The first consumer-grade PCIe Gen 5 platform was announced back in 2021 with Intel's Alder Lake CPUs and although the chips had Gen 5 lanes, they were only limited to discrete GPUs. The Gen 5 SSD options would not appear until the end of 2022 and we have to thank AMD for its AM5 push that has truly kick-started the Gen 5 SSD market.

Currently, both Intel's 700-series and AMD's AM5 platform feature support for PCIe Gen 5 SSDs but Intel's support is limited in the way that only a few motherboards that split the CPU Gen 5 lanes between the dGFX and M.2 slots have access to them.

AMD has more options but just like Intel's premium offerings that support Gen 5 SSDs, AMD's AM5 premium offerings also get Gen 5 SSD support which means there are still ways to go before we get to mass consumer variants. With that said, 2023 has finally kicked off retail availability for the first Gen 5 NVMe SSD solutions and Phison is leading the wave with its flagship E26 controller powering the most premium and fastest SSDs in their class.

For today's review, we will be taking a look at two of the first PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSDs powered by the Phison E26 controller. We have the TD510 2 TB SSD from Inland and the AORUS Gen 5 10000 2TB SSD from Gigabyte. Both of these storage devices are premium products retailing well above what Gen 4 SSD costs. SSD manufacturers will first be rolling out 10,000 MB/s products and move to faster 12 and 14 GB/s products once NAND Flash matures.

Inland TD510 2 TB PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD

The Inland TD510 PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD will come in up to 4 TB flavors though the drive we are testing today offers a 2 TB capacity.

The drives feature the Phison PS5026-E26 controller which hosts a PCIe Gen 5.0 x4 interface for up to 128 GT/s link speeds & comes with a dual CPU architecture that incorporates the Arm Cortex R5 CPU based on a 12nm process node. The SSD features support for 8 channels, supporting 3D TLC and QLC NAND Flash memory, LPDDR4/DDR4 DRAM controller (3200 Mb/s), & all the latest security features. The SSD comes in the standard M.2 2280 form factor which makes them compatible with virtually any modern PC.

The 2 TB and 4 TB drivers are rated at a maximum sequential read speed of 10,000 MB/s while the Sequential write speeds are rated at 9,500 MB/s. Similarly, the Random Read & Writes are rated at 1400/1500K IOPs, respectively. The 2 TB is rated at an endurance of 1400 TBW while the 4 TB has an endurance of 3000 TB. Meanwhile, the 1 TB variant is rated at 10,000 MB/s read and 8,500 MB/s Write speeds while offering 1300K/1500K IOPS and 700 TBW. The trio features hynix LPDDR4 DRAM and comes with a 6-year warranty.

Phison offers its 5th Generation LDPC ECC, RAID ECC, SmartECC (RAID ECC), and End-To-End Data Path Protection security features along with ASPM+APST for power management. Surprisingly, the manufacturer has yet to list its PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD on its official page but you can find more info at retailers such as Microcenter. The heatsink and cooler on the Inland SSD are pre-installed and it is meant to be used this way since there are no copper or aluminum pads underneath the heatsink at all.

Inland TD510 2 TB PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD