The release of the first PCIe Gen5 SSDs came in a rather limited fashion, debuting in Japan about a week ago. CFD Gaming was one of the first to bet on these new storage solutions, and to keep operating temperatures under control, they set up a massive cooling system consisting of heatsink and fan located just above it.

Unlike what happens with PCIe Gen4 SSDs, where we only have a modest passive cooling system that is more than enough to avoid problems with excessive heat, in PCIe Gen5 SSDs the size of the radiator has been increased very, and use active element, fanmeans that we have to connect one more cable and that we also have another source of noise.

The fan that mounts the CFD Gaming PCIe Gen5 SSD drives is very noisy, so much so that under full load it gives us the feeling that it will fly away at any moment. The attached video speaks for itself and I think this is noise that would annoy any type of user, even those with a higher tolerance level. Probably the fan operates at 21,000 rpm.

I know the jumps in fan work they do not occur consistentlyonly when the disk is heavily loaded, which of course doesn’t happen all the time and won’t last long, but that’s no less annoying, that’s for sure.

I understand that these are next generation storage units that are able to offer high performance levels, they produce more heat and you end up having to integrate a more powerful cooling system to dissipate it, but honestly I think there has to be a better way to cool these PCIe Gen5 SSDsand I hope the other premium manufacturers surprise us with quieter and better raised stakes.

When it comes to performance, these early PCIe Gen5 SSDs are capable break the barrier of 10 GB/s in a sequence of reading and writingl, values ​​that are well above the 7.5 GB/s that PCIe Gen4 SSDs can achieve. However, I think the difference in performance between the two is overshadowed by the huge and noisy cooling system as well as their higher asking price.

Keep in mind that the 2TB drive that plays in this report has an approximate cost 350 euros, after currency conversion and VAT applied and that it is possible to find 2TB PCIe Gen4 7GB/s drives for less than 250 euros.