As a PC enthusiast, I’m usually hungry to push the performance of my system. However, the higher speeds that PCIe 5.0 SSDs offer hasn’t compelled me to swap out SK Hynix P31 Platinum in my personal system with a faster alternative. It seems I’m not alone in my diminished appetite for faster storage, as there’s little present enthusiasm to push boundaries further with PCIe 6.0.
“You will not see any PCIe Gen6 [solutions] until 2030,” claims Wallace C. Kuo, CEO of Silicon Motion, a major manufacturer of SSD controllers. In an interview with Tom’s Hardware, Kuo explains that OEMs have “little interest” in the faster standard, while AMD and Intel outright “do not want to talk about it.”
PCIe 6.0 SSDs would offer theoretical bandwidth of up to 32GB/s, doubling the 16GB/s ceiling of PCIe 5.0. However, these higher data rates make it harder to accommodate the likes of signal loss, noise, and impedance, and such complexity naturally drives costs up. This has contributed to higher relative pricing between PCIe 5.0 and PCIe 4.0 storage, and would repeat with PCIe 6.0.
Consumers will, of course, happily swallow higher prices providing there are tangible benefits behind their spend. However, speaking from my own experience, PCIe 6.0 would face the same problem as PCIe 5.0 in providing noticeable uplifts save for specific parties.
As I explore in my WD_Black SN8100 and Samsung Pro 9100 reviews, these faster data rates and advanced controllers shine in workloads that require prolonged usage or where access time is key. Neither are easily appreciable in other tasks, namely game load times which are already plenty quick.
With all this in mind, I’m all for PCIe 6.0 SSDs taking a while longer to arrive to consumers. I’m sure the enterprise market will happily lead the charge and lap up the advantages of faster data rates, regardless of price. In the meantime, I’ll kick back and watch PCIe 5.0 storage prices drop, nabbing myself a speedier drive when the time and price is right.
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