturing productivity by enabling the simultaneous creation of electron pathways within a double-stack structure. This method is crucial as it enables efficient drilling through more layers, which is increasingly important as cell layers are added.

The latest V-NAND also features the introduction of a faster NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.1, which boosts peak data transfer rates by 33% to 3.2 GT/s, or almost 400MB/sec for a single die. Additionally, 9th gen V-NAND's power consumption has been reduced by 10%, according to Samsung. Though Samsung doesn't state under what conditions – presumably, this is at iso-frequency rather than max frequency.

Samsung's launch of 1Tb TLC V-NAND is set to be followed by the release of a quad-level cell (QLC) model later this year.

"We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product. Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Samsung Electronics has started mass production of its 9th generation of V-NAND memory. The first dies based on their latest NAND tech come in a 1 Tb capacity using a triple-level cell (TLC) architecture, with data transfer rates as high as 3.2 GT/s. The new 3D TLC NAND memory will initially be used to build high-capacity and high-performance SSDs, which will help to solidify Samsung's position in the storage market.

Diving right in, Samsung is conspicuously avoiding to list the number of layers in their latest generation NAND, which is the principle driving factor in increasing capacity generation-on-generation. The company's current 8th gen V-NAND is 236 layers – similar to its major competitors – and word on the street is that 9th gen V-NAND ups that to 290 layers, though this remains to be confirmed.

Regardless, Samsung says that its 9th generation V-NAND memory boasts an approximate 50% improvement in bit density over its 8th generation predecessor. Driving this gains, the company cites the miniaturization of the cell size, as well as the integration of enhanced memory cell technologies that reduce interference and extend the lifespan of the cells. With their latest NAND technology, Samsung has also been able to eliminate dummy channel holes, thus reducing the planar area of the memory cells.

Interestingly, today's announcement also marks the first time that Samsung has publicly confirmed their use of string stacking in their NAND, referring to it as their "double-stack structure." The company is widely believed to have been using sting stacking back in their 8th generation NAND as well, however this was never confirmed by the company. Regardless, the use of string stacking is only going to increase from here, as vendors look to keep adding layers to their NAND dies, while manufacturing variability and channel hole tolerances make it difficult to produce more than 150-200 layers in a single stack.

Speaking of channel holes, another key technological enhancement in the 9th gen V-NAND is Samsung's advanced 'channel hole etching' technology. This process improves manufacturing productivity by enabling the simultaneous creation of electron pathways within a double-stack structure. This method is crucial as it enables efficient drilling through more layers, which is increasingly important as cell layers are added.

The latest V-NAND also features the introduction of a faster NAND flash interface, Toggle DDR 5.1, which boosts peak data transfer rates by 33% to 3.2 GT/s, or almost 400MB/sec for a single die. Additionally, 9th gen V-NAND's power consumption has been reduced by 10%, according to Samsung. Though Samsung doesn't state under what conditions – presumably, this is at iso-frequency rather than max frequency.

Samsung's launch of 1Tb TLC V-NAND is set to be followed by the release of a quad-level cell (QLC) model later this year.

"We are excited to deliver the industry’s first 9th-gen V-NAND which will bring future applications leaps forward," said SungHoi Hur, Head of Flash Product & Technology of the Memory Business at Samsung Electronics. "In order to address the evolving needs for NAND flash solutions, Samsung has pushed the boundaries in cell architecture and operational scheme for our next-generation product. Through our latest V-NAND, Samsung will continue to set the trend for the high-performance, high-density solid-state drive (SSD) market that meets the needs for the coming AI generation."

Amazon's Gaming Week sale has lots of deals on gaming accessories and hardware, including a decent discount on the heatsink version of the 2TB WD Black SN850X SSD, which is still the best SSD for gaming you can get.

Buy now

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Although Corsair aren't included in our current best gaming SSDs guide, their compact form factor SSDs, including the MP600 Mini, are probably some of the best M.2 2230 SSDs on the market to pair with your Steam Deck gaming console.

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Patriot has formally introduced its first solid-state drives featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at demanding users. The Viper PV553 SSD uses the company's all-new active cooling system boasting an aluminum radiator, a blower fan, and a special heat shield that promises to ensure the best possible cooling for consistent performance under high workloads.

Set to be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations, Patriot's Viper PV553 uses Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory and we presume Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as Patriot is a loyal partner of the Taiwan-based SSD controller developer.

As for performance, Patriot rates its 2 TB and 4 TB PV553 for sequential read/write speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s as well as up to 1.4 million random 4K read and write IOPS. Meanwhile, the 1 TB model is slightly slower and offers read/write speeds of up to 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s as well as up to 1.3/1.4 million read/write IOPS.

The drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are compatible with desktops that have sufficient space inside as Patriot's Viper PV553 SSDs are equipped with quite an extraordinary cooling system to take away 11W of thermal power that they can dissipate. The cooler (which features a 16.5 mm z-height) employs a rather big aluminum radiator that covers both the controller and memory chips, a blower fan, thermal pads on both sides of the drive, and an aluminum casing — which the company calls heat shield — that directs air produced by the fan through the radiator's fins to maximize cooling performance.

The extensive cooling is supposed to ensure that Patriot's Viper PV553 drives sustains performance even under severe workloads. In fact, Patriot says that the cooler ensures that the drive maintains temperature at about 45ºC in normal room temperature conditions.

Meanwhile, PV553 SSDs are not Patriot's fastest drives. Recently the company demonstrated its Viper PV573 SSDs that use Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and offer a sequential read and write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. That drive will perhaps get more benefits from the new cooling system, but it will be available at a later date.

As it is always the case with Patriot's premium SSDs, the Viper PV553 drives are backed by a five-year warranty and are guaranteed to sustain 700, 1400, and 3000 terabytes to be written.

You may have noticed that SSDs got extremely cheap towards the end of 2023, and then they rebounded somewhat in 2024. We normally expect better deals at Black Friday than during the rest of the year, but this is something a bit different, with oversupply in 2023 leading to significant reductions that aren't likely to be repeated in 2024. However, there are still some better deals than others, and unless you can hop in a time machine they're still well worth covering.

The subject of today's deals post is the Kingston KC3000, an SSD that I use in my own testing PC thanks to its high capacity, impressive PCIe 4.0 speeds and generally aggressive pricing. Today you can pick up the 2TB KC3000 for £123, a fair price for a drive that cost more than £150 at the start of 2024.

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Patriot has formally introduced its first solid-state drives featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at demanding users. The Viper PV553 SSD uses the company's all-new active cooling system boasting an aluminum radiator, a blower fan, and a special heat shield that promises to ensure the best possible cooling for consistent performance under high workloads.

Set to be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations, Patriot's Viper PV553 uses Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory and we presume Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as Patriot is a loyal partner of the Taiwan-based SSD controller developer.

As for performance, Patriot rates its 2 TB and 4 TB PV553 for sequential read/write speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s as well as up to 1.4 million random 4K read and write IOPS. Meanwhile, the 1 TB model is slightly slower and offers read/write speeds of up to 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s as well as up to 1.3/1.4 million read/write IOPS.

The drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are compatible with desktops that have sufficient space inside as Patriot's Viper PV553 SSDs are equipped with quite an extraordinary cooling system to take away 11W of thermal power that they can dissipate. The cooler (which features a 16.5 mm z-height) employs a rather big aluminum radiator that covers both the controller and memory chips, a blower fan, thermal pads on both sides of the drive, and an aluminum casing — which the company calls heat shield — that directs air produced by the fan through the radiator's fins to maximize cooling performance.

The extensive cooling is supposed to ensure that Patriot's Viper PV553 drives sustains performance even under severe workloads. In fact, Patriot says that the cooler ensures that the drive maintains temperature at about 45ºC in normal room temperature conditions.

Meanwhile, PV553 SSDs are not Patriot's fastest drives. Recently the company demonstrated its Viper PV573 SSDs that use Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and offer a sequential read and write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. That drive will perhaps get more benefits from the new cooling system, but it will be available at a later date.

As it is always the case with Patriot's premium SSDs, the Viper PV553 drives are backed by a five-year warranty and are guaranteed to sustain 700, 1400, and 3000 terabytes to be written.

While enthusiasts are now focused mostly on SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface, there are many people who will be just fine with drives featuring a PCIe 4.0 interface to upgrade their PlayStation 5 or PCs bought a few years ago. To address these customers, SSD makers need to offer something that offers the right balance between price and performance. This is exactly what Corsair does with its MP600 Elite devices.

Corsair this week has released a new line of SSDs aimed at the mainstream market, the MP600 Elite. The drives are based on Phison's low-power highly-integrated PS5027-E27T platform, which is geared towards building mainstream, DRAM-less drives. The controller supports both 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash via a four channel, Toggle 5.0/ONFi 5.0 interface, with data transfer rates up to 3600 MT/s. Meanwhile host connectivity is provided via a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

With its MP600 Elite SSDs, Corsair is not trying to offer the fastest PCIe Gen4 drives on the market, but rather attempts to offer the maximum value for 3D TLC-powered 1 TB, 2 TB as well as 4 TB configurations. The drives will offer sequential read performance of up to 7,000 MB/s and write performance of up to 6,500 MB/s, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K and 1,200K IOPS respectively, which is not bad for a PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

To maximize compatibility of its MP600 Elite drives (and make it compatible with Sony's PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Slim), Corsair offers them both with a tiny aluminum heatspreader and an even thinner graphene heatspreader.

