Alright, so Computex 2025 is over (or, you know, ending), and my tech nerd heart is racing. Patriot, a company I’ve heard of doing my PC building research many times before, had some new SSDs to offer that are quite the marvels. Hello, goodbye to boring, slow drives of the past; we’re talking Gen5 speed levels here, which essentially means super-duper-fast.
Anyway, Patriot released two new SSDs a while ago: the PV593 and the PV563. There was another drive PV573 but we’ll focus just on these two in this article. Consider them the two coolest kids in school—one is brimming with frills and thrills, and the other is just as cool without the trouble.
The PV593 employs this, otherwise known as the Silicon Motion SM2508 8-channel NVMe SSD controller. Sounds like tech-speak soup, don’t worry. What that amounts to is this drive is going to achieve speeds of a whopping 14 GB/s (gigabytes per second) reading data and 13 GB/s writing. And it’s also going to remain fairly cool, which is a bonus for keeping your system content. Seriously, if you really want to know what this controller can do, take a look at some reviews of the Kingston Fury G5, Micron 4600, Acer Predator 9000, and WD Black SN8100. They all share the same brain.
And then there’s the PV563, and this one has a twist: it’s “DRAMless.” Now, as for me, your initial thought might be, “DRAMless? That doesn’t sound good.” Not as much! It incorporates a Maxiotek MAP1806a Gen5 DRAMless SSD controller. What’s great about this is that it’s likely to be one of the coolest 14GB/s solutions around. Consider this – less heat makes it ideal for laptops, where space and heat dissipation are always an issue. So, it looks like some BIWINS X570 is out that includes this very same controller, and review rumors indicate one is on its way sometime down the road. You can bet I’m on the lookout for that!
Who Are They Up Against?
Out in the open range of SSDs, Patriot isn’t the only ranger. There are simply too many big players. When you’re discussing Gen5 speeds, their biggest competition will come from Samsung with their 990 Pro (yep, it’s Gen4, but they always break the rules) or whatever new Gen5 giant they’re developing, Crucial (Micron’s brand), WD_BLACK, and Kingston (their Fury drive shares the same controller as one of Patriot’s new ones). And then there are other smaller but still competitive brands like ADATA and PNY. It’s a fairly crazy market, so Patriot has to bring the price-to-performance to the park.
What About the Ancestors? (Previous Versions)
Patriot’s been around the SSD block a while. Before these Gen5 bad boys, they had a string of Gen4 and even Gen3 SSDs. Their Viper VP4300 was a fairly well-regarded Gen4 drive, with good speeds and low prices. I recall that I read a number of forum threads on it when I first considered upgrading my PC. They’ve always positioned themselves to provide performance without taking you out of your budget, and that’s why they are generally a solid substitute for the top-of-the-line brands
Who Should Buy It (and Who Probably Shouldn’t)
Alright, alright, so let’s get down to who these super-speedy SSDs are actually for, because 14GB/s might be great, but isn’t needed by all.
Who Should Absolutely Get These:
• PC Enthusiasts and Early Adopters with Compatible Hardware: If you’ve got a bleeding-edge system with an Intel 13th/14th Gen (Alder Lake/Raptor Lake) or AMD Ryzen 7000-series (Zen 4) CPU and a motherboard that has a PCIe 5.0 M.2 slot, then you’re the audience for these SSDs. You’re the type of user who just wants to be able to say that you have the best performance out there, even if it’s only so you can brag about it.
• Professional Content Creators: Consider video editors trimming uncompressed 4K or 8K video, 3D animators, graphic designers, videographers, VFX designers with huge files to manipulate, or anyone in a profession where there is ongoing transfer of huge datasets. The 14GB/s sequential read and write performance will substantially reduce render time, file transfers, and workflow bottlenecks in general.
•Future-Proofers: While existing programs won’t fill Gen5 speeds now, technology such as Microsoft’s DirectStorage for gaming already begins to take advantage of quicker SSDs. If you wish to be prepared for whatever software the next couple of years introduce, jumping on Gen5 early could potentially eliminate an upgrade in the future.
• Laptop Enthusiasts (Primarily for the PV563 DRAMless version): The PV563, billed as the “coolest 14GB/s solution,” is a performance laptop killer. If you’re willing to pay for industry-leading speed in a mobile package without sacrificing your laptop as a mini-heater, this is a fantasy come true.
Who Probably Doesn’t Need These (and Why):
• Average Gamers: Much as we all cherish quick load screens, the truth is that in most games, the leap from Gen4 to Gen5 SSDs in real-world perceivable load time savings is actually quite modest at present. A good Gen4 NVMe drive, like a Samsung 990 Pro or WD_BLACK SN850X, is fantastic performance for less money, and games aren’t optimized to take full advantage of Gen5 speeds yet. Avoid the fallacy of hoping that a Gen5 SSD will somehow make your games play at 120 FPS if your GPU is not capable.
• Casual PC Users and Students (not content creators): If web Browsing, document editing, streaming video, and occasional gaming are all the computing you do in a day, a Gen3 or Gen4 NVMe SSD will be more than enough. You just won’t appreciate the full impact of Gen5 speeds in ordinary use, and the extra cost isn’t worth it. You’re paying for capabilities you’ll never, or hardly ever, have need of.
• Legacy System Users (not PCIe 5.0 compatible): Even if you purchased one of those, your system would restrict it to the speed of your motherboard-supported PCIe generation (Gen4 or Gen3). So, the drive itself is fast, but your system would slow it down, so you’d be paying extra for performance that you couldn’t even utilize. Check motherboard specs at all times!
• Budget-Conscious Buyers: Let’s face it, bleeding-edge tech does come with a price premium. Treading on a shoestring? Popping cash for a top-of-the-line GPU or CPU will likely yield a much bigger perceived performance gain than a Gen5 SSD.
What Do People Think? (User Reviews)
Since these are just fresh off the Computex floor, there doesn’t necessarily need to be a great many “people’s reviews” for these particular models. But from the controllers they’re employing, we can form a pretty good guess. The Silicon Motion SM2508 controller, employed in the PV593, has otherwise been well-received for its top-notch performance and decent thermals. Testers of other drives utilizing this controller, like those above, tend to praise its bare speed. For application in the PV563, the low-power and high-efficiency DRAMless Maxiotek MAP1806a controller will be its crown jewel. Laptop owners are going to love it if it performs as advertised, up to 14 GB/,s and is just plain really cool. Pre-release buzz for the BIWINS X570, which uses this same controller, indicates that it’s a great solution for the on-the-move power user.
Price Tag and How They Compare
Now, finally, the million-dollar question: how much will these cost? Patriot has not yet announced official pricing for the PV593 and PV563, but by examining current Gen5 SSDs, we can make some educated guesses. Drives like the Crucial T750 or Samsung 9100 PRO can range from around $150-$250 for 1TB, $250-$400 for 2TB, and upwards of $400+ for 4 TB. With the cutting-edge build, expect the PV593 with its DRAM cache to be at the upper end of that, maybe even a bit higher. The PV563 DRAMless, on the other hand, is budget-friendly, most likely to be among the cheapest 14 GB/s drives available, according to the news.
Potential Weaknesses (Since nothing is perfect):
• Heat Management (General Gen 5.0 Weakness): Even though the SM2508 in the PV593 is more power efficient, all Gen5 SSDs are very hot due to their phenomenal speeds. Even with passive heatsinks, throttling can still occur under continuous heavy loads. To get the most out of it, an excellent quality motherboard heatsink or even an after-market one may be required, which increases cost and complexity. The PV563 being DRAMless may counteract this somewhat, though 14 GB/s is quite a lot of data passing through.
• Real-World vs. Artificial Performance: Although benchmark figures (such as 14GB/s) sound great on paper, real-world performance disparity between a 7GB/s Gen4 SSD and a 14GB/s Gen5 SSD is not always as astounding as the figures suggest for everyday tasks. Unless you’re constantly doing big file copying, video rendering, or working with extremely large databases, you may not “feel” the full advantage.
• System Stability and Compatibility: Early Gen5 adoption has at times experienced concerns with motherboard compatibility and BIOS stability, occasionally restricting drives to slower speeds or system crashes. Although such problems are typically addressed by BIOS updates, it’s something to be aware of if you’re an early adopter.
• DRAMless Performance Consistency (PV563): Although the Maxiotek controller is lovely, DRAMless SSDs sometimes look less consistent in performance at Very Heavy, Long-term loads than the same SSDs with DRAM, most obviously when the SLC cache (A very fast, finite section of the NAND) becomes full. This would typically be more problematic for enterprise use, but it’s a theoretical issue. Patriot would need to provide stable firmware for the PV563 in order to sustain heavy workloads.
Conclusion
All in all, it would appear the Patriot is doing the intelligent thing here. They’re employing proven controllers for their flagship drive and going with a more power-frugal, lower-wattage configuration on their DRAMless model. As a college student looking to get the best bang for my buck, I’m sure to be eager to hear the final costs on these. My wallet (and my laptop) are ready and waiting!