G.Skill Phoenix Blade 480GB PCIe SSD Review

Introduction

Once upon a time the amount of bandwidth available to your storage device was far beyond the capabilities of said device to saturate it. Even the fastest Hard Disk Drives were relatively slow. Then, thankfully for all of our sanity, Solid State Drives appeared and they quickly got towards the 3Gbps limits of SATA II. This was solved by the introduction of the 6Gbps SATA III, although even an average SSD is capable of pushing 550MB/s.

The latest versions of Intel's chipsets are coming complete with SATA Express which promises support for 10Gbps devices, although we've yet to see any of them. G.Skill have looked at the options available and gone a different route. Why take advantage of some PCI Express bandwidth to bolster the SATA bandwidth when you can just use the PCI Express itself?

So there are now two clear solutions to the eternal quest for faster storage options. Does the Phoenix Blade provide enough to become the VHS to the Beta SATA Express? The DVD to LaserDisc, the BluRay to HDDVD. Let's find out.

Technical Specifications

Just stop a moment and look at the headline grabbing numbers proclaimed in the specifications. 2GBs read and write. Something that would require a 4 or 5 drive RAID 0 setup with all the associated setup/cable annoyance and costs involved in that. If that's even remotely backed up by our testing then there is no question about the new king. Let's find out then...