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

SSDs with PCIe 5.0 ×4 Phison E26 controller using what looks like a reference design have started selling in Japan

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.

Corsair is likely planning on releasing, or at least unveiling, a PCIe SSD called the MP700 in the coming days. The company did in fact release a promotional video for these SSDs, but soon it was pulled from the internet again (but not fast enough, giving Overclock3D enough time to document it), which probably means it was released prematurely. But the amount of time till the proper publication date likely isn’t that long, so hopefully the real release won’t be that far off.

According to this information, the Corsair MP700 is supposed to be an SSD with a sequential read speed of 10,000 MB/s and achieve write speeds of up to 9,500 MB/s (as usual, this specification describes writing into the pseudoSLC write cache). The module will be based on 3D TLC NAND and is supposed to support NVMe 2.0. It is likely based on the Phison E26 controller with PCIe 5.0 ×4 interface, which will be featured in a lot of similar modules.

Read more: SSDs using PCIe 5.0 will be up to twice as fast, see details of the Phison E26 controller

This controller is supposed to support read speeds of up to around 12.5–13.0 GB/s, but some modules with it will only reach lower speeds of just around 10 GB/s, like this Corsair MP700. This is due to the NAND used. 10GB/s SSDs are based on an older generation of NAND chips, whereas higher performance modules require the latest NAND chips, which are in limited supply on the market however and will cost more. Therefore, a significant portion of PCIe 5.0 SSDs will initially run at these lower speeds due to using prior generation NAND chips.

The Corsair MP700 has a classic M.2 2280 design (it does not use the wider PCB 2580 format that was previously being discussed for PCIe 5.0 SSDs). What makes this SSD atypical, however, is its thickness. The cooler has a very high aluminum heatsink, with which will make it unable to be installed in slots covered by a graphics card, for example. However, this cooler is also equipped with a fan, which does not make us very happy, because small diameter fans are usually associated with a lot of noise due to the high RPMs at which they operate. Unfortunately, we don’t know yet whether the fan will be temperature-controlled and whether it might also have a semi-fanless mode, where it would only turn on after the SSD reaches certain temperature.

According to some information, the fan has a cable with a connector that plugs in externally, and runs on 5V (like the fans in laptops, from which it is probably derived). However, this would probably mean that it plugs into a Molex or SATA Power cable from the power supply, and would therefore have no speed control, unless the fan has its own control thermistor touching the heatsink underneath. It would also have a possible advantage however: the controller is completely unaware of the fan in this case, and the SSD won’t protest in any way if you don’t plug it in and provide airflow some other way.

Update (May 2, 2023):

Corsair has announced that the production version of these drives will not use the originally presented cooler with a fan, that has been featured on samples used in reviews. Apparently MP700 modules you will be able to buy will either use a regular fanless heatsink, or will rely on cooling solutions integrated on mainboards.

Similar design from other manufacturers, sales have already started in Japan

This cooler design was probably created by Phison as a reference design. In fact, Phison develops not only controllers, but also reference firmware and SSD implementations, which it can even produce itself in its own factory as a turnkey product. This allows companies to sell such reference modules under their own brand.

The same cooler has appeared in photos of Phison’s engineering samples before, and we’ll probably see it in other SSDs as well these days. In fact, a module with apparently the same cooler has appeared in Japan under the brand CFD Gaming (this Japanese company announced the SSD last year and the cooler was shown already then). In this case, the CFD Gaming SSD PG5NFZ module has even already started selling in Japan, which would make it the first ever of these SSDs on the market. For now, just a 2TB version is available, with 1TB and 4TB modules coming later.

PCIe 5.0 SSD CFD Gaming SSD PG5NFZ (Source: CFD Gaming)

This SSD is supposed to have comparable specs to the Corsair MP700 (it’s also based on Micron’s 3D TLC NAND and of course the Phison E26). It also claims sequential read speeds of up to 10,000 MB/s and write speeds of up to 9,500 MB/s, so it also falls into that slower rank of PCIe 5.0 SSD. However, random access performance is said to be up to 1,500,000 IOPS in reads and 1,250,000 IOPS in writes.

Specifications for CFD Gaming SSD PG5NFZ (Source: CFD Gaming)

Similar to reference and non-reference graphics cards, SSDs based on the same controller but with a different cooler should also appear. These could also be fanless or come without any cooler (for users who mount them under a heatsink provided by their motherboard). It probably won’t be the case that all PCIe 5.0 ×4 modules will need to have a fan like this reference design.

PCIe 5.0 SSD CFD Gaming SSD PG5NFZ (Source: CFD Gaming)

The biggest benefit of an SSD like this could probably be for games that utilize DirectStorage, a technology that provides texture loading to the GPU directly from the SSD in games. Corsair’s promotional material also refers to this purpose. However, broader use of this technology is something yet to be seen, so it remains to be seen how important this will be and how much benefit it will bring to gaming.

Sources: Overclock3d, VideoCardz (1, 2 ), CFD Gaming

English translation and edit by Jozef Dudáš


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