Category: SSDs

SSD reaches 122TB capacity, beating largest HDD by four times

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

Not so long ago, one could wonder how long it would take SSDs to overtake hard disk drives in capacity. It’s a while since that has happened, but the capacity of electronic storage based on NAND Flash memory continues to grow at a much faster rate than that of magnetic platters. While WD and Seagate have only just passed the 30TB capacity mark, SSDs now offer four times that. The price per unit of capacity, however, will be somewhere else. Read more “SSD reaches 122TB capacity, beating largest HDD by four times” »

Raspberry Pi releases its own SSD for RPi 5, adds PCIe 3.0 support

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

Raspberry Pi started as a small foundation, but since then it has created several boards and modules, its own “keyboard PC”, peripherals and is starting to develop its own chips. RPi traditionally used memory cards as the storage, but the latest version has NVMe SSD support, so now comes the logical thing to do: Raspberry Pi is releasing its own SSD, although this time it is not in-house product, the module is manufactured externally. Read more “Raspberry Pi releases its own SSD for RPi 5, adds PCIe 3.0 support” »

Finally cheaper SSDs: A period of falling prices is coming

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

SSD pricing has been unfavorable form most of the year, with storage becoming more and more expensive ever since the second half of 2023. Fortunately, it seems that the cycle is finally over and prices will hopefully start falling again, according to the SSD market forecast for the last quarter of the year published by market research outfit TrendForce, which has been tracking DRAM and NAND (and with them, entire SSDs) prices for a long time. Read more “Finally cheaper SSDs: A period of falling prices is coming” »

Crucial P310: Surprising performance from an SSD with QLC NAND?

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

QLC NAND SSDs, which have low endurance but should allow for lower prices, have recently been improving in performance more and more, which is the second main criticism of this type of memory. Recently there was the cheap Kingston NV3 SSD, which will apparently feature both QLC and TLC NAND versions, now a new Crucial P310 drive is coming to market. And this module is seemingly the fastest QLC SSD ever to come out so far. Read more “Crucial P310: Surprising performance from an SSD with QLC NAND?” »

Gigabyte SSD brings back SLC NAND, lasts 109,500 write cycles

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

The boom (or bubble?) around AI has brought many things, and among them interesting news for those missing SSDs based on MLC and SLC NAND Flash which was more pricy but had better performance and crucially, much longer lifespan so you didn’t have to worry about wearing out the SSD. That said, Gigabyte is launching an SSD that is officially designed for AI applications, but not just for them – its main asset is precisely SLC recording. Read more “Gigabyte SSD brings back SLC NAND, lasts 109,500 write cycles” »

GeForce RTX 4060 Ti with M.2 slot launched, can use PCIe 5.0 SSD

Graphics, News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

Some GPUs in current gaming graphics cards use just eight PCIe lanes instead of the whole ×16 interface. This includes cards like the Radeon RX 7600 and also the GeForce RTX 4060 and 4060 Ti. Asus recently came up with an idea to make use of the extra lanes that would go to waste such a GPU, and made a graphics card that gets some utility out of of the excess lanes, using them to connect an SSD and provide an extra M.2 slot. Read more “GeForce RTX 4060 Ti with M.2 slot launched, can use PCIe 5.0 SSD” »

Corsair’s MP700 Pro Gen5 SSD delivers up to 12.4 GB/s speeds

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

When SSDs using PCI Express 5.0 technology came to market, most models available delivered sequential speeds of “just” around 10 GB/s. The Phison E26 controller used is supposed to reach up to about 12.5 GB/s, but it turned out that with most of the NAND available on the market it only reaches that lower level bar between 9500 – 10 000 MB/s. Fortunately, things are getting better and the 12.5GB/s drives promised a year ago are coming. Read more “Corsair’s MP700 Pro Gen5 SSD delivers up to 12.4 GB/s speeds” »

The days of SSDs getting cheaper are over. Prices are starting to rise

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

SSDs have been steadily getting cheaper for a long time now, often to prices undreamed of a few years ago. This was due to a slump in PC demand, which left the NAND Flash memory market oversupplied. Beware, however, this price drop seems to have bottomed out and prices are expected to start going up from autumn, or at best stay flat. So the time fo any storage upgrades may be now as SSDs may get more expensive in the coming months. Read more “The days of SSDs getting cheaper are over. Prices are starting to rise” »

