Solid State Drives (SSDs) have witnessed a significant improvement in terms of speed, efficiency, and reliability over the past few years. After the arrival of Gen 5.0, the storage devices have taken a huge leap with record-breaking read/write speeds that can reach up to 12000 MB/s and even more. Since the interface used in these devices is PCIe 5.0, they offer double the theoretical speed of Gen 4.0 SSDs.
This massive leap makes Gen 5.0 SSDs a future-proof choice for professional users, creators, and those who are enthusiastic about the quicker file transfers, better multitasking, and faster loading times.
But, Early adoption of anything may not come out to be the safest idea. Gen 5.0 SSDs’ early adoption may not give you what you expect in return. And in some scenarios, it could even create problems for you. So, before you upgrade, it’s worth getting a better idea of the drawbacks.
In this article, we have compiled 6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Buy a Gen 5.0 SSD.
1. Price-to-Performance Gap
One of the major reasons not to go with the Gen 5.0 SSDs right now is the price tag attached to them. These drive comes at a price that is significantly more expensive than a Gen 4.0 SSD. They cost 40-60 percent more for the same storage capacity. For example, a Gen 4 SSD may cost around $100-$130 for a good 2 TB drive, but in the same storage segment, a Gen 5 SSD may easily go beyond $200 or more, sometimes, without a heatsink included.
And the main idea is: are you really going to get the doubled-up performance in real-world scenarios?
In most of the tasks that we perform in the real world, such as gaming, booting, app launching, and image or video editing, the changes seen are often negligible. Even if the Gen 5 SSD provides extra bandwidth, what’s the benefit if the workload doesn’t take advantage of it?
2. Excessive Heat Generation
With great performance comes great heat, and there is no exception with Gen 5.0 SSDs. Due to the increased bandwidth of the 5.0 interface, the data transfer is a lot faster, dissipating a lot of heat.
Gen 5.0 SSDs, however, use bulky heatsinks to keep temperatures under control. Some of them even come with built-in fans. These cooling solutions might prevent thermal throttling, but this setup takes the valuable space inside your build. In a laptop device or any compact build, installing these bulky SSDs is a tedious task. And even if you succeed in installing them, due to the limited airflow, a Gen 5.0 SSD can quickly show thermal throttling, affecting not only the performance but will also end up heating other pc components, such as the GPU, CPU, and motherboard, etc.
3. Limited Motherboard and CPU Compatibility
There is no doubt that Gen 5 SSDs come with exceptional performance, still their adoption has some compatibility issues. The power of these SSDs can only be utilized to their full potential with the newer motherboards that support the PCIe 5.0 standard. If you have an older motherboard, it doesn’t matter how high performing it is; you won’t be able to take advantage of these drives, eventually sticking to Gen 4.0 or Gen 3.0 speed.
So, in case you are planning to buy a Gen 5.0 SSD for an older system with an older motherboard that you have, you will have to spend extra money buying a new motherboard and a compatible CPU if required as well, if you ever care to utilize the full performance of the SSD. Another thing, the compatibility of a Gen 5.0 SSD in the motherboard is still being actively fine-tuned.
4. Software Isn’t Ready
As hinted earlier, there are many software programs not capable of taking the full advantage of the speed that a Gen 5.0 SSD provides, at least not yet. Many applications, games, and even operating systems struggle to make use of the bandwidth that Gen 5.0 offers. In fact, in processes like booting up, application loading, and gameplay, you won’t see any noticeable difference in performance.
The real-world difference can be noticed in large-scale scenarios such as large-scale data transfers, high-speed scientific simulations, and super-fast computing tasks. For a typical consumer, these kinds of tasks are few.
In short, Gen 5.0 SSDs are overkill for most users. It will be until more software is optimized to make use of the speed that it provides.
5. Early Tech Instability
The cutting-edge technology takes time to mature. Gen 5.0 SSDs are still in the maturing phase. And that’s the reason why these come with a drawback of having reliability and stability issues. Many early models have been known to suffer from inconsistent performance, critical failure, and firmware bugs. Since manufacturers are still working on the best way out, this generation of SSDs is currently less stable than generation 4.
Another reason is the lack of mature drivers. Generic drives may not be optimized for consistent performance, and this can result in random crashes and unsatisfactory thermal performance.
6. Gen 4 is More Than Enough for Now
Before jumping into the hype of Gen 5.0, it’s very important to consider how valuable the Gen 4.0 SSDs already are. The high-end Gen 4 drives like the WD Black SN850X or Samsung 980 Pro, really offer a speed over 7000 MB/s, which is already a good speed to consider for daily working tasks like content creation and gaming.
These drives also have a proven track record of being reliable, having good driver support, and firmware support. They have matured over the years and are now rock-solid and well-established options to choose from.
Conclusion
Gen 5 SSDs, though being future-proof and known for offering exceptional speed and performance on paper, come with too many trade-offs as of now. These are high prices, low compatibility issues, excessive heat generation, and questionable real-world benefits. The Gen 5 technology is still in an evolving phase. Their early adoption can be attributed to dealing with hardware limitations, potential bugs, and many other factors.
Unless you are too much enthusiastic or working in a field that requires high-speed data transfer with faster storage, Gen 4.0 SSDs are the safest and smartest investment.