Despite all the buzz around next-gen technology, PCIe 5.0 SSDs are here to stay – and they’ll be sticking around longer than you might think.
According to Wallace Kou, CEO of Silicon Motion, there’s no real consumer demand for PCIe 6.0 SSDs anytime soon. Even AMD and Intel aren’t in a rush, and Kou says OEMs are largely uninterested in moving forward until there’s a valid reason.
PCIe 5.0 SSDs already offer near-double the transfer speeds of PCIe 4.0, yet most PC users haven’t even fully adopted Gen 5. From performance gains that don’t translate into real-world advantages for everyday users to increasingly high manufacturing costs, PCIe 6.0 is just not worth the trouble – at least for now.
Kou emphasized that a single PCIe 6.0 SSD controller tape-out could cost up to $40 million, using advanced 4nm process nodes and up to 16 NAND channels. That’s up from an already steep $16–20 million for Gen 5. And what does that mean for consumers? Even more expensive SSDs with minimal perceived benefit. It’s no wonder PCIe 6.0 SSDs will only show up around 2027 or 2028, and even then, mostly in enterprise systems due to upcoming AI hardware like NVIDIA’s Rubin.
Meanwhile, Gen 5.0 SSDs are still maturing, but they have some growing pains. Users report excessive heat – with some joking they run hotter than AMD GPUs. But there are solutions, including replacing stock thermal pads with higher-quality thermal interfaces to better manage temperatures. Despite the performance leap, many consumers remain content with PCIe 3.0 or 4.0 drives, especially when high IOPS matter more than raw speed.
For now, it’s clear: the industry is sticking with PCIe 5.0. Unless you’re chasing every last benchmark point or building a cutting-edge server, there’s just no need to jump to Gen 6. The focus should shift to affordability and capacity – because let’s face it, most of us just want more terabytes for our buck, not another speed number to chase.
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