In a nutshell: PCIe 4.0 SSDs currently offer the bleeding edge in terms of consumer storage, though thermals can often become a concern under consistent, heavy loads. Gigabyte aims to address this issue with the new Aorus Gen4 7000s Prem. SSD, which features a tall and chunky nanocarbon coated heatsink called Thermal Guard Xtreme. Gigabyte claims this solution enables the drive to deliver peak performance with no throttling, noting consistent max sequential reads for hours on end.
Gigabyte’s new Aorus m.2 SSD is likely going to be a tight fit on even the most enthusiast-level motherboards considering that it measures 92 x 23.5 x 44.7 mm (l x w x h), thanks to the included heatsink. The drive also has some limitations in terms of digital space – at least initially – as it only comes in 1TB and 2TB versions.
The latter’s performance figures of up to 7,000 MB/s sequential read and 6,850 MB/s write speeds put it in the same league as our top picks in this storage category. Like the competition, this drive uses TLC-based flash storage and comes with a 2GB DDR4 cache. It delivers max random read and write IOPS of 650,000 and 700,000, respectively, and has an official endurance of 1,400 TBW.
The slower 1TB variant, meanwhile, offers up to 5,000 MB/s reads and 4,500 MB/s writes, 1GB DRAM, and delivers slightly better random read/write performance figures of up to 750,000 and 700,000 IOPS, respectively.
It also comes with a higher 1,800 TBW endurance rating, something that’s unusual to see on a lesser capacity drive. Both Aorus models, however, include AES 256-bit hardware encryption and come with a 5-year warranty.
This drive’s main edge over the competition is its massive Thermal Guard Xtreme heatsink. Touting uncompromised peak performance, Gigabyte notes that this solution offers improved thermal dissipation over regular plated heat spreaders and eliminates throttling. In Gigabyte’s internal testing, the Aorus drive was able to maintain consistent 7GB/s seq. read speeds for over 8 hours.
Pricing and availability of the Aorus Gen4 7000s Prem. is yet to be announced. For reference, the drive’s standard model (with an aluminum heatsink) is currently listed on Amazon at $200/1TB and $380/2TB.