Most companies haven’t transitioned their entire NVMe SSD lineup to PCI Express 4.0 yet, but PCIe 5.0 SSDs for PCs are on the horizon.
Storage company Silicon Motion said in a recent earnings report that its PCIe 5.0-enabled SSD controllers for consumer SSDs will be available sometime in 2024, which will open the door to a wide range of high-performance drives from different manufacturers. SSD maker ADATA introduced several PCIe 5.0 SSDs at CES last month (albeit without an expected release date), boasting read speeds of up to 14GB/s and write speeds of up to 12GB/s using the Silicon Motion SM2508 controller. Current high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs like the Samsung 980 Pro achieve about half that speed.
Other reports suggest these PCIe 5.0 consumer SSDs will arrive later in 2022, but according to the conversation transcript, this only applies to the latest version of the Silicon Motion PCIe 5.0 controller for enterprise SSDs, products that end up being used in servers and data centers., not what usually ends up on a PC on your desk or lap. Early PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumer PCs were also showcased at CES a couple of years before they became products that could be bought.
In 2022 and 2023, Silicon Motion will continue to focus on PCIe 4.0 SSDs. Budget SSDs like Western Digital’s WD Black SN770 SE are just starting to transition to PCIe 4.0, and according to reviews like this one from Tom’s Hardware, their controllers and flash aren’t fast enough yet to benefit much from the extra bandwidth. Silicon Motion also reports that PCIe 4.0 SSDs have only become commonplace in pre-built PCs within the last year due to “extensive validation and testing”requirements.
If you want to prepare your PC for PCIe 5.0 SSDs when they go on sale, 12th Gen Intel Alder Lake processors and upcoming AMD Ryzen 7000 series Zen 4 processors support PCIe 5.0.