Not satisfied with announcing one of the first X570 motherboards, Gigabyte has also used the Computex 2019 expo to unmask its first foray into PCIe 4.0 SSDs with the appositely titled AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD.
The SSD uses a Phison PS5016-E16 controller based on 28nm fabrication process as well as 96-layer Toshiba BiCS4 3D TLC NAND flash memory with eight NAND channels and 32 CE targets, a PCIe 4.04×4 M.2 interface connector, and external DDR4 DRAM caching. The Phison controller is geared towards reliability with support for the NVMe 1.3 protocol, over provision tech, wear leveling, and LDPC error correction.
With a rather impressive full body 27 fins array-optimized copper heat spreader and a LAIRD high conductivity thermal pad to ensure uniform heat dissipation, the NVMe Gen4 appears to be well equipped to handle the extra heat produced by the higher transfer rates of the PCIe 4.0 standard. Gigabyte says upwards of a 69% improvement on aluminium heat dissipaters ostensibly improving the longevity of the SSD.
Tech jargon aside the AORUS NVMe Gen4 SSD has a capacity of either 500GB, 1TB, or 2TB with sequential read speeds bang on 5GB/s and sequential write speeds reaching towards 4.4GB/s. Gigabyte is claiming a 40% increase in speeds versus the previous gen PCIe 3.0, and we are at odds to disagree given the alleged leap in performance. We’ll have to wait for the SSDs to reach stores to see how this works in practice.
Visually, the SSD fits in with the AORUS range of components and if affixed to a model from the new X570 AORUS motherboard range is sure to create quite the dazzling combination.
Gigabyte’s SSD ToolBox software also benefits from a facelift to ensure accurate status data, heat monitoring, and Secure Erase functionality from the Gen4 standard.
Keeping with the trend of companies announcing products without a pricing structure or launch date at Computex 2019, meatier details about the AORUS NVMe Gen4 should reach us soon.