The main idea behind the Corsair MP600 Elite is its affordability: it does not require DRAM or a sophisticated cooling system, which optimizes the manufacturer's costs. Meanwhile, Corsair offers 1 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $89.99 and 2 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $164.99 (whereas versions with an aluminum heatsink are $5 cheaper), which is not particularly cheap. For example, a faster Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2 TB costs $169.99.

Every drive is comes with a five-year warranty and can endure up to 1,200 terabytes written (TBW).

Virtually all client SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface released to date use Phison's PS5026-E26 controller. Apparently, TeamGroup decided to try something different and introduced a drive powered by a completely different platform, the Innogrit IG5666. The T-Force Ge Pro SSD not only uses an all-new platform, but it also boasts with fast 3D NAND to enable a sequential read speed of up to 14 GB/s, which almost saturates the PCIe 5.0 x4 bus.

TeamGroup's T-Force Ge Pro PCIe 5.0 SSDs will be among the first drives to use the Innogrit IG5666 controller, which packs multiple cores that can handle an LDPC ECC algorithm with a 4096-bit code length, features low power consumption, has eight NAND channels, is made on a 12 nm-class process technology, and has a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface. The drives will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations as well as will rely on high-performance 3D TLC NAND memory with a 2400 MT/s interface speed to guarantee maximum performance.

Indeed, 2 TB and 4TB T-Force Ge Pro drives are rated for an up to 14,000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as an up to 11,800 MB/s sequential write speed, which is in line with the highest-end SSDs based on the Phison E26 controller. Meanwhile, TeamGroup does not disclose random performance offered by these SSDs.

What is noteworthy is that to T-Force Ge Pro drives are equipped with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which is said to be enough to sustain such high-performance levels under loads. Usage of such a cooler makes it easy to fit a T-Force Ge Pro into almost any system, a major difference with many of Phison E26-based drives. Of course, only reviews will reveal whether such a cooling system is indeed enough to properly cool the SSDs, but the fact that TeamGroup decided to go with a thin cooler is notable.

TeamGroup is set to offer its T-Force Ge Pro SSDs with a five-year warranty. Amazon, Newegg, and Amazon Japan will start taking pre-orders on these drives on February 9, 2024. Prices are currently unknown.

Patriot has formally introduced its first solid-state drives featuring a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface aimed at demanding users. The Viper PV553 SSD uses the company's all-new active cooling system boasting an aluminum radiator, a blower fan, and a special heat shield that promises to ensure the best possible cooling for consistent performance under high workloads.

Set to be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations, Patriot's Viper PV553 uses Micron's 232-layer 3D TLC NAND memory and we presume Phison's PS5026-E26 controller as Patriot is a loyal partner of the Taiwan-based SSD controller developer.

As for performance, Patriot rates its 2 TB and 4 TB PV553 for sequential read/write speeds of up to 12,400 MB/s and 11,800 MB/s as well as up to 1.4 million random 4K read and write IOPS. Meanwhile, the 1 TB model is slightly slower and offers read/write speeds of up to 11,700 MB/s and 9,500 MB/s as well as up to 1.3/1.4 million read/write IOPS.

The drives come in an M.2-2280 form-factor and are compatible with desktops that have sufficient space inside as Patriot's Viper PV553 SSDs are equipped with quite an extraordinary cooling system to take away 11W of thermal power that they can dissipate. The cooler (which features a 16.5 mm z-height) employs a rather big aluminum radiator that covers both the controller and memory chips, a blower fan, thermal pads on both sides of the drive, and an aluminum casing — which the company calls heat shield — that directs air produced by the fan through the radiator's fins to maximize cooling performance.

The extensive cooling is supposed to ensure that Patriot's Viper PV553 drives sustains performance even under severe workloads. In fact, Patriot says that the cooler ensures that the drive maintains temperature at about 45ºC in normal room temperature conditions.

Meanwhile, PV553 SSDs are not Patriot's fastest drives. Recently the company demonstrated its Viper PV573 SSDs that use Micron's B58R 3D TLC NAND with a 2400 MT/s data transfer rate and offer a sequential read and write speed of up to 14,000 MB/s and 12,000 MB/s, respectively. That drive will perhaps get more benefits from the new cooling system, but it will be available at a later date.

As it is always the case with Patriot's premium SSDs, the Viper PV553 drives are backed by a five-year warranty and are guaranteed to sustain 700, 1400, and 3000 terabytes to be written.

While enthusiasts are now focused mostly on SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 interface, there are many people who will be just fine with drives featuring a PCIe 4.0 interface to upgrade their PlayStation 5 or PCs bought a few years ago. To address these customers, SSD makers need to offer something that offers the right balance between price and performance. This is exactly what Corsair does with its MP600 Elite devices.

Corsair this week has released a new line of SSDs aimed at the mainstream market, the MP600 Elite. The drives are based on Phison's low-power highly-integrated PS5027-E27T platform, which is geared towards building mainstream, DRAM-less drives. The controller supports both 3D TLC and 3D QLC NAND flash via a four channel, Toggle 5.0/ONFi 5.0 interface, with data transfer rates up to 3600 MT/s. Meanwhile host connectivity is provided via a PCIe 4.0 x4 interface.

With its MP600 Elite SSDs, Corsair is not trying to offer the fastest PCIe Gen4 drives on the market, but rather attempts to offer the maximum value for 3D TLC-powered 1 TB, 2 TB as well as 4 TB configurations. The drives will offer sequential read performance of up to 7,000 MB/s and write performance of up to 6,500 MB/s, as well as random read and write speeds of up to 1,000K and 1,200K IOPS respectively, which is not bad for a PCIe Gen4 SSDs.

To maximize compatibility of its MP600 Elite drives (and make it compatible with Sony's PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 5 Slim), Corsair offers them both with a tiny aluminum heatspreader and an even thinner graphene heatspreader.

The main idea behind the Corsair MP600 Elite is its affordability: it does not require DRAM or a sophisticated cooling system, which optimizes the manufacturer's costs. Meanwhile, Corsair offers 1 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $89.99 and 2 TB MP600 Elite SSD with a graphene heatspreader for $164.99 (whereas versions with an aluminum heatsink are $5 cheaper), which is not particularly cheap. For example, a faster Corsair MP600 Pro LPX 2 TB costs $169.99.

Every drive is comes with a five-year warranty and can endure up to 1,200 terabytes written (TBW).

Virtually all client SSDs with a PCIe 5.0 x4 interface released to date use Phison's PS5026-E26 controller. Apparently, TeamGroup decided to try something different and introduced a drive powered by a completely different platform, the Innogrit IG5666. The T-Force Ge Pro SSD not only uses an all-new platform, but it also boasts with fast 3D NAND to enable a sequential read speed of up to 14 GB/s, which almost saturates the PCIe 5.0 x4 bus.

TeamGroup's T-Force Ge Pro PCIe 5.0 SSDs will be among the first drives to use the Innogrit IG5666 controller, which packs multiple cores that can handle an LDPC ECC algorithm with a 4096-bit code length, features low power consumption, has eight NAND channels, is made on a 12 nm-class process technology, and has a PCIe 5.0 x4 host interface. The drives will be available in 1 TB, 2 TB, and 4 TB configurations as well as will rely on high-performance 3D TLC NAND memory with a 2400 MT/s interface speed to guarantee maximum performance.

Indeed, 2 TB and 4TB T-Force Ge Pro drives are rated for an up to 14,000 MB/s sequential read speed as well as an up to 11,800 MB/s sequential write speed, which is in line with the highest-end SSDs based on the Phison E26 controller. Meanwhile, TeamGroup does not disclose random performance offered by these SSDs.

What is noteworthy is that to T-Force Ge Pro drives are equipped with a simplistic graphene heatspreader, which is said to be enough to sustain such high-performance levels under loads. Usage of such a cooler makes it easy to fit a T-Force Ge Pro into almost any system, a major difference with many of Phison E26-based drives. Of course, only reviews will reveal whether such a cooling system is indeed enough to properly cool the SSDs, but the fact that TeamGroup decided to go with a thin cooler is notable.

TeamGroup is set to offer its T-Force Ge Pro SSDs with a five-year warranty. Amazon, Newegg, and Amazon Japan will start taking pre-orders on these drives on February 9, 2024. Prices are currently unknown.

SSD prices have been on the uptick recently, following a record-breaking 2023 where oversupply caused the best deals on high-capacity SSDs we've ever seen. That means that current prices aren't going to beat out last year's Black Friday deals, but there are still some decent options that carve out a better value proposition than their peers. One example is the Kingston NV2, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 SSD going for just £50 on Amazon UK at the moment - some £14 below its UK RRP.

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