Gigabyte Aorus G5 10000 2TB SSD Review

Introduction

We spent some time when PCI Express 4.0 first arrived on the scene looking at how it affected the performance of your graphics card, and we did similar testing with PCI Express 5.0. The reality was that for graphics there isn't as much difference as you might imagine.

The area that actual improvements appeared was the world of storage. It wasn't that long ago that we were all basking in the glory of the 2.5" SSDs and how much faster they were than fat old mechanical drives. Then M.2s appeared and annihilated the SATA SSD performance. PCI Express 4.0 took the transfer speeds to spectacular new heights, albeit ones with a price tag that kept them within the purvey of the wealthy.

Like a dangling carrot, the launch of the latest generation of motherboards has come with PCI Express 5.0, and we couldn't help wonder what transfer speeds that vastly broader bandwidth could give us. It's been a little while that we've been waiting to get our mitts upon a true 5th Generation NVMe storage solution, and Gigabyte are first up to the blocks with their Aorus Gen5 10000 SSD. Available in different sizes we've got the 2TB model for review.

Being part of the famous Gigabyte Aorus range it is more than just a 2280 length M.2 though. You also get a huge heatsink to tame the temperatures that will appear any time you're pushing this much data at these kind of speeds. So pay attention to exactly where your PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot is in relation to your graphics card because, as we will show you on the next page, this isn't a slender thing.

Technical Specifications

It's nearly impossible to look at the specifications of the Aorus Gen5 and not come away slack-jawed. We knew numbers like this are possible, but it's rare to see them claimed. Of course we're here to find out how accurate these numbers are.