New Silicon Motion controller will make PCIe 5.0 SSDs low-power

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

PCIe Gen5 SSDs have so far been the domain of Phison, whose E26 controller has a pretty high power draw, and there are reports of throttling or even system crashes due to overheating of these SSDs. Silicon Motion controllers will quite possibly solve this, as their power draw is supposed to be significantly lower. It turns out then not just the lower-tier ones, but even the high-performance SM2508 design will be quite efficient. Read more “New Silicon Motion controller will make PCIe 5.0 SSDs low-power” »

Asus puts M.2 SSD on GeForce RTX 4060 Ti to make use of PCIe ×16

Graphics, News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

There’s more and more graphics cards that don’t use the full width of PCI Express ×16 slot and run with just eight lanes to cut GPU die area and cost. This usually renders the remaining eight lanes useless, but Asus has now come up with an idea to make them useful. They still won’t be usable for the graphics card itself, but at least they’ll find some use. It could come in handy on A620 boards with a shortage of M.2 slots, for example. Read more “Asus puts M.2 SSD on GeForce RTX 4060 Ti to make use of PCIe ×16” »

Kioxia trying HLC NAND with 7 bits per cell, LN2 cooling required

News, SSDs, Technology | | Jan Olšan

A few years ago, we used to look down on TLC NAND flash that stores 3 bits in a single cell and ask for SSDs with SLC (just 1-bit) flash memory. Since then, TLC has become the norm, and the lower-quality tier was taken over by QLC chips with 4 bits per cell and even worse endurance and performance. And it seems this trend could continue, as Kioxia and WD are preparing “hepta-level cell” NAND that would store 7 bits at once. Read more “Kioxia trying HLC NAND with 7 bits per cell, LN2 cooling required” »

Beware: counterfeit Samsung SSD 980 Pro are selling in China

News, SSDs | | Jan Olšan

When you shop on auction servers or Chinese internet “marketplaces”, you are at risk of counterfeit hardware. There have been and still keep being sold counterfeit graphics cards (that usually contain old and worthless GPUs), but also processors. And now, apparently, we are getting counterfeit NVMe SSDs. They also appeared in China and are while they are quite sophisticated, you won’t get the desired features and performance. Read more “Beware: counterfeit Samsung SSD 980 Pro are selling in China” »

PCIe 5.0 SSDs have started selling. The first models use a fan

News, SSDs, Storages | | Jan Olšan

When PCI Express 4.0 first appeared in desktops in 2019, SSDs started to use it virtually right away. On the other hand, PCI Express 5.0, available from autumn 2021 on the LGA 1700 platform and from autumn 2022 on AM5 boards, has suffered a disappointing lack of any SSDs till now. But they are finally here now. Corsair has shown its first PCIe 5.0 module, which however raises some concerns by including a cooling a fan. Read more “PCIe 5.0 SSDs have started selling. The first models use a fan” »

Intel Raptor Lake and Z790 platform will lack PCIe 5.0 for SSDs

Motherboards, News, SSDs, Storages | | Jan Olšan

Curiously, even though Intel Raptor Lake CPUs are only three months away, there’s virtually no word on the 700-series chipsets and motherboards that should come with the new CPUs. Last week, however, a leaked document was posted on the Internet, in which Intel introduces the Raptor Lake platform, the CPU and the new chipsets. The most surprising bit is that the new boards won’t bring the one feature that was most expected of them. Read more “Intel Raptor Lake and Z790 platform will lack PCIe 5.0 for SSDs” »

Phison E26: PCIe 5.0 controller to deliver 2× faster NVMe SSDs

News, SSDs, Storages | | Jan Olšan

We are starting to see introductions of first PCI Express 5.0 SSDs, which will enable up to double the read and write speeds on AMD AM5 and Intel LGA 1700 platforms. Many or majority of these SSDs will be based on the Phison E26 controller (and often on Phison reference design and firmware). Its manufacturer has now unveiled its specs at Computex 2022, showing us what the new cutting-edge SSD for PCs will look like. Read more “Phison E26: PCIe 5.0 controller to deliver 2× faster NVMe SSDs” »

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