Gigabyte has presented its first PCIe 5.0 SSD in detail. With the Aorus Gen5 10000, the cooler is optional and does not require a fan. However, the cooler is very large and therefore not compatible with many mainboards.
Gigabyte announced the Aorus Gen5 10000 last summer. As with all manufacturers, the product comes onto the market with a considerable delay.
The product pages are now available with further details. Accordingly, the Aorus Gen5 10000 will be available without a cooler, although the use of a cooler included with the respective mainboard is recommended. Optionally, there is a large heat sink with two heat pipes and “Nanocarbon” coating. Gigabyte M.2 Thermal Guard calls this XTREME. It should prevent throttling due to excessive temperatures. There is no mini fan, such as that used by Corsair on the MP700. Based on its own tests, Gigabyte certifies that the cooler can keep the PCIe 5.0 SSD at 60 °C even after 5 minutes of continuous use.
The cooler doesn't fit everywhere
However, there is one problem: the cooler increases the dimensions of the SSD to 92 × 23.5 × 44.7 mm (L×W×H). This means that more space is required in all three dimensions, because without a cooler the standard format is 80 × 22 × 2.3 mm (L×W×H). The size of the cooler leads to incompatibilities. Gigabyte links a list (PDF) with incompatible mainboards from their own company. No fewer than 35 models, especially those with the B660 or B760 chipset from Intel, are therefore incompatible. There are also the not individually listed Mini-ITX mainboards from the brands Gigabyte and Aorus, none of which are supported.
-
Aorus Gen5 10000 SSD (Image: Gigabyte)
Image 1 of 4
Aorus Gen5 10000 SSD (Image: Gigabyte)
The Aorus Gen5 10000 is offered with storage capacities of 1 TB or 2 TB. The 2 TB model is said to achieve sequential transfer rates of 10 GB/s reading and 9.5 GB/s writing and consume “less than 10.5 watts” and “less than 11 watts” respectively. The 1 TB version is specified with 9.5 GB/s reading and 8.5 GB/s writing at “less than 10 watts”. When inactive (idle), the power consumption should be less than 85 milliwatts for both. The Total Bytes Written (TBW) are given as 700 TB and 1400 TB respectively.
Doubled DRAM cache
If an SSD has its own DRAM cache, this usually measures 1 GB per 1 TB of SSD storage space. With the new generation with PCIe 5.0, Gigabyte doubles this to 2 GB for the 1 TB model and 4 GB for the 2 TB model. According to the manufacturer, this is economical LPDDR4 RAM. As is well known, the Phison E26 with eight channels and NVMe 2.0 serves as the controller.
No information about the market launch yet
However, it is not yet known when and at what price the Aorus Gen5 10000 will be launched. In Japan, a first model with PCIe 5.0 from the manufacturer CFD Gaming was already available, but there are reports of a small amount that is already sold out.