Teamgroup T-Force PCIe 5.0 SSD Launched With 13,000MB/s Read Speed

Now that PCIe 4.0 SSDs are fully compatible with today’s CPU and motherboard platforms, and even consoles for that matter, the next obvious step is to move to the PCIe 5.0 standard. You know, this feature is not yet supported on any consumer products. Teamgroup has been in the spotlight for a preview of what it will bring across the board in the near future, and the specs are astounding compared to what was considered “fast storage” just a few years ago. Teamgroup’s PCIe 5.0 NVME SSD, called the T-Force Cardea, will achieve peak sequential read speeds of over 13,000MB/s with sequential write speeds of up to 12,000MB/s. It will also come with a sturdy aluminum heatsink for improved cooling.

The company teased the product in a blog post contains basic details on what we can expect from the upcoming flagship SSD. This news is certainly welcome, but it also raises more questions than it answers the timing. Considered by Intel top Z690Trend B660 and H-600 . series PCIe 4.0-only platform, similar to AMD’s older but still high-end X570 platform, it’s a bit vague as to when we’ll actually be able to use the powerful Teamgroup T-Force Cardea PCIe 5.0 SSD.

PCIe 5.0 SSD hard drive already available?

However, we can make some pretty good guesses. Seeing as how Intel Alder Lake CPUs support PCIe 5.0 in the CPU, support could be extended to the chipset in the 13th Gen Z790 motherboards, which are expected to launch within the next 7 months. That’s about the time AMD’s Zen 4 CPUs will come with the new AM5 motherboard platform. See where are we going with this?

If you’re thinking, “but I don’t even have a PCIe 4.0 drive,” you’re not alone. High product costs and lack of support from Intel until the Spring 2021 generation of Rocket Lake have led to a strange situation where the console storage specs are really ahead of all, except for Ryzen owners. Seeing as that doesn’t fit with the whole PC Master Race story, it’s likely we’re about to move from the short-lived PCIe 4.0 generation to something bigger.

So for the million dollar question, would your gaming experience benefit from this very expensive new technology? Probably not in most cases for a few more years. It will depend on when more game developers start optimizing the already generous in-game content streaming allotted by PCIe 4.0 drives. Seeing as consoles are now equivalent to PCIe 4.0 as well, we could start to see some more games over the next year or two that really benefit from these crazy new specs. As a result the loading transitions in open world games should be smooth and pretty much at the end of the loading screen. Eg, Cyberpunk 2077 loaded, saving about five seconds on the WD Black SN850 PCIe 4.0 7,000MB/s SSD.

All in all, it’s exciting news to know that Teamgroup and other manufacturers are preparing PCIe 5.0 SSDs for consumer systems, and we look forward to seeing game developers take advantage of the new capabilities. powered by these flexible new technologies.