Now that PCIe 5.0 computers are starting to gain a bit of traction with the latest Intel processor release, it’s time to start looking into compatible peripherals. TeamGroup is among the first brands to launch a PCIe 5.0 NVMe solid-state drive, and on paper, it offers impressive specs. While general consumers might not reap the benefits of PCIe 5.0 for years to come, we’re finally getting to a place where storage devices outpace processors and other PC components, which is something the gaming and content creation industry has desired for many years. What all does the TeamGroup PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSD bring to the table, and how is this new technology going to change computers as we know it? Let’s take a closer look below.
SSD storage is finally catching up with other components
For years, we’ve had ultra-fast processors, graphics cards, and even RAM, but storage has been lacking. With the introduction of NVMe drives in recent years, things have improved dramatically but storage has always been a bottleneck for a system. Often, if your computer was taking ages to boot up or launch programs, adding more RAM or a faster processor would do little good to alleviate the problem. The only real solution was to replace a platter drive with an SSD, and then eventually to move from SATA storage to PCIe once NVMe hit the scene.
Fast forward to today. NVMe drives are crazy fast already with PCIe 4.0 being widely adopted, delivering up to 7GB/s transfer rates in optimal conditions. For consumers, this is about as fast as we’ll need for quite a while, but the professional industry still needs a bit more – in comes TeamGroup and PCIe 5.0 technology and break-neck SSD transfer speeds. Launched under the T-FORCE subgroup and CARDEA series, the upcoming NVMe SSDs offer a theoretical maximum read speed of over 13,000MB/s and write at over 12,000MB/s. That’s right, if you can keep the drive cool and feed it with large enough files, it can move data at up to 13GB per second.
This comes from utilizing the latest NVMe 2.0 standard and will use “proprietary technology to improve durability and product lifespan.” While you might not need 13GB/s transfer speeds in a traditional gaming desktop, the content creation industry, which is working on editing 12K or 16K RAW footage, will greatly benefit from these increased transfer speeds. Now that the ceiling is higher for maximum throughput when things throttle down we should effectively see PCIe 4.0 speeds which is crazy to think about. Content creators will be able to offload high-resolution footage faster than ever before, and it’ll make editing the content that much easier too.
If you’re looking to run the latest in NVMe SSDs, the pickings are slim for what computers are compatible. Right now, only Intel’s latest lineup of 12th Generation processors feature PCIe 5.0 support, though the next-generation Ryzen CPUs should also boast compatibility. In addition to that, TeamGroup’s latest PCIe 5.0 NVMe SSDs won’t be available until Q3 of this year, meaning it’ll be July through September before we start to see them hit the market. So, if your storage is lacking in speed, it’ll be a while before you can easily upgrade. We also don’t quite know what the pricing will be yet, as TeamGroup isn’t releasing that information until closer to the drive’s official release later this year. We can expect it to be in line with what PCIe 4.0 launched with, if not a bit higher, so expect to pay over $100 for a 500GB drive and well over $200 for 1TB, though that’s pure speculation on our part, of course.
Electronicsforward’ Take
While consumers might not immediately benefit from having these drives in their system, the PC community as a whole will reap the rewards as time goes on. It’s only a matter of time before we see systems that take full advantage of these storage speeds for high-end video editing or content production. Plus, as 4K gaming takes over and we move into the realm of 6K or 8K gaming on the horizon, we’re going to need faster and faster storage drives to keep up with feeding the system when it comes to high-resolution texture packs. I’m excited for what the future holds when it comes to PCIe 5.0 technology, but not just in storage. If we have NVMe SSDs reaching these speeds, which is double what PCIe 4.0 offers and even more than quadruple PCIe 5.0, then what can we expect to see from graphics cards or other interfaces? Only time will tell, and I’m excited to be living in an age where technology is advancing so quickly.